Treasure Island Music Festival – San Francisco, CA
Live Review: 10/18/09
***
The weather turned for Day 2 of our festival, and what seemed like the usual San Francisco fog was actually just clouds. Tank tops and cut-off jean shorts turned into slick leather bombers and halfway-on beanies. The line for iced lemonade migrated to the coffee stand. That’s life in San Francisco—you just have to roll with it. I wish I’d packed a thicker jacket, though…

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes

One of the most enjoyable parts of attending a festival is finding hidden gems like Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes. I came into their show without any preconceived notions; however, I had plenty of stereotypes in my head once they hit the stage–all of which were soon shattered when they started playing.

They’re a combination folk and old soul music, like a cross between Bob Dylan and Widespread Panic, only a little younger and more hippie looking. Apparently, just a few short years ago, the lead singer looked more like The Killers than a gypsy, but now he’s decidedly Haight-Ashbury—something I can definitely relate to since I live there.

There are a lot of people and even more instruments involved in the production, including horns, drums, tambourines, and even an accordion. The mass of people lended a certain sense of community to the whole shebang, which was furthered by the lead singer hopping all over the place and causing a damn ruckus. Case in point:

Strange as it was, they got us all excited to listen to folk music, and that’s tough to do.  Sometimes, you have to wheel out the big guns even if they’re full of LSD, which they may have been…

We all had a damn good time. This is a band that’s definitely worth seeing should you ever get the chance, even if you’re not into folk. It’s entertaining as hell.

The Walkmen

As the fog rolled in and the sun crept down, The Walkmen came to the small stage with the crowd on its toes. They broke out with some faster-paced stuff, which immediately got the freezing-cold crowd into it. Lead-singer, Hamilton Leithauser, joked that they consistently bring the bad weather with them, and today’s frigid, windy weather was no exception.

The Walkmen are kind of like The Strokes, only with more yelling. What sets Hamilton apart from from Julian Casablancas is his ability to hold a tone at the top of his range. And, he uses it to great effect, throwing it in when the crowd dips to bring them abruptly back to attention. It was a pretty high-energy set until about midway through, when they decided to play some song off their new album.

Apparently, their new album is kind of a slow acoustic affair that definitely brought the crowd down, but was still pretty good. It’s  tough to judge an album based off a live performance, but I’d say this is going to be good despite the direction change.

Yo La Tengo

Perhaps no other band was as highly touted coming into the festival as Yo La Tengo. And not in a traditional sense, but more in a music-blogger, you-ain’t-up-on-this-yet sense. They’re basically the band that indie heads use to separate themselves from poseurs.

Naturally, the crowd was packed for their show, even though The Decembrists “collective” (there are at least 20 of them on stage) played just before them. I tried to watch The Decembrists, but as a fellow journalist said: “I couldn’t listen to their whole album straight through.”  I wholly agree.

As for Yo La Tengo, they’re fantastic musicians, and lead guitarist, Ira Kaplan, is absolutely amazing. He has a Hendrix-like way of using distortion to completely change the way everything sounds, which is great over their sometimes-droning guitar track. It’s kind of like wearing a bright-red shirt with a navy suit; it looks normal, but then there’s that shirt–where the hell did that shirt come from?

I really can’t remember someone who uses distortion as well, except maybe Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene, which is a compliment in and of itself.

Watching them play, I could tell why it was such an indie-nerd favorite—they do a lot of little things, like the distortion, to set themselves apart. Indie nerds love that kind of thing, and I may border on one since I noticed it. Nawwww…Not cool enough for that.

After a long set of spastic distortion tracks over otherwise lowkey music, I think the geeks were pleased. Yo La Tengo definitely didn’t disappoint, which is good when the entire blogging community is watching with baited breath—they’ll (verbally) tear you apart for that!

Then, it was off to watch the Flaming Lips, which was the show of the concert. They’re on a whole different level of live performance—like Girl Talk times 10. I stayed for almost the entire thing, which is saying something at 10:30pm on a Sunday night!

Flaming Lips lead-singer Wayne Coyne crowd-surfing in his bubble

via David Mongan, 3 November 2009 8:40am | |