Here’s where the weekend finally caught up with me. After exiting Grant Park on Saturday night riding high thanks to an excellent set from Cut Copy, I jetted off to a Glen Hansard aftershow that would eventually become my downfall. See, the headlining set for most aftershows lasts 90 minutes or less, so attendees get out at a (somewhat) reasonable hour for another day of festival-going. Well, Hansard seemed to feel like he wanted to give the crowd a proper SHOW, and decided to play for a little more than 2.5 hours. That’s following an opening band, too. It was incredible but also took a more serious toll on my body than expected. Add in an early morning brunch that was previously scheduled, and suddenly I needed a nap just to ensure I’d make it through Sunday at Lolla. So I arrived on the grounds a couple of hours later than I had the previous two days, and missed a couple of artists it might have been nice to have seen. Alas, this is one of the problems with getting older – you can’t always do as much as you might like. Here’s a closer look at the music I saw on Sunday:
After a healthy 30 minute wait to get through bag check (which was a bit longer than Saturday but about equal to Friday), I made it through the gates to find that thanks to plenty of rain earlier in the day, Grant Park had once again become Mud City. Getting dirty wasn’t so much a choice as it was an occupational hazard, particularly if you wanted to get anywhere close to the stage to watch your favorite band perform. I had arrived in time to see the final 15 minutes of London Grammar‘s set, but noticed significant gaps in the crowd where the mud was just so thick nobody wanted to stand in it. That’s not something I wanted to embrace at the start of my day either, so I hung back a bit and enjoyed them from a distance. To my delight, the band was actually pretty fantastic. I think that singer Hannah Reid said at one point that the overcast skies and light drizzle felt just like home, as they are from the UK. And indeed, London Grammar seemed quite comfortable in their performance. My only gripe was that they ended a bit early, with about 20 minutes left to go in their time slot. Of course they’re a relatively new band and only have an album and EP under their belts, so it’s entirely possible they just ran out of material.
Speaking of artists running out of material, the hip hop pairing of El-P and Killer Mike, aka Run the Jewels, also wound up in that same situation. Of course because they’ve had lengthy solo careers they also know a thing or two about stretching for time. When they ended their set with about 15 minutes still left, they came back out and asked the crowd if they wanted to hear some new, unpremiered material from the forthcoming Run the Jewels 2 record. It was something they had “just recorded like five days ago,” and though they claim they probably wouldn’t remember the lyrics, seemed to get by just fine. Following that, they left the stage again, only to return due to chants of “one more song.” They were technically out of material, but did one of Killer Mike’s tracks on which El-P guested before Run the Jewels ever came into existence. As for the rest of their set, it was nothing short of stellar. They plowed through the only Run the Jewels record in masterful fashion, and though the crowd was a bit thin, just about everyone had a blast. Well, except for one person, who got into it with security. El-P stopped in the middle of a track to yell at security for roughing up a girl, only to be told a moment later that it was a guy. Whoops. A brief guest appearance from Z-Trip helped to make up for it, elevating the set to an even higher level than it was already at. As a whole it wound up being one of Sunday’s best, and it’s just a shame so many people missed it in favor of Cage the Elephant or other options.
The 1975 are another band from the UK, and they too pointed out that the rainy, overcast weather reminded them of home. Unfortunately, they didn’t sound very at home during the first half of their set. At first I thought they were dragging a bit out of sheer apathy, like they didn’t want to be there and decided to give a half-assed performance. Watching more carefully though, I spotted a couple of band members drinking wine straight from the bottle in between songs. Singer Matt Healy was also talking pretty slowly and slurring his words, which gave me the impression at least he was drunk. Whatever state the band was in wasn’t increasing their likability, though I’m not entirely sure how many people really cared. They were just there to hear The 1975’s two hit singles “Chocolate” and “Sex,” which they naturally saved for very last. For whatever reason, they perked up for those two, and made me wish the entire set was at that level. I think their record is okay, and from what I’ve been told by friends who know or have met them they’re very nice guys, but their Lolla performance didn’t do much for me.
As the rain began to increase just a bit, I sought shelter in the trees near the BMI stage, where Betty Who happened to be performing. More accurately, I wanted to be there, as I’ve heard good things about the up-and-coming pop singer-songwriter. She’s got two EPs to her name, a full length album out later this fall, and will be opening for Katy Perry on the Australian leg of her world tour this November. In other words, she’s about to blow up. The moderately large sized crowd for her set at Lolla could certainly be an early indicator of future success. They were there to sing and dance, and Betty Who wasn’t about to let them down. While the first half of her set was very upbeat and fun in a similar vein as Swedish pop star Robyn, the last few songs were where things really started to get interesting. She performed one song for what was likely to be the last time in a very long time (for whatever reason), slipped into a seriously crowd pleasing cover of the Destiny’s Child hit “Say My Name,” and then wrapped everything up in a nice little bow with her rising hit single “Somebody Loves You.” Her band played it cool, and was reliable through every twist and turn. She may be on the small BMI stage for right now, but rest assured next time will be a much different story.
Somewhere about three or four songs into The Airborne Toxic Event‘s set, it started to pour. Like soaked to the bone sort of pour. I had my poncho on and was huddled up underneath a large tree but was still getting pretty wet, just to give you an idea of how heavy it really was. It actually almost put a stop to the band’s set too, as they quickly went into their biggest hit “Sometime Around Midnight” and implied that the plug was likely going to get pulled at any second. Yet it didn’t, and they were able to play for their full time in spite of everything. As for the crowd, well, those already stuck in the middle of things just embraced it, while small groups on the outer edges made a break for drier ground. Mostly though, everyone stuck it out with the band, who was extremely appreciative. They kept the energy high, spaced out their singles pretty evenly, and even managed to fit in a new song from their next record. Overall I was pretty impressed, quite possibly because I went in with low expectations in the first place. As soon as the band’s time was up and they left the stage, the rain stopped. Funny how that happens sometimes.
Following that extremely heavy downpour, the wet and muddy conditions became extremely sloppy. It was messy any time you stepped off the pavement, and what used to be puddles had quickly become small lakes. If you knew the right spots to go however, you could stay relatively clean amidst the mud people. With that logic in mind, I ventured over to see how Childish Gambino was doing. If the gigantic crowd was any indication, he was doing quite well. Decked out in an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and swim trunks, Donald Glover looked like he was on vacation and ready for a day at the beach. He got a day in the mud instead. That didn’t seem to have any effect on him though, as he strutted back and forth across the stage to work the crowd and kept throwing up his hands in an effort to control them like a puppet master. He earns serious points for stage presence and charisma. Towards the end he even tossed some serious pyrotechnics into the mix as well, with gigantic flame cannons shooting up from the front of the stage. With all that flash, was there any substance? I’d argue not really, but judging by how much the crowd seemed to love every second, clearly I was in the minority.
Having stayed for the duration of Childish Gambino’s set, I missed about half of Flume‘s over at the nearby Grove stage. There was a pretty huge crowd already there when I arrived, and it only got bigger as more people filtered over like me from other stages. Given that Flume is essentially an electronica act and that he effortlessly blends his own original compositions with remixes of tracks by popular artists, he probably would have been more at home on the Perry’s stage. Not that stage placement really matters in the end, anyways. People showed up to his set to dance, and he delivered the music that allowed them to do so. Armed with his super cool looking Infinity Prism and busting out remixes of tracks from Lorde and Disclosure (among others), the sounds and crowd enthusiasm reminded me a whole lot of Girl Talk when I saw him perform at Lolla a few years back. Will Flume soon become an equally respected household name in the world of dance music and remixes? That seems like a reasonable assumption.
Exactly 366 days after his Lollapalooza debut on the tiny BMI stage, Chance the Rapper was now primed and ready to headline Perry’s stage. Last year, he attracted such a huge crowd on the side stage that people bled out into the major walkways and caused a huge traffic jam on that end of the park. This year, he managed to fill the huge field set aside for Perry’s and then some. To say he’s become huge would be an understatement, and it’s even more incredible that he hasn’t really released any new material in that time either. Compared to the no frills approach he had last time, suddenly he had all the frills, including gigantic smoke machines, dynamic, multi-colored lighting, and screens for huge graphics. I jammed myself in on the sidewalk as close to the stage as I could get without venturing out into the huge mud pit, and still felt like I was watching from a pretty extreme distance. That was about as good as it was going to get, and I wasn’t planning on staying the whole time anyways. The 25 or so minutes of the set that I saw were pretty fantastic. It’s clear that Chance is not only ready for but fully embracing his sharply rising star in the hip hop world. He dedicated the performance to his home, the City of Chicago, and in turn the city embraced him. He and his full band were still going strong when I stepped away to go and see what else the night had to offer. Afterwards, I heard he brought out R. Kelly for a couple of songs, and even tried to teach the crowd a new dance. Sounds like it was a blast.
My final stop of the entire festival would be a return to The Grove stage, where DARKSIDE were closing out the weekend. By comparison to the other stages, they had a rather paltry few hundred people in the crowd, but anybody that skipped them missed out on one of the truly unique and brilliant performances of all three days. DARKSIDE’s debut album Psychic was one of 2013’s finest, and the duo’s set was just about at that same level. Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington aren’t ones for stage banter, choosing instead to let the music and atmosphere do their talking for them. They sounded fantastic, their experimental electronica consistently shifting between cool dance floor beats and slower, more subtle flavors. The show played up the visual as much as it did the audio, and through careful use of lighting and fog the duo appeared in shadow almost the entire time. The small crowd that was there seemed to love it. Most were dancing, some were whipping around glow sticks on strings, while a couple other guys decided it would be a good time to roll around in the mud while moving to the music. Overall it put a nice little bow on this year’s Lollapalooza, once again providing enough incentive that I want to do it all again next year.
