I really want to love Grouper. On record, the dreamy/droney cave-born acoustic-thing works wonderfully. This is late night headphone music at its finest. As such, live it loses a bit of what makes it so great, since instead of walking through the snow at 2 am contemplating life and other such deep meaningful things, you're standing around with a bunch of other folks staring at Liz Harris for 40 minutes. I think I'd dig this a lot more if she met me behind an old church and played at midnight, but in a concert hall, it loses something.
Circulatory System carries the rainbow-flame acid torch passed on from Olivia Tremor Control and played a lively set, with a comfortable mix of catchy pop and all-out psychedelic jams. Again, they continued the early-afternoon theme of "enjoyable but not remarkable", but [also] again, it ain't nothin' against the band. It's entirely possible I was too excited for the latter half of the day, but that would be unprofessional, wouldn't it?
& alas, no surprise Jeff Mangum sightings. Dang.
Bradford Cox played his first set of the day as Atlas Sound on the decidedly more intimate second stage. Sure, on any "technically" level this was a fairly atrocious set with numerous technical problems and restarts and "hold on just a minute"s, but fuck it, I love Bradford Cox. He could run over my dog and I would not be able to get mad at him. Infinitely friendly, charming, and a great performer. One of the festival highlights for me.
Unfortunately, due to major jet-lag in my travelling company, we had to retire for a bit of the afternoon, but there was nothing I was particularly dying to see, but I have heard that Black Dice and El-P kicked out some fairly serious jams.
Shellac welcomed us back and nearly killed us, easily eclipsing every band in terms of volume during sound check alone. I'm not gear-heady enough to tell you what kind of amps they were using, but it looked like some sort of military equipment: a large, chrome box for an amp head with a solitary oversized dial on the front. As expected, they were tight as hell, kicked out some riff-heavy tunes and generally straight-up^rocked a lot harder than any of the bands there. You know, in that "fuck art, bang yr head" kinda way. No nonsense. Well, as no nonsense as "Squirrel Song" can get.
As the evening came to close, I get the feeling that whatever mastermind-cum-evil genius planned this festival twisted his moustache and cackled maniacally as festival goers were forced to choose between a serious conflict: Deerhunter or The Melvins? Fuuuuuck. After great, great deliberation, I decided my love for the Melvins was too deep and had been going on since middle school and I could not pass up the chance to finally see them live. I was able to catch the start of Deerhunter's set, though; "Cryptograms" and "Never Stops" lead me to believe I missed great things. Dang.
But hey, it's the goddamn Melvins. The Melvins! Fuck! They did not disappoint at all, even if I still find the two drummers thing a bit superfluous. A great mix of new and old stuff, including some of my favourite tunes from each era ("The Talking Horse" and "Hooch", respectively), but with such an expansive discography, you really can't please everyone, you know? (I was secretly holding out for "Honey Bucket", but what can ya do?) That being said, that's by no means a knock against them; they've been at it for 25 years now and it definitely shows. Plus, I caught an interview with King Buzzo earlier in the day, and it really makes me wish his legitimately hilarious banter carried on to the stage.
The night closed with Animal Collective, a band which I want to like but infuriates me to no end. Feels is a fantastic record. Their earlier, more experimental material circa-Here Comes the Indian has some great hidden gems ("Hey Light"). They even have some killer pop tunes in their recent discography ("Peacebone", "Brothersport"). But live? It's one giant piss-off. They've seemingly abandoned everything pre-Merriweather Post Pavilion, save for "Fireworks" and ditched any semblance of organic music, sticking exclusively to samplers, save for the rare guitar. What results is a bunch of overly-indulgent jams on frankly annoying loops, and with a hilarious amount of reverb and delay on the vocals rendering the hooks indistinguishable from the electronic clusterfuck. Great songs like "My Girls" lose their punch and dynamics. Garbled, unfocused, and frankly boring. Which is a shame, because on record, even their new material is largely enjoyable; minimal but still engaging pop songs.
PART THREE, THE CONCLUSION, COMING SOON.
