Every three-day festival has at least one wonky day, and Saturday, you are it. Of course there are exceptions. Gogol Bordello, with its frenetic polka beats and can't-help-but-make-you-smile accordion, acts like a cochlear palette cleanser amidst the musics of the Western persuasion. If these New York gypsies are at all road-weary from what seems to be perennial touring, they are masking it well. If the Gogols are joy in a minor key, then Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros are the major key analogue. Hearing "Om Nashi Me" chanted on a record may conjure up thoughts of Father Yod and Yahowa 13, or at least breakfast at Victory's Banner, but live it makes not hugging the person next to you an impossibility. There were no arms crossed or feet planted here in the Shire...er, Sony bloggie Stage.
AFI, I blame you and countless Cali bands like you for paving the way to the musical abortion known as Screamo. Seriously, how does a state that births the likes of X and Dwarves end up guiding punk into such gleaming (packaged neatly for rotation on KROQ) drivel? I don't believe your pain, Davey Havoc, when you scream "I feel nothing at all." You can leap off that sparkly little riser all day, fist-pumping the air, but well, I'm the one feeling nothing at all. I do love your Color Me Badd haircut, and it has to be acknowledged that you gave Lollapalooza a true stage performance, but other than Jade Puget's inspired finger-tapping guitar solos, I have got to get out of here and am heading to...
Social Distortion. The martini-spilling Dia de Los Muertos skeleton was a welcome sight after the what-have-you mentioned above. In business since '78, these days Social Distortion seem to fulfill a similar role to Ted Leo or The Hold Steady in a festival lineup. The straight-ahead rock sound works as a temporary respite from the bevy of laptops and synths elsewhere, and although a cover of "Under My Thumb" was a slightly uneventful take on the Jagger/Richards classic, this was the most animated I've seen the over-40 crowd at Lolla.
Where Coachella and even Pitchfork often get it right is in the seemingly indiscriminate friendships that materialize over the tiniest of incidents: an accidental bump of a sudsy tallboy, the discovery of one's T-shirt doppelgänger or the shared ecstasy of a particularly clever electronic break. Today, Chicago's oft-touted camaraderie was less apparent, save maybe over at Perry's Stage. Whatever the reason, the pre-concert insular clusters of Cut Copy devotees did begin to synthesize only once the energetic Australians took to the stage. Like Jamie Lidell on Friday, the members of the dance-rock outfit surrounding founder Dan Whitford seem superfluous. It would make sense that more live musicians on stage would bolster music that can be achieved largely through electronics and vocals alone, but here the drumming and guitar work came across as redundant. A slightly stale ending to a lackluster day, Sunday will no doubt prove to be a massive rebound. There aren't any goth-punk band's tomorrow, are there?
- Doyle Armbrust
published in the Time Out Chicago Audio File Blog on August 8th, 2010