Some of the performances on Lollapalooza this past Saturday.
VANCE JOY
His delicate, organic songs seemed a bit off in such a big stage, but people actually were digging it. His pop songs with indie sensibility made a huge splash on the crowd, and the horn section he brought added an extra emotional layer to his already emotional repertoire (even if the horns were a bit off-key). His fragile voice grew to fill the Bud Light stage and forced everyone to watch silent and sing along to his command. Respect. His folk-oriented arrangements seems to fill a void left by Mumford and Sons, but this is on a bigger league, quality-wise.
With no new album at sight (probably one coming soon? probably, he already released a single this year) he even dared to cover Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al" with “Cheerleader” (Omi) in the middle and then closed his set with “Riptide”, his biggest and best known song, leaving the audience asking for more. What an artist.
ALT-J
I don’t know, maybe it’s me. I’m aware that Alt-J are big in the indie circuit, but I just can’t figure out why. For some reason their songs are often used in media (the first time I heard them was on last year’s “Captain America: Civil War” movie, when “Left Hand Free” was used when Tom Holland was introduced as Peter Parker), but to me they are pretty generic. I guess they were OK, they songs are fine, but there’s something missing.
BANKS
Banks basically performed the same show that she presented at Coachella, lights, attire, covered back dancers and choreographies included. I still think there are more interesting artists in the alternative R&B shield.
THE HEAD AND THE HEART
Yes, they play with tons of heart. But their songs are so basic that one loses interest after a while. There are good songs, yes (actually, “Rhythm & Blues” is a GREAT song and sounds even better live). But after Vince Joy took us to heaven with basically the same style, I found this lacking something.
Charity Rose Thielen’s violin annoyed the hell out of me being out of key.
ROYAL BLOOD
It takes courage just to try what this duo does so well: playing hard rock with bass and drums only. Yes, the bass is distorted and sounds like a guitar but even so, their sound is huge. They have a huge attitude, they have the stamina to command a stage and they are real rock stars, no wonder why the British band has grown so big the crowd was chanting the band's name (they already count Jimmy Page as a fan). It's true that sometimes their stoner rock sound gets them closer to Queens of the Stone Age, Clutch or Sons of Otis, but their musicianship and young age sets them apart. Lollapalooza needed a good kick in the ass and this band gave it.
GLASS ANIMALS
One of the youngest British indie bands, and already making waves as rising rock stars, Glass Animals clearly differentiates from their contemporaries first because they can reproduce fairly enough their recordings, second because of their clever use of electronic devices and third because they are an entertaining act to watch while being able to make the crowd react -unlike, say, Phantogram- and dance. Everything about them screams good taste, from the tuned-down guitars to their modest but effective props making the stage looks like a cozy living room.
ALVVAYS
The female-fronted Canadian band played the Bud Light stage (one of two main stages at Lolla) as the second act of the day there and played their songs, that owes to the 4AD sound as much as 90's British indie bands, showing that what you hear on record is what you get live: nice, likeable but totally inoffensive and inconsequential indie pop songs.
God, I swear that at times I thought I was listening to a watered-down Teenage Fanclub around their “Bandwagonesque” era.
NGHTMRE
Lollapalooza didn’t even try this year with their EDM artists. They brought a zillion DJ’s that sounded the same and did the same stuff with the trap-meets-dubstep excuse. Not that NGHTMRE did a bad job per se, but seeing the same trick over and over again gets tiresome. Especially when you do such stereotyped tricks like recurring to “DNA” (Kendrick Lamar), “All of the Lights” (Kanye West) or “Broccoli” (D.R.A.M). Boring.