Lolipalooza II Part 2, Saturday June 27th 2015 Review
White Fence
There were some real girl power at Lollapalooza, as a lot of bands were dominated by women, like Feels, a trio of badass girls with a complex sound unleashing a formidable energy. They were wild and aggressive, screaming as if they were declaring war.
Talking of badass females, Death Valley Girls had a punk psychedelic sound, with some female duo yelling their guts with Minnie Mouse voices.
Liphemra had brought a double set of drums, and her sound was intriguing, filled with plaintive vocals and synth dissonance, even cacophonic, discordant, going nowhere except into a big sonic effect.
LA Witch represented the dark side of the festival (I had seen them before opening for the Warlocks – and they managed to stay very sexy while keeping this sludgy heavy sound.
The front girl of Kim & TC was a crazy gal, she put a tremendous energy in her set, looking like an elastic Christmas tree in leotard, going through her songs in a restless mode, jumping in the crowd, spraying us with gold dust and covering T.Rex. She was a lot of fun but her stage antics totally distracted me from the music.
Winter had a frontgirl with ethereal vocals going through her very moody songs, with an exotic and sun-drenched vibe, which was totally bizarre considering the moniker. She was all-smile, all the time, melting in front of the mic and falling on the floor for a grand finale.
The Molochs had varied songs, slow and fast with a touch a country, they sounded great and strangely familiar, even a bit rockabilly at times,
Santoros’ frontman arrived late at the band’s beach party and when he was there, their sound changed a bit from south-of-the-border retro rock to Cambodian serenade, this guy has charisma.
So Many Wizards had a great intensity and some catchy cute pop songs with a not-too-obvious punk feel.
Joel Jerome knew about sweet reverb and 60’s psychedelia, he had a song in HBO Girls this season, and this says it all.
Feeding People was one of these bands which had de-banded and reformed, I may have recognized the keyboardist from Mr. Elevator & the Brain Hotel and one of the singers of Death Valley Girls, and they brought a lot of dark atmospheric psychedelic sound, slowly spreading for several minutes, before exploding into war chant and sludgy drama. And they threw away all kind of stuff bizarre to the crowd.
Part Time looked so laid-back, progressing into a more rockier sound as they progressed into their set. I must say they sounded quite different from the rest of the bands, goofy and weird, a bit old-fashioned in a good way, with a sort of tempo borrowed from the Cars then going totally bluesy on another one. May be frontman Davida Loca, who was wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt with a tuxedo collar, is another Ariel Pink.
Although there were still two bands playing after them, Corners may have been the real headliners, the crowd was very big and crazy during their set, and the band brought the energy to the roof. They still are the greatest and they even have a song called like this if I heard correctly. They unleashing a formidable surf-goth-punk energy and it was crowd surfing galore. It was a bold and empowering set with a sound as crisp as sexy. It’s not always easy to find this magic combination between sound and attitude, it works for Corners and the crowd could not agree more.
It was hard to follow Corners, but Cosmonauts were up to the task with a ravaging set, filled with long distortions and dark melodies buried in the fuzz.They were more into grooves than music themes, but they still had some songs with very distinct melodies.
White Fence closed the night and at this point of the marathon, I could not hear anything very clearly, but this guy sounded like the reincarnation of Syd Barrett… or may be I was totally drunk at this point, not that I had any time to even have a drink! Frontman Tim Presely was smoking on stage – what? isn’t it a crime in California? – he was holding his guitar very high and tight, pointing it like a gun toward the amp, he has recently collaborated with Ty Segall and his sound couldn’t have been more punk-psychedelic with a heavy layer coming straight from the 70’s.
Which makes me think, I have probably use the terms psychedelic/psychedelia way too many times in this review, but try to see 24 bands in 10 hours!
Plenty of pictures of the event there.
