Up until this afternoon, my best Lollapalooza discovery had been Jukebox the Ghost. They were fun and poppy and pretty rockin'.
My friend Bekaah recommended the band Mumford & Sons, who I had never heard of. But I had nothing else going on during that hour of the show, so I decided to hit them up.
I was very pleasantly surprised considering every other recommendation that I followed over the weekend fell flat (Wavves, Soft Pack, others).
Mumford & Sons were great, a driving, up-tempo style of folky Americana. The London band managed to stir up a frenzied state that rivaled Green Day's reaction yesterday (and, a few times, surpassed it).
I was pleasantly surprised. So thanks, Bekaah.
After that, I headed over to get a good spot for Frightened Rabbit, the band I've been most anticipating. As mentioned before, the Scots blew me away at South By Southwest.
Their songs have not only emotive, colorful lyrics, but I'm impressed by the musicianship as well. A sometimes three-pronged guitar attack is backed up by keyboards and driving drums. Plus the four-part harmonies are exquisite.
And they do it all without sounding overwrought (even if my praise of the band may be...).
It was, once again, incredible. And frontman Scott Hutchinson was funny and affable for a guy singing about his heart being stomped on.
* * *
I guess every hipster here wanted to see MGMT.
"There must be about 2,000 of you here," MGMT's Andrew VanWyngarden just said.
Uh, might wanna check your eyes, chief. There's more people here than there were for the Strokes the other day. 20 to 30k maybe? There's no way to tell.
* * *
The food here is good. I've never had better at this kind of event. And other than for beer, the prices are pretty standard.
So far, my favorites have been deeep dish sausage pizza from Lou Malnati's and a chipotle chicken burger from Goose Island.
I'll let you know my final decision later.
glad to see you enjoyed Mumford and Sons. First heard them on thecurrent.org they are one of my favorites from this year by far. Too bad they don't play close to Omaha
ReplyDeleteJeff
Mumford & Sons is one of the rare bands where the music AND the lyrics actually matter...kinda like Frightened Rabbit, actually. They both have incredible energy, yet are so far away from dance music.
ReplyDeleteMGMT had incredible energy while being dance music, and now they have an album with stupid 80s revival artwork and nothing else worth talking about. Oh well.
Mumford & Sons were really good. I'm glad I saw them because the closes they'll get is Chicago, Minneapolis and Denver.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, they actually have a day off in between Denver and Minneapolis. What do you want to bet they stay in an Omaha hotel? Too bad they're not playing a show, too.
MGMT wasn't great. They did "Kids" and "Time To Pretend," but their new music is bad. Like epically shit-tastic bad. And it was made all the more apparent by being played next to songs like "Electric Feel."