1. Janelle Monae, “The ArchAndroid” (Bad Boy): The Atlanta singer’s boundary-busting debut album has ambition to burn. It’s a self-empowerment manifesto couched inside a futuristic “emotion-picture” about an android’s battle to overcome oppression – got all that? The music is equally adventurous, touching on everything from lounge jazz to hard funk. A star is born.
2. The Besnard Lakes, “The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night” (Jagjaguwar): The Montreal band perfects its marriage of Brian Wilson-like melodic splendor and My Bloody Valentine-worthy guitar roar. While the lyrics are a bonfire of earthly espionage and anxiety, the music shoots for the heavens.
Lollapalooza is a wrap, setting a new attendance record of 240,000 for the three-day festival, up 15,000 from the peak set in 2008 and ‘09.
Here’s an excerpt from my Monday story for the print edition that summarizes my concerns about the record-busting weekend:
Size matters at Lollapalooza, as the festival expanded its reach westward by shutting down Columbus Avenue and spreading eight stages across 115 acres, up from 80 acres in previous years. Columbus Drive was converted into a giant sidewalk lined with portable toilets, a simple but effective improvement that allowed fans to avoid the dreaded Buckingham Fountain bottleneck that had turned previous festivals into human traffic jams. The festival topped its previous three-day record of 225,000, reached the last two years.
Still, there was little room during some performances at the northernmost stages on Butler Field, where fans jostled shoulder-to-shoulder for space to see performances by Metric, Phoenix and Arcade Fire. Note to Austin, Texas-based promoters C3 Presents: How about widening the southern entrance to Butler Field or moving one of the stages onto Columbus Drive to relieve what is becoming an annual problem? It's only going to get worse if the festival approaches its new capacity of 95,000 a day in future years.
As for the music, here’s how Day 3 went down Sunday, with reports from me (GK) and my indefatigable colleagues Bob Gendron (BG) and Andy Downing (AD).
11:20 a.m. Chicago DJ Dani Deahl begins her early set on Lollapalooza's final day under gray skies and a steady stream of raindrops. Flanked by a quartet of dancers that pop-and-lock like extras from Madonna's “Vogue” video, Deahl mixes glammed-up disco grooves with harder rock beats (dig that ominous, reverb-soaked bass line), but has a hard time rousing the couple dozen early arrivers that mill about the stage. Surrounded by partially-deflated beach balls, the soggy attendees — some wearing wide-brimmed sombreros — stand around glumly as though their afternoon beach party has just been canceled. (AD)
11:35 a.m. Health guitarist-vocalist Jake Duzsik throws his instrument down on the stage floor. The action isn't out of frustration. Rather, it's part of the Los Angeles quartet's sonic terrorism that, along with the steady rain and wind, gets Day Three off to a ruckus start. There's no way to tell if the noise rock band (above) makes any mistakes. Borrowing from the Japanese no-wave tradition, songs aren't concerned with form. Function — namely, using various gadgets, hot-rodded computer keyboards and tribal percussion to stir up a frenzy — is key. Indecipherable vocals, phased effects, repetitive electronic loops and programmed synths that mimic shorting-out fuses contribute to the danceable commotion. One wonders what E.T. would've done had the alien heard the group's version of Speak and Spell transmissions. In the process of bridging abrasive disco to hyperactive punk, Health aptly reminds everyone about the importance of treating attention-deficit disorders. (BG)
Memory, childhood, home. These are big subjects that have obsessed novelists, movie makers, playwrights and songwriters for decades, if not centuries. Now the Arcade Fire, a band not known for thinking small, tackles them all in its third studio album,“The Suburbs” (Merge).
When the Arcade Fire burst into sudden prominence in 2004 with its rousing debut album, “Funeral,”a process accelerated by the kind of viral enthusiasm normally reserved for Paris Hilton home movies and Kanye West tweets, the excitement was tempered by one nagging doubt: Was this just another built-to-implode Internet flash?
But the Montreal septet has now proven its staying power, making three very different albums in a span of six years. Whereas “Funeral” inspired shout-from-the-rafters sing-alongs, a blast of live-for-the-moment resolve at a time of mourning,“Neon Bible”(2007) was ominous and claustrophobic, a skeptical look at an era that conflates religion, war and consumerism. If “Funeral” was about having faith in each other, “Neon Bible” was about losing faith in the institutions that try to manage our lives.
The title song that opens “The Suburbs” signals another thematic and sonic shift. It’s lighter than anything Arcade Fire has done in the past, with its bouncy piano and skip-along beat, an invitation into an album that seems to expand as it progresses, not unlike the sprawling communities it describes. The song’s jauntiness melts into a mass of ghost-like voices and the tone shifts to something more evanescent. The narrator recalls the expectations and dreams he once had as a child and questions whether he has lived up to them.
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