Tag: Kanrocksas

Review: Kanrocksas (Day 2)

by thedailyrecord, posted in Concert review, Kansas City music scene

(Above: Muse borrow a bit from Van Halen and then Queen with their performance of “Stockholm Syndrome” during their headlining set on the second day of Kanrocksas.)

By Joel Francis
The Daily Record 

Note: For my coverage of the Kanrocksas music festival, I decided not to cover any band’s previously reviewed by The Daily Record. Visit the archives to read about theArctic Monkeys, Black Keys, Flaming Lips, Flogging Molly and Girl Talk. Go here to read a review of Day 1.

Best Coast

The confessional California-based indie rock trio deserved better. Singer Beth Costentino’s intimate songs about frustrated crushes and missed chances wilted under the bright, blazing mid-day sun. Her lo-fi, straight-ahead songs are best suited for small, dark clubs, not 100-degree afternoons.

Costentino and her rhythm section of Bobb Bruno and Ali Koehler made the best of a bad time slot, though. The trio plays with considerably more power than is hinted at on their full-length debut LP and the sound was full despite the lack of bass guitar (Costentino and Bruno both played electric guitar while Koehler held down the beat on his drum kit).

The best moment’s of the 40-minute set were many of the same high points on the record: “Boyfriend,” which came out early, “Bratty B,” “Something In the Way” and the new song “When You Wake Up.” Colorful remnants of Friday’s Flaming Lips set still littered the ground as the band played.

OK GO

OK Go are better known for their videos than their music. Although the indie rock band’s 40-minute set showed they have depth beyond viral treadmill clips, their reputation is also fair.

The four musicians took the stage wearing bright, monotone Crayola suits, invited a fan onstage to play guitar and donned white gloves before performing “What To Do” on hand bells. Lead singer Damian Kulash left the stage to perform a couple songs acoustically, surrounded by the crowd. Upon returning to the stage, Kulash pulled out a digital camera and took a picture of the audience, promising to post it on Facebook so everyone could tag themselves. That, my friends, is marketing 2.0.

Behind the spectacle, the music was catchy and bouncy, filled with touches of New Wave and disco, a la Franz Ferdinand, and elements of the Cars, Cheap Trick and Roxy Music. High points included “White Knuckles,” “Do What You Want “ and “Here It Goes Again,” aka the treadmill song.

A Perfect Circle

The sun was just starting to set as A Perfect Circle took the stage. It was fitting, because this thinking-man’s metal band lives in the shadows and darkness. Each song was an exercise in subtly shifting textures and tempos, making each performance seem longer than it actually was.

One third of the quintet’s dozen songs were covers. “People Are People” opened with a slow, building solo that placed the Depeche Mode hit in a completely new context. Likewise, a minor-key reading of John Lennon’s “Imagine” may have resembled how Mark David Chapman heard the anthem for peace. Songs like “Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums” and “The Outsider” offered one of the weekend’s few opportunities for head banging and get the metal out.

Each of the five band members stood on their own platforms, denying a single visual focus. Much of the pyrotechnics came from guitarist Billy Howerdel and beastly drummer Josh Freese, raised behind him. Singer Maynard James Keenan stood in the back left, out of the spotlight, back to the crowd.  Former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha was elevated in the center.

Take-aways:

The layout provided easy access to several water stations, toilets and dedicated shade areas. The sound at all three stages and the DJ tent was surprisingly clear and aside from the large obligatory sound tents, all of the stages had decent sight lines.

My biggest complaint was the placement of the Ad Astra Stage. While the Stagesaurus Rex and Main Stage faced each other at either end of the main field, travelling to the Ad Astra Stage forced crowds through several gated bottlenecks. This made bouncing between the Ad Astra to the main area take longer than necessary, and forced fans to choose between forgoing the final songs of the current set or missing the opening numbers of the next one.

The Charity Village – a nice forum for local non-profits to introduce themselves to fans – was easily overlooked in the back of one of the vendor tents. It deserved more prominent placement.

All told, the foundation for what I hope will be a longstanding Kansas City summer tradition was in place.

Keep reading:

Review: Lilith Fair

Open wide for Mouth

Review: Smashing Pumpkins, Cake

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Review: Kanrocksas (Day 1)

by thedailyrecord, posted in Concert review, Kansas City music scene

(Above: Friday’s Kanrocksas headliner Eminem performs “Lighters” sans Bruno Mars.)

By Joel Francis
The Daily Record 

Note: For my coverage of the Kanrocksas music festival, I decided not to cover any band’s previously reviewed by The Daily Record. Visit the archives to read about the Arctic Monkeys, Black Keys, Flaming Lips, Flogging Molly and Girl Talk. Stay tuned for Kanrocksas Day 2 early next week.

The Joy Formidable

The crowd assembled for this Welsh-trio likely would have been much larger if they weren’t going head-to-head with Fitz and the Tantrums. As it was, the crowd wasn’t much bigger than what would pack the Granada Theater in Lawrence, but judging by facial expressions as the audience dispersed most people left impressed.

Much of the band’s 40-minute set drew from “The Big Roar,” the critically praised album released earlier this year. Songs performed included “Cradle,” “The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade” and the non-album single “Greyhounds in the Slips.”

Lead singer/guitarist Ritzy Bryan threw herself into the set-closing “Whirring,” hurling herself at the mic as she sang enthusiastically. Bryan later conjured images of Jimi Hendrix at Monteray when she threw her guitar on the ground and knelt over it to coax out some otherworldly sounds. Drummer Matt Thomas punctuated the noise with double-pedal rolls on the bass drum.

D12

Eminem’s Detroit cronies took the stage 20 minutes late – not bad by rap standards, but kind of a big deal when your allotted time is barely over half an hour.

Rapping over what sounded like their own commercial CDs – Eminem’s backing vocals were clearly audible despite his absence – the quartet employed what I like to call the “gang of yelling.” Technique: one rapper delivers most of the verse with the rest chiming in on the four count or the end of a phrase. The name is derived from the end result: an indiscernible cacophony of yelling.

Wearing a purple shower cap and red Angry Birds t-shirt, Bizarre led the group in rhymes about murder, family (“Loyalty”), women (“She Devil”) and weed, lots of weed. At one point the group parodied the Temptations attempting a synchronized dance routine and faux crooning about “my weed” over a sample of “My Girl.” Like the rest of their performance it was obvious, uninspired and unnecessary.

Kid Cudi

Kid Cudi writes pop/rock songs delivered as soul numbers draped in hip hop attitude. As his four-piece band vamped over a heavy prog-rock riff, Cudi skipped onstage wearing a Joan Jett t-shirt. Cudi’s hour-long set veered from rap (“Soundtrack to My Life”), ‘80s pop (“Mr. Rager”) to indie pop (“Pursuit of Happiness”). Several times he transformed the large lawn into a huge dance club.

The music tipped heavily toward Cudi’s sophomore album released this year, “Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager,” but included the singles from Cudi’s 2009 debut and an a capella medley of favorites from the 2008 mixtape “A Kid Named Cudi.” Regardless of the source, fans enthusiastically sang along to Cudi’s songs about isolation and escapism through marijuana.

Cudi’s previous stop at the Midland Theater last spring was by all accounts a disaster. The difference this time the presence of live instruments, which emphatically translating Cudi’s charismatic  energy throughout the massive crowd. The triumph represented both the largest crowd and biggest response of the day, aside from headliner Eminem.

Major Lazer

The DJ duo of Dilpo and Switch – best known for their work with MIA and Beyonce’s “Girls (Who Run the World)” – were unfortunately slotted against California dj Bassnectar. With Bassnectar monopolizing the main stage, Major Lazer were unfortunately relegated to the Critical Mass Tent, an oversized carport with horrible air circulation stranded in the middle of port-a-potty land.

None of this stopped the dedicated from dancing as the pair blended standard techno tracks with touches of dancehall, Harry Belafonte, Lynryd Skynryd and their own “Keep It Goin’ Louder” from 2009’s full-length “Guns Don’t Kill People, Lazers Do.”

Surrounded by four frantic LED screens, the pair got an assist from an over-the-top hype-man with a deep Jamaican patois and a dancer whose primary job was to perform headstands on every accommodating surface onstage, including on top of both stacks of speakers.

Keep reading:

Review: Kanrocksas (Day 2)

10 Must-see bands at Kanrocksas (part 1 – Friday)

Wakarusa Music Festival: A Look Back

10 Must-see bands at Kanrocksas (part 2 – Saturday)

by thedailyrecord, posted in Kansas City music scene
(Above: The mini-movie for “Our Deal,” the latest song from Best Coast.)

By Joel Francis
The Daily Record 

The big names at the top of the bill will draw the most fans, but sometimes the best performances are from lesser-known acts early in the day. In the week leading up to the inaugural Kanrocksas music festival we’ll examine 10 overlooked acts. Earlier this week we looked at five acts from Friday’s lineup. Below are some great picks for Saturday.

Hearts of Darkness (Main Stage, 1:30 – 2 p.m.)

Kansas City’s worst-kept secret will kick off Saturday with deep Afro-beat grooves so hot the sun may be intimidated. With a five-piece horn section and multiple percussionists, the 18-member band has recently upstaged Snoop Dogg and made Huey Lewis and the News work a little harder. Hopefully it won’t be too long until Hearts of Darkness get the later stage time they deserve.

Making Movies (INK Unplugged Stage, 3:30 – 4 p.m.)

Making Movies took their name from the Dire Straits, but their sound is closer to Los Lobos. And just like Los Lobos, Making Moviesconcerts are likely to skip all over the place, with a salsa cover running into a Modest Mouse song. They will bring a much-needed world music presence to the lineup.

Best Coast (Stagesaurus Rex, 3:40 – 4:20 p.m.)

As their iTunes sessions EP proves, Best Coast have a lot more muscle onstage than their dreamy, lo-fi indie pop recordings imply. That’s good because they’ll have a massive space to fill Saturday afternoon. Singer/songwriter Bethany Cosentino has great songwriting chops. Now we’ll see how her song translate over several sunny acres.

Girl Talk (Main Stage, 8:30 – 9:35 p.m.)

Mash-up king Greg Gillis is the king of plucking a song’s apex and pairing it with another seemingly disparate crescendo to create a nonstop party. By stealing a few pages from the Flaming Lips play book and spraying the crowd with confetti and letting fans party onstage, Gillis is the rare DJ that is as fun to watch as he is to listen to.

Soundtribe Sector 9 (Critical Mass tent, 11:15 p.m. – 1 a.m.)

The world of jam bands is an admittedly crowded and homogenous terrain, but STS9 manage to stand out by combining heavy electronic and psychedelic elements to the standard open-ended, improvisational fare. After withstanding two days and 24 hours of steady live music, zoning out and riding the STS9 wave may be the best way to end the festival.

Look for more Kanrocksas coverage next week on The Daily Record.

Keep reading:

10 Must-see bands at Kanrocksas (part 1 – Friday)

Review: Snoop Dogg with Hearts of Darkness

Review: Girl Talk

10 Must-see bands at Kanrocksas (part 1 – Friday)

by thedailyrecord, posted in band feature, Kansas City music scene
(Above: The Lawrence band Fourth of July make breakups sound like fun on “Friend of a Friend.”)

By Joel Francis
The Daily Record

The big names at the top of the bill will draw the most fans, but sometimes the best performances are from lesser-known acts early in the day. In the week leading up to the inaugural Kanrocksas music festival we’ll examine 10 overlooked acts. Below are five acts from Friday’s lineup. On Thursday we examine Saturday’s bands.

FRIDAY

The Joy Formidable (Ad Astra stage, 2:50 – 3:30 p.m.)

The Joy Formidable have toured with the Editors and Passion Pit and turned to Muse and Glasvegas’ producer to help behind the boards for their studio debut. Singer Ritzy Bryan has a touch of Bjork in her delivery and the arrangements hint at what could happen if Jesus and Mary Chain were a pop band.

Fitz and the Tantrums (Main Stage, 2:50 – 3:30 p.m.)

This Los Angeles-buzz band play opposite the Joy Formidable, which is fitting because their music is at the other end of the spectrum as well. Working without a guitar, the group splits the difference between the Dap-tone sound and Maroon 5.

Fourth of July (Ink Unplugged stage, 6:15 – 6:45 p.m.)

This Lawrence quintet, comprised of two sets of siblings, combined the heartache and pain of “Blood on the Tracks”-era Bob Dylan with the relentlessly upbeat jangle of Camper Van Beethoven. A longtime mainstay of the Lawrence/KC music scene, their work deserves a wider audience.

Kid Cudi (Main Stage, 6:10 – 7 p.m.)

After bringing only a DJ to his Kansas City debut at the Midland theater last year, Kid Cudi has decided to bring a live band on the road with him this time out. Cudi’s studio work places the minimalist introspection of Kanye West’s “808s and Heartbreaks” in more lush, accessible surroundings. It should be interesting to watch Cudi try to translate his headphone music to a festival setting.

Major Lazer (Critical Mass tent, 8:15 – 9:05 p.m.)

DJs Diplo and Switch are best know for helping create the pastiche behind M.I.A.’s three albums. On their own the pair – who met through working with M.I.A. – create some swampy, dubbed-out dancehall reggae. Put Shaggy in a blender with the Bomb Squad, add George Clinton’s showmanship and you’re close.

Keep reading:

10 Must-see bands at Kanrocksas (part 2 – Saturday)

Wakarusa Music Festival: A Look Back

Claypool hits the jackpot on casino debut

(Below: A bonus video from Major Lazer.)