Here’s my second post of my 4 post series recapping my Lollapalooza 2017 weekend. To read my thoughts on Thursday (Day One), click here. To give you a quick recap – my Twitter followers voted for me to separate my review by day instead of one post. Thanks for reading!
1:00PM: After arriving to Lollapalooza for the second day of the festival alone, I planned on wandering and then heading to the Bud Light Stage for the first performance of my day. However, after realizing that Frenship would be performing at the Toyota Music Den at 1pm, I knew that I would have to put the Bud Light stage on hold so I can see the band crank out some tunes. If you don’t know who Frenship is, I’m sure that you have heard their breakout song, Capsize, which currently has over 388,000,000 streams on Spotify (pretty incredible). The band only has a handful of songs on the internet and one EP that was released last year – but that didn’t stop them from attracting some curious fans to the tent that early in the day. The Toyota Music Den is a small acoustic performing area in Lollapalooza that not many people know about – but always has amazing performers stop by like MUNA (last year) and Of Monsters & Men (2015), just to name a couple.
Since I wasn’t able to see Frenship’s full performance at the BMI Stage later that afternoon (that drew a HUGE crowd), I was happy to see the band perform a 30 minute set here instead. I was impressed with the band’s natural ability to create music together (the two lead singers told the crowd that they met working at LuLu Lemon just a few years ago and decided to form a band). While it was evident that the band is still in the middle of gaining their musicianship and working on their craft, I had a lot of fun at the set and know that they’re going to be killing it in the next couple years.
1:34PM: I made my way over to the Bud Light stage – where I was initially headed to when I got into the park – to see Moose Blood. As I’m sure many of my readers know, I grew up listening to pop punk music – like All Time Low, The Maine, and Mayday Parade (to name a few), which is why I was so drawn to Moose Blood. I knew maybe about 4 or 5 songs but enjoyed my 25 ish minutes of time watching the band perform. It was really great to see a big turnout for their set so early in the day – not to mention the fact that it was about 60 degrees and cloudy (and windy) in August: pretty unusual for a Chicago summer.
Moose Blood – from the United Kingdom – expressed their gratitude to the crowd, clearly astonished at the amount people watching them perform, grateful for the opportunity and exposure. Moose Blood has been climbing the charts in the United States after gaining a solid fanbase in Europe and I’m looking forward to see what’s next for them.
2:04PM: I made my way back to the Pepsi stage I went for the 3rd or 4th time of the weekend so far for some laid back vibes from Mondo Cozmo. This band was one that I had stumbled upon while researching bands that I was unfamiliar with on the lineup and realized that I had heard their biggest song – “Shine” – probably on 101.1 (Chicago’s alternative music station) at some point or another.
Josh Ostrander is the brains behind the operation – originally growing his music in Philadelphia before moving to Los Angeles. Ostrander has created music under other stage names but Mondo Cozmo was born in 2015.
The rock and roll style of music Mondo Cozmo plays translated to a great time onstage and gave audience members – a diverse one that that – to relax and jam out.
2:50PM: I remained at the Pepsi Stage to check out Skott – a female folk pop singer from Scandinavia with some hippie vibes and great vocals. An interesting blurb about Skott – she grew up in a “forest commune run by outcast folk musicians” – and never listened to contemporary music until she was a teenager. If you know her music, this actually makes a lot of sense. The core of her sound definitely lives in folk, but Skott plays a lot with R&B and electronic sounds in her music.
I found Skott to have a captivating presence onstage and her energy seemed to be quite mystical and fantasy like – she easily could have played a villain in a Disney Channel movie. I stayed for the majority of the set – but since the majority of her music is slow – I think she struggled with keeping the momentum of the show going.
4:03PM: After a food and water break, I was back at the Pepsi stage – again – to catch Mura Masa. I was really looking forward to this set – as we all know, I’m really not very educated on EDM / House / Etc. music – but I know what I like when I hear it. However, we were really shocked to get back to the stage to see it COMPLETELY PACKED with people – guys were even starting to climb trees to get a view of the stage.
The set began with a song featuring a female rapper – I believe her name is Bonzai – and got the crowd riled up. However, it seemed like almost every song Mura Masa was performing was rap infused and that was something I wasn’t expecting. I realize now that I probably wasn’t as familiar with his stuff as I thought I was – and I just wasn’t really into the vibe of the set. We ended up leaving after three or four songs.
5:15PM: There’s never enough powerhouse female vocalists on the scene – and Bishop Briggs makes a wonderful addition. I have been following Briggs’ career for over a year – check out this post I featured her in – and was TOO pumped to see if she would live up to the hype. And trust me, she definitely did.
Briggs’ brought an energy that was so powerful, upbeat and memorable and she seemed genuinely excited to be performing. It was a great reminder to see that there are musicians out there who put 150% into all of their performances – may I remind you, just 24 hours before, Liam Gallagher walked off the stage less than halfway through his set.
Briggs did a phenomenal job maintaining the crowd’s interest and had a few singalongs during the performance, which was great to see! I’m really looking forward to her opening for Bleachers this fall.
6:00PM: Much to my happiness, Briggs ended up finishing her set a couple minutes early, which allowed me to book it to the Tito’s Stage to catch Ryan Adams’ opening song. I knew that he had been touring lately and opened with “Doo You Still Love Me?” – which was one of my favorites from his newest album, Prisoner. It was great to see him sing it and I really enjoyed his live vocal ability shine during his set. The best part of this time during Lollapalooza was that the sun was finally starting to shine and I felt everyone’s spirits starting to be lifted during his set.
I ended up walking towards the Bud Light stage a bit early to get a good spot for Foster the People – but enjoyed my time with Ryan Adams, regardless. I will always respect him as a songwriter and performer and seeing him live was a great experience!
7:00PM: I think one of my favorite things about music is seeing a band or artist that you admire release new music after a long break. This was how I felt about Bleachers releasing their second album back in June, Lorde releasing Melodrama, and Foster the People releasing their third album, Sacred Hearts Club, just a few weeks ago.
The last time I saw Foster the People perform was at Lollapalooza in 2014 – and although the band sounded great, I thought the performance seemed a little robotic and like they were going through the motions. With that being said, I throughly enjoyed this year’s performance a lot more! I’m also ridiculously obsessed with the band’s new album and was happy to hear a handful of new songs.
Some of my favorite moments included “Coming of Age” and the band closing with “Loyal Like Sid & Nancy,” a new song. It was unfortunate, however, that they ended up closing with this, because nearly everyone left the stage as soon as the band finished “Pumped Up Kicks.” That didn’t stop me from jamming, though.
A current trend in music is performers using their platforms for social issues, and politics is definitely big in the music scene right now. Mark Foster, wearing a “F*** Racism” t-shirt, closed the set with a brief statement on inclusion, stating that “Love will always be greater than politics,” getting a lot of cheers out of the crowd.
I really hope to see Foster the People return to Chicago soon.
8:53PM: It was the moment I had been waiting for basically since I was 13 years old: I was finally seeing The Killers live. Back in 2013, I decided to see Lana Del Rey at Lollapalooza instead of The Killers and I legitimately had regretted it ever since. But thanks to The Weeknd apparently dropping his spot just days before the Lollapalooza 2017 lineup was supposed to be released, C3 Presents book The Killers to take his place. The original headliners for Friday were supposed to be Blink 182 and The Weeknd, which makes the weird clash between two rock bands a little more sense.
I had the time of my life seeing The Killers perform. It was like reliving my teenage years to some of my favorite songs. The Killers even threw in a cover of Muse’s “Starlight,” shouting out the fellow rock band and commenting on their unfortunate cancelation from Thursday night due to weather. That was an epic sing-a-long that I will honestly never forget.
I was impressed with the band’s seamless performance, frontman Brandon Flowers keeping his energy up and voice solid, the band sounding great, and the overall energy a great and powerful one. It was easily one of my FAVORITE sets of the weekend and one of my favorites out of my five years going to Lollapalooza.
Not going to lie, I’m pretty thankful that The Weeknd ended up dropping out, giving me 90 minutes I will never ever get over.
To check out my review of Thursday at Lollapalooza, click here.
Recaps of Saturday and Sunday to come!
– Kristin
Pingback: LOLLAPALOOZA 2017 HITS & MISSES: SUNDAY – Chicago Haze