Lollapalooza 2017 Hits & Misses: Sunday

Here we go: the final recap post of my four post installation of my Lollapalooza 2017 Weekend. This was a lot of writing and a LOT of will power to keep going – but I’m glad to see that there was interest in reading these posts!

Click here to read my Day One (Thursday) recap to learn how the festival’s evacuation unfolded.

Click here to read my Day Two (Friday) recap and see who some of my favorite acts of the weekend were.

Click here to ready my Day Three (Saturday) recap and see who left me majorly disappointed.

 

2PM: It was honestly VERY difficult for me to get out of bed on Sunday after spending three days at Lollapalooza, but I knew that I had to pull through for the final day of the weekend. On my way to Grant Park, I was rained on for about 15 minutes, but fortunately, it stayed clear of rain for the rest of the day. After getting into the park, I made my way to the Tito’s Stage for Joseph.

Joseph, comprised of three singing sisters, have been making some of my favorite music for the past year or so, and I was really excited to see them again after seeing them previously at Lincoln Hall in November of last year. I was really happy to see that they attracted a large crowd, despite it being early AND the last day of Lollapalooza, where generally, you can see the festival goers start to crash and slow their walk a bit (a lot).

I was happy that Joseph was given an entire hour to perform and they did a fantastic job entertaining the crowd. Their indie pop & folk collection of tunes really showcases their vocal ability (which was literally flawless) and they even threw in a couple covers – including one of “Moonlight Mile” by The Rolling Stones.

3:10PM: After finally getting my ice cream cone (that I had been wanting ALL WEEKEND), we walked over to the Bud Light stage to pop a squat on the grass and check out Car Seat Headrest, a indie rock “lo-fi” band based in Seattle (but developed in Virginia), led by 24-year-old Will Toledo. The band’s name came from Toledo’s decision to record vocals in the back of his car to maintain privacy and feel comfortable singing.

I really enjoy the band’s latest release, Teens of Denial, and the band, who has been creating music since 2010, have been forming a large online following. Teens of Denial has received quite critical acclaim: this article from Pitchfork says Toledo is “Running ahead of the pack as an incredibly imaginative, insightful singer-songwriter who’s also capable of crafting a dynamic rock song.”

Not trying to be rude, but I thought that this live performance was SO BORING! I can totally understand music that’s just meant to vibe to and enjoy, (see: The Japanese House’s performance at Lolla on the previous day), but I was just not entertained whatsoever. I’m not sure if it’s the genre of music and/or the fact that I was beyond exhausted, but I was just not very into this performance at all. I will probably continue to listen to Car Seat Headrest casually, as I did before, but I’m not all that interested in seeing them live again.

3:45PM: As I commented on my previous post, the Lakeshore Stage always has a popular pop singer perform around 3 or 4pm – which of course is when Charli XCX  was scheduled to perform (side note: Charli XCX played at this exact time slot in 2014, which is funny/interesting to me).

My main priority I wanted to get out of this set was to see Charli sing her newest single, “Boys,” which is probably my favorite song she has released thus far into her career. I was happy to hear the song about 10 minutes after I arrived to her set, but was annoyed to see that not as many people around me knew what the song was. It does make sense though, considering, like I noted before, this is a time slot for mainstream pop artists to draw a big crowd and it’s pretty likely that the attendees are going to know about 3 or 4 songs out of the entire hour long set.

I think Charli is cool and is making fun pop music, but I have seen her before and don’t really enjoy her live performance. It was fine, but I didn’t really get any sense of musicianship or uniqueness out of her set. There was a fun moment where she brought out upcoming tour mate, Halsey, to join her for a cover of the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” which was a fun moment. I can’t speak on the rest of the performance, since I decided to leave early.

4:40PM: Sunday was a pretty lax day for me and we spent a lot of time chilling in the grass and catching bits and pieces of sets. But one of the bands I was very much looking forward to see was Flor – a Los Angeles based band who recently released their debut album, Come Out You’re Hiding in May of 2017.

I had heard of Flor after they toured with Halsey in 2015 and I became a fan of their music, despite only having a handful of songs released to the public before Come Out You’re Hiding was released. If you’re curious to hear more about them, check out my article about their debut on Ones to Watch.

I was interested to see how I would like Flor’s live performance – considering 1) I hadn’t seen them live for about two years 2) I didn’t even know any of their music back then 3) The lead singer, Zach, has a higher pitched voice and I was curious to see how it would translate live. But I was definitely not disappointed! I very much enjoyed Flor’s 40 minute set and the band seemed really happily surprised to see how many people had showed up to their set. Their airy, electric indie pop really translated well to the Lolla crowd and they seemed very suited for the atmosphere and aesthetic of Lollapalooza.

I ended up chatting with a man in the crowd who is actually roommates with the band in L.A. – who shared with me that Dylan, the bassist, has produced music for other musicians and tours with Halsey, who helps with her live production. Thought that was interesting!

5:30PM: I feel like there are just some bands that always exist on your radar but you never fully delve into their music – and that’s how I have always been with Milky Chance. I have listened to their music here and there but I have never particularly been a fan of them. But we decided to check out their 5pm set a few minutes late – assuming we would be seeing the band perform their bigger songs – which is exactly what happened.

We saw just about half of Milky Chance’s set and I surprisingly had a lot of fun. I was impressed with the band’s live performance – and the lead singer, Clemens Rehbein, sounded phenomenal live. I was not really sure what to expect in regards to crowd size, but the lawn was entirely full of people. Looking back on this, I realize that I was very much naive towards Milky Chance’s popularity: their biggest song, “Stolen Paradise,” has nearly 350,000,000 streams on Spotify.

I think one of the coolest things about festivals is stumbling across bands you were unfamiliar with or indifferent about only to leave a set being a fan, which is exactly what happened here. I will definitely look into Milky Chance more in-depth.

6:30PM: As my evening was coming to a close, I made my way to the south end of the park to check out The Shins. Unlike a few of my friends, I was never really into The Shins, who were at the height of their popularity when I was in middle school. However, I was still looking forward to checking out their set. But beforehand, I was happy to see a couple minutes (literally less than one full song) of London Grammar, who was perfuming on Lakeshore Stage just before The Shins would start at Grant Park.

London Grammar is surprisingly very popular in Europe, which makes sense as to why they were performing so late in the day at Lollapalooza. I was happy to catch a bit of their set because I find the lead singer, Hannah, to have a beautiful and captivating voice. It sounded just arnica live!

Back to The Shins. We took this time to sit in the grass and watch the set from the back of the grass, which gave us a wonderful opportunity to people watch (which is especially entertaining at Lollapalooza, if you haven’t been). I very much enjoyed myself at this set and I think it was a great match for the band to perform at this time on the last day of the festival. They played their massive hits, like “Simple Song,” “New Slang” and “Australia” and ended their set with a cover of Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” which got the crowd to share a massive singalong, which ultimately became one of my favorite moments of the weekend.

8:30PM: I have always found myself casually listening to Arcade Fire but never fully investing my time into their music. When I heard that they would be headlining Lollapalooza this year, I knew that this would be my time to finally fully appreciate them as a band. I was really interested in seeing them at Lollapalooza but decided to take the night casually and bop around between both headliners.

More than one person had told me how amazing Justice was live (more on that soon) and decided to see them for a bit after I checked out Arcade Fire. I started the night at their performance and was pleased with myself for knowing the first 3 or 4 songs that they performed, starting with “Everything Now” with an enthusiasm and upbeatness (if that’s even a word) that I was definitely unexpected. I appreciated Arcade Fire’s music but was very much unsure how it would translate over to a live performance and I was totally left surprised!

The crowd – I was pretty far back on the lawn – was so crowded and everyone was just enjoying their space and dancing around. I really appreciated the vibes and it seemed like everyone just wanted to enjoy the music for what it was and didn’t care about any sort of gimmicks. We ended up leaving to head to Justice after about 20 minutes and looking back, I totally would have stayed longer for Arcade Fire’s set because I was having so much fun! I’ve definitely become more of a fan and would love to see Arcade Fire on their headlining tour, which will be hitting Chicago in October.

 

9PM: My last set of Lollapalooza was given to Justice. Confused about who Justice is? You’re not alone. I had 0 idea who Justice was before all Lollapalooza 2017 rumors started coming out and to be quite honest, I still don’t really know who they are…apparently they have been as influential to dance music as Daft Punk is. Regardless, I still truly don’t know much about them and did not particularly enjoy the 20 minutes of their set I attended to.

I’m going to keep this short and sweet because writing these 4 posts has been far more overwhelming than I anticipated and I don’t really have much to say about Justice. I have tried to understand the dance music culture for YEARS and besides my experience seeing Disclosure, I have never particularly enjoyed any dance or EDM show that I have seen before. I didn’t really understand Justice’ vibes and I think the main issue for me was that I have a very hard time enjoying live music or music in general that doesn’t have singing/lyrics. I was also incredibly sober so the dance music culture just I have come to the terms that I won’t ever really understand that sort of music. I don’t feel like I had any sort of “special” experience seeing Justice and really wish I just stayed at Arcade Fire. But hindsight’s 20/20, right?

Well – if you have actually read all of these posts, I love you SO much and can’t thank you enough for caring about my blog! Or if you just read this post, that’s cool too. Thanks for getting to the bottom!

As always, I will be returning to Lolla next year and maybe I can even get myself a press pass! Who knows, right?

Kristin