Dispatch From Bonnaroo: Hot on Cold War Kids, cold on Tool

[Buzz Bands delegate Jeff Weiss is in Tennessee, and lucid enough to send along this missive:]

Salutations, KB:

Friday, 1:15 p.m.

Bonnaroo is the type of place where you don’t bat an eyelash when the 17-year old girl hippie girl to the right of you abruptly starts vomiting today’s breakfast (and probably last night’s booze) onto the vast dirt bowl that serves as the festival’s field. In fact, girls think nothing of walking around topless or even donning green paint and dancing manically to Hot Chip, looking like a cluster of relatively attractive jolly green giants. In short, it’s so hippie that you expect the ghost of Jerry Garcia to rise from the dead and start laughing at the drug-addled masses for being fooled into thinking that the String Cheese Incident is a good band.

In other news, the Cold War Kids are still a good band. Don’t believe any of the backlash against them. "Robbers and Cowards" was a fine debut and those Christian rock charges sound even more ridiculous when you see them live, as the only gospel they’re prostylizing is their own stylish version of filthy white-boy blues.

Strange seeing a band you saw in front of eight people at the Silverlake Lounge just two years previous  packing “That Tent” to its capacity, tearing through a stomping and rollicking set.  Lead singer Nathan Willett, traded off between the keys and guitar, commencing the performance with album opener, “We Used to Vacation,” full of jagged bursts of psychedelic guitar and a cheering crowd packed 20 deep out the sides of the tent.

After a year of touring, the Cold War Kids sounded ridiculously tight as a band, unleashing a dirty and primal version of “Passing the Hat,” with Matt Aveiro’s warehouse drums booming throughout the acres of dust. The haters can say what they want, they can invoke Willet’s fairly overt usage of Christian imagery, they can point out CWK’s fairly familiar sound, but none of it mattered to a couple thousand screaming fans in Tennessee, half of them born after the Cold War. Live, few bands can produce the sense of catharsis and power that the Cold War Kids bring to the table.

4 p.m., Hot Chip, "This Tent"

Hot Chip should just be over-hyped hipster schlock. All of their songs have a patina of arch ironic cool and they don’t move much on-stage, opting to hide behind an array of electronic equipment and a lone guitar. But I’ll be damned that in the repetitive hypnosis of their techno-pop there is a certain core emotional resonance that makes them one of the most interesting bands in the world today.

Of course, it all looks a little strange on stage, as the Hot Chippers have been known to dress up as super-heroes and throw beach balls into the audience. Yesterday, it was a bit more staid, with lead singer Alexis Taylor, unadorned by the neon green glasses he often wears, instead playing everything from the bongos to the maracas to the hand-drums -- and looking more like Harry Potter with a crewcut than Prince (perhaps his closest sonic equivalent). The band might be the five biggest dorks you’ve ever seen, but it’s all endearing and ruthlessly fun to watch them trade off four-part harmonies set to propulsive danceable beats. The entire front half of the stage erupted into hysterics from old tracks like “Over and Over” and “The Warning” to newer ones like “Shake Your Fist” from their forthcoming yet un-titled album.

6 p.m., the Roots , "What Stage"

Is it too much to ask the Roots to play their own songs any more? By my count, they have three great albums in "Do You Want More?," "Illadelphalflife" and "Things Fall Apart." And last year’s "Game Theory" was none too shabby. Yet for some odd reason, the Roots feel content to waste all their talent (and that of the fiercely proficient horn and wind section accompanying them onstage) on doing bar-mitzvah renditions of other artists' popular songs. Does anyone really need to hear the Roots covering “Hip-Hop is Dead,” “Lost Ones,” “Deep Cover” or “Shimmy Shimmy Ya.” To say nothing of hip-hop’s most pretentious band’s odd decision to perform “Sexy Back” and “This is Why I’m Hot.” Is it too much to ask for “What They Do” or “Concerto of the Desperado?”

Granted, the first 20 minutes of the set, where Black Thought & Co. stuck to songs off of "Game Theory" was phenomenal, vintage Roots, but after that the bottom fell out. Of course, the hippies didn’t care, they danced along anyway. It’s what they do.

6:45 p.m., the Black Keys, "That Tent"

The Black Keys are an archetypal Bonnaroo band, packing searing guitar solos and gargantuan drums into their tasteful Delta blues, making them feel at times like a blues jam band. Accordingly, while the Keys played to a half-empty tent at Coachella, here they were one of the most anticipated bands on the under-card. Heavily bearded lead singer Dan Auerbach might’ve looked like a cross between Clapton circa ’72 and a wookie, but his riffs were straight Clapton ’65, circa John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. As always, the remarkably consistent Keys delivered a formidable set, though by the end of the hour and a half set, all their songs kinda’ sorta’ sounded exactly the same.

9 p.m., Tool, "Which Stage"

Note to festival organizers across America: Please stop booking Tool as your headliner, particularly when there’s a complete blackout between 9 and 11:30, forcing you to see one of Los Angeles’ most uninspiring bands (and yes, I have heard Whitestarr). Slow, meandering and needlessly heavy, Tool never met a riff they couldn’t steal, or a melody they couldn’t bludgeon with a few power chords.

Midnight, Aesop Rock, "This Tent"

I’ve seen Aesop Rock just short of a dozen times over the past decade and last night’s performance was the best. Kicking a 45-minute greatest hits set, incorporating material from his much-anticipated "None Shall Pass" record, Aesop’s already great live show has approached the realm of the transcendent. His flow is both nimble and atom-smashing, moving with a deadly amalgam of speed and power. His breath-control is astonishing; his usually propulsive beats slow to a crawl as Aesop does what he wants with them, slowing it up, speeding it down, kicking raps that duck and weave. With El-P rightfully garnering the lion’s share of Def Jux attention for this year’s "I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead" record, Aesop’s brilliant performance reminded heads why he’s become one of the underground’s leading lights. As the tattoo on his arm reads: Must not sleep.

Gotta go see the Hold Steady,
Weiss


Photo: The Manu Chao Radio Bemba Sound System performs at Bonnaroo (John Russell/Associated Press).

Comments

[bad lands.]

you're a moron for calling Tool uninsipring.

[DudeAsInCool]

Interesting writeup as always from Mr. Weiss--informative, to the point and on the mark.

[Raul]

Pfork is being rough on Cold War Kids. They're a mightily entertaining band and I'm delighted that they're on the cusp of breaking through. Their sound will definitely be a welcome change of pace on KROQ. I do think there's a bit too much performance in their performance, striking poses to reflect the bluesy bite they want to evoke. Their encore of "A Change Is Gonna Come" only points out the divide between genuine and manufactured soul, but taken on their own merit, the Kids are a terrific act. I've never been bored or disappointed by their shows. Not only that, they are skilled songwriters and hopefully they will grow and develop their own style in no time. After all, wasn't it Radiohead who was viewed as a middling derivative band when Pablo Honey came out?