Marisa Landicho – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Mon, 24 Oct 2011 03:50:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Marisa Landicho – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Review: Treasure Island Music Festival https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/21/review-treasure-island-music-festival/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/21/review-treasure-island-music-festival/#respond Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:00:38 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1050943 Treasure Island Music Festival came to an iPhone-friendly close last weekend with a jaw-dropping sunset on Sunday evening. A testament to the young festival’s flexibility, San Francisco’s satellite island supported both an Explosions in the Sky rock conflagration as well as a nostalgia-inducing tour with Death Cab for Cutie on its closing night.

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Review: Treasure Island Music Festival
Courtesy of Brian Valdizno

Treasure Island Music Festival came to an iPhone-friendly close last weekend with a jaw-dropping sunset on Sunday evening. A testament to the young festival’s flexibility, San Francisco’s satellite island supported both an Explosions in the Sky rock conflagration as well as a nostalgia-inducing tour with Death Cab for Cutie on its closing night.

Over two days, 26 acts across the musical slate attracted 25,000 attendees–a number sizable enough to produce a lively atmosphere and small enough to make the Korean BBQ line doable. From the primal aggression of Saturday’s sweat-provoking sets to the pure rock of Sunday, Intermission was on hand to capture the moments for yearbook posterity. Treasure Island, you’re great; don’t ever change.

 

SATURDAY

To anyone who thought The Naked And Famous was going to give a shiny pop set: should have brought earplugs. The band of Kiwis switched between Passion-Pit-esque melodies and shredding guitars and touched on tracks from their only album–“Punching in a Dream” and “The Sun.”

Review: Treasure Island Music Festival
Courtesy of Brian Valdizno

The island wasn’t prepared to receive the Portuguese electro-dance crew Buraka Som Sistema. Repping the progressive kuduro style (think tribal house), the group whiplashed curious onlookers into a disjointed, pulsating frenzy. The lyrics may not have been as aggressively lewd as last year’s Die Antwoord, but the ass-shaking definitely was. The four dudes ripped through their BPM-raising “Hangover (BaBaBa),” but they alone couldn’t lead the dancing tide. It was their booty-clapping dancer-MC, Blaya, who skyrocketed the tempo from club to breakneck and put all the waifish indie girls to shame.

Dizzee Rascal, the self-proclaimed Best MC in England, only needed a bare stage and one supporting MC to draw the Treasure Island population to the Bridge Stage. The crowd readily responded to the rapper’s instructions to jump and bounce from the get-go, but the show hit perfection after the high-energy, hilariously anti-drug song “Bassline Junkie.” No one could resist the call of the “Big, dirty, stinkin’ bass,” a feeling that was sustained through “Dance Wiv Me” (sadly lacking Calvin Harris, though the guest singer did nicely) and the seductive “Holiday.”

As a creator, Flying Lotus is a genre-dissolving mastermind. With the onset of night over the island, FlyLo shook the island to its core, sending shockwaves as far as the Silent Disco, which was supposed to be, well, silent. The most electronic of acts, the L.A. producer alternated between experimental beats and crowd-pleasers, squinting at his laptop as his mouth remained locked in a permanent grin. After spewing out “Robo Tussin,” a remix of Lil Wayne’s “A Milli” and mouthing the words to Tyler The Creator’s “Yonkers,” Flying Lotus closed his set with a promise. Find me a house party tonight in San Francisco, and I’ll come and play free of charge, he said. We’re guessing someone had a good post-TIMF night.

Cut Copy, slotted before fellow Australians Empire Of The Sun, put on a show to make the land down under quake. Fittingly, a school of iridescent jellyfish surged through the crowd for the nighttime set, wafting through the exuberant dancers looking like the poltergeists from the band’s second album, “In Ghost Colours.” In his band’s decade of performing, singer Dan Whitford has transformed from a laptop junkie into a festival maestro, seen Saturday night in his double fist pumping and dandy foot stomping to the “Zonoscope”-dominated set. The animated frontman still looked like a robot in comparison to Empire of the Sun’s diva, Luke Steele, but the Melbourne electronic quartet proved that their years of touring have cultured a tight, synth-pulsing, dance-demanding live show.

 

Review: Treasure Island Music Festival
Courtesy of Brian Valdizno

SUNDAY

Annie Clark wasted no time getting into the meat of St. Vincent‘s set and jumped straight into “Surgeon” before the crowd finished cheering her arrival.

“I spent the summer on my back,” she moaned, then laced her breezy voice with sharp growls from her guitar. Fresh off the critical acclaim for her newest album, “Strange Mercy,” Clark packed more on-stage charisma into her tiny self than most groups do into a five-piece band. Her voice traveled between breathy and burly, pulling the audience in with the “ah-ah-ah-ah” of “Cheerleader” and the lyric simplicity of “Your Lips Are Red.” Even the bros in the audience–and there were many–raised their arms in excitement for “Cruel.” Most of the set sounded harsher, louder and a bit crazier than the haze on her album, and it only made us respect Clark more for being unafraid to let loose.

Attention, “Stuff White People Like.” If you only get to pick one band, make it The Head And The Heart. The Seattle-based group’s somewhat-Mumford-somewhat-folksy music fell at the perfect time of the day: the band, facing east, was framed in the dusty backlighting of the sun setting over the Bay. You really couldn’t have gotten more picturesque if you had tried.

Review: Treasure Island Music Festival
Courtesy of Brian Valdizno

Dream-pop duo Beach House played in front of a weird audience, but according to Victoria Legrand, “Weird isn’t a bad thing. It’s a compliment. And y’all are weird.” Legrand spent much of the set enjoying the characters from the audience who got their 15 seconds of fame with a cameo on the big screen. Distracted as she was between sets, Legrand and guitarist Alex Scally put on a beautiful show, hitting most of their still-fresh“Teen Dream.” The intense bass drum hits of “10 Mile Stereo” were the perfect transition from daylight to moonlight on the island.

On the walk toward the Bridge Stage for Friendly Fires, something didn’t seem right. It was way too quiet on the approach, even with Ed Macfarlane screaming his larynx out into the mic. After a song and a half spent in audio purgatory, the festival’s “side” stage received a quick fix, as the stage-right sound system burst into life to provide the cure. Warmed up and backed by the shining San Francisco skyline, Macfarlane boogied into “Skeleton Boy,” unafraid of whiplash and apparently fashion critique (his Hawaiian shirt was terrible). Popping with energy from Edd Gibson, who brandished his guitar like a Kalashnikov, to the funky backing horn players, the trio from St. Albans, England seemed a Sunday scheduling mishap, especially with the synth-heavy “Paris,” which would have been right at home a day before.

Review: Treasure Island Music Festival
Courtesy of Brian Valdizno

There was only one band on everyone’s mind after Sunday at Treasure Island. Explosions In the Sky are not just superior songwriters, they are masters of their instruments and clearly enjoy nothing more than sharing their passion with an audience. All three guitarists had very distinct playing styles and roles within the songs. Despite having no singers, Michael James was clearly the front man, taking the smooth guitar solos and going all out with his strumming. Munaf Rayani had the privilege of making the loudest noise of the entire weekend by simply slapping all the strings of his guitar to create a sonic boom 10 times louder than any bass drum. The wall of sound, though most pronounced during Rayani’s strikes, never ceased for the Austin band. Their five-member set had every aural and emotional range covered. Never before were there such enthusiastic chants for one more song at a festival. The only disappointment of their show was their inability to comply.

Brooklyn rockers The Hold Steady didn’t quite fit in with Sunday’s lineup–mostly because they’d have fit in better in 1975. Unabashedly classic in style and brash in execution, the band spent Sunday evening crashing through their hits and pulling out clean-as-a-whistle guitar solos that made the audience feel like they lived in a pre-computer world.

Inheriting the main stage at TIMF from his significant other a year later, Ben Gibbard and Death Cab For Cutie marked their return to the Bay Area with the closing set of this year’s festival. But for a band that put out a new record, “Codes And Keys,” there seemed to be a certain boredom to it all. Yes, there was new material to be had and even older material to be dusted off, but the band continued to play the expected for a particularly unadventurous set list. Seven full albums into their careers, DCFC have settled into a comfort zone that spans “Transatlanticism” and whatever their newest release is, leaving little room for experimentation or divergence.

An average Death Cab show, however, is nothing to be scoffed at. Gibbard still commanded the stage, whipping his hair back and forth as he jumped from guitar to piano for “I Will Possess Your Heart” and “We Looked Like Giants.” Nick Harmer jammed away at his bass, while Jason McGerr received shout-outs from his own little fan entourage at the front. It was enjoyable, but with Monday looming, some of the crowd had already made its way toward the shuttles, leaving an Explosions In the Sky-sized hole at the Main Stage. Stopping to dance with the jellies on their way home, the early departures made one last salute to TIMF 2011 before heading off into the night.

 

A version of this review appeared at Treeswingers.com.

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Preview: Treasure Island Music Festival https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/14/preview-treasure-island-music-festival/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/10/14/preview-treasure-island-music-festival/#respond Fri, 14 Oct 2011 07:56:59 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1050726 With the lights of its iconic Ferris wheel splashing across the Bay, Treasure Island will reclaim the entertainment spotlight this weekend. For two days, the artificial isle off San Francisco proper will again play host to Treasure Island Music Festival (TIMF), a small-scale bonanza of just-left-of-mainstream rock and dance

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Preview: Treasure Island Music Festival
Courtesy of Another Planet Entertainment

With the lights of its iconic Ferris wheel splashing across the Bay, Treasure Island will reclaim the entertainment spotlight this weekend. For two days, the artificial isle off San Francisco proper will again play host to Treasure Island Music Festival (TIMF), a small-scale bonanza of just-left-of-mainstream rock and dance. Most of all, the local fest will give music-lovers a chance to close the festival season with a fitting and intimate send-off.

Expect no surprises for the fifth take of TIMF. Organizers Noise Pop and Another Planet Entertainment have isolated their selling points and marketed them efficiently. Day One remains vaguely electronic, while Day Two tilts toward indie rock–with the headliners, Empire of the Sun and Explosions in the Sky, straddling both camps to tempt more two-day ticket sales.

TIMF’s smaller capacity makes it more of a 26-course meal rather than the free-for-all buffet of big-budget festival giants like Coachella and Sasquatch. The musical offerings are still diverse, but the manageable crowd size gives the fog-wrapped island an idyllic, rather than an imprisoning, air.

Through the weekend, 26 music acts will ping-pong between two stages, allowing attendees to see each show without worrying about the dreaded schedule conflict. TIMF remains one of the only music festivals where it is actually possible to see every act on the bill. And the predictably fickle weather will make embracing the group hustle to and from the Bridge and Tunnel stages that much more welcome.

Anchoring the festival are Australian duo Empire of the Sun on Saturday night and high-school throwbacks Death Cab for Cutie on Sunday. The former will rally with electro-pop chords and the costume department of an ‘80s science fiction movie; the latter will draw sing-alongs from the most reticent of onlookers, though the Seattle band lacks some of the nostalgic oomph of last year’s festival closer, Belle & Sebastian.

Their lead-in acts are equally as strong. Dance-punk duo Death from Above 1979 is finishing their reunion tour, obliterating the memory of their five-year split with a reanimated “You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine.” DFA 1979 will benefit from the funkadelic endorphins of synthesizer-friendly Chromeo and Australian group Cut Copy, who lead the post-sundown charge on Day One. But, hands down, the most apropos act for the venue will be the atmospheric and extended jamming of Explosions in the Sky on Sunday night.

Females anchor Sunday afternoon, from the art rock of all-girl troupe Warpaint to vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark, promoting the recent release of her third album under the moniker St. Vincent. Rounding out the trifecta is Victoria Legrand, the ethereal voice behind dream-pop duo Beach House’s 2010 release, “Teen Dream.”

Looking for something outside the alt milieu? Head to the tribal rave set by Portugal’s Buraka Som Sistema on Saturday late afternoon or chill out with the soul of Saturday early-bird crooner Aloe Blacc.

In the event that the music fails to entertain, the views of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco skyline can fill the void–that or the Silent Disco, where attendees can satisfy the need to be antisocial and dance ironically at the same time.

Tickets are still available for both Saturday and Sunday: $70 for a single-day ticket and $125 for both days. With the late start of Stanford’s quarter, even midterms won’t be standing in the way of a weekend of musical bliss.

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Outside Lands recap https://stanforddaily.com/2011/08/18/outside-lands-recap/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/08/18/outside-lands-recap/#respond Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:29:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1049857 San Francisco’s Outside Lands music festival wrapped up its fourth iteration last weekend, transforming the photo-ready Golden Gate Park into a vibrant hub for feather-sporting teens and toddler-toting ‘hip’ parents alike.

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Outside Lands recap
Erykah Badu (Courtesy of MCT)

San Francisco’s Outside Lands music festival wrapped up its fourth iteration last weekend, transforming the photo-ready Golden Gate Park into a vibrant hub for feather-sporting teens and toddler-toting ‘hip’ parents alike. The sold-out three-day extravaganza had over 180,000 attendees gorging on the freshest music and food around – the largest attendance for the festival yet. With a lineup bolstered by indie-powerhouses and an impressive grab-bag of genres, organizers can put a check in the win column for 2011.

Reinstating the fest’s third day this year, producers Another Planet Entertainment rolled out a headlining roster stacked with formidable performers. There was the recent Grammy-winning club: Canadians Arcade Fire, hot on a major festival headlining spree; The Black Keys, bringing blues rock to the fore; and Brit astro-rockers Muse, whose music is pitch-perfect for laser shows and apparently, the “Twilight” series’ soundtracks. Oh, and of course the requisite throwback band Phish, for whom organizers booked for a three-and-a-half-hour slot on Friday evening.

The safe choices in big-budget acts seemed to pay off. Through the weekend, the Polo Field was livened by the swaying sea of arms and a respectable mosh pit or two. The only knock on the fest was the at-capacity crowd, which seemed particularly throng-like in the sunshine of days two and three. With the expansive backdrop of the Polo Field and Speedway Meadow, the bodies themselves weren’t the problem. Instead, it was the overtaxed cell networks that seemed determined to peeve friends hustling from one end of the venue to the other. Considering the fervor to see off-the-main-stage acts Foster the People and Major Lazer, video screens on the three lesser stages would have been much appreciated.

While the echoing bass of MGMT and Deadmau5 may be merely a memory to Golden Gate Park’s neighbors, read below for the highlights of the weekend. Sit back and reminisce.

 

Biggest Brouhaha

The story of Friday was the no-show of rapper Big Boi, who kept fans milling on the Sutro Stage for an hour before a haggard comedian Dave Chappelle tried to calm the crowd. Although Chappelle pulled out a two-minute bit on beach balls, fans weren’t exactly understanding when it was announced that Big Boi had pulled out entirely.

Big Boi’s Twitter trail blames the DJ for getting lost. The rapper refused to do a “half-ass show” in the abbreviated slot he was given, and thus didn’t perform at all. Circumstances are still fuzzy.

The absence of the highly-billed rapper overshadowed anything the school of Phish or The Shins could come up with and threw off the evening’s scheduling. R&B singer Erykah Badu’s set on the same stage was pushed back by more than half an hour, though those who did stay were treated to some of the finest jazz flute shredding to back the Queen of Neo-Soul. For people avoiding the Phish love-fest at all costs, the gap in programming just left people cold and confused.

Outside Lands recap
Phish (Courtesy of MCT)

 

Best Use of a Stanford Degree

By the time K.Flay hit the stage on Friday afternoon, those who were hoping for warmer weather knew it wasn’t going to arrive. Instead, fans huddled close to the stage as the Stanford grad tossed out lines as cool as the incoming fog and pumped out beats from her laptop (which boasted a sticker that said “Reading is sexy.”).

Backed up only by a drummer, she ran across the stage, throwing shout outs to her roommates in the audience and peppering the set with background stories to several songs — “Elle Fanning” inspired by a photo of the actress in her bathroom, another inspired by the Lucky Supermarket on Fulton. Her chops, though, stole the show: on a Busta-inspired rap that inched ever-so-slightly in speed from slow to whoa to holy shit, K.Flay proved to her few-in-number but ardent-in-heart fans on Friday that girl’s got skills.

 

Best Rock Star Move

The Joy Formidable may have been on their last show before returning to their native North Wales, but the rock trio’s megawatt smiles could still be seen from the Sutro Stage’s entrance. No tour exhaustion here. The unpretentious Brits and their synth-dabbling arena rock turned the backwater Sutro Stage into a grass amphitheater, never mind that it was early afternoon on Friday.

The clear voice of lead singer Ritzy Bryan brought their aptly-named “The Big Roar” to uplifting heights. Bryan won the biggest baller award of Day One after repeatedly throwing her guitar to the ground after anthemic closer “Whirring,” ending the set on her knees with bassist-guitarist Rhydian Dafydd. In her bright red dress and blond bob, she didn’t do much damage to the instrument, but the rockstar feeling was there.

 

The Dirty Handbell

It shouldn’t be surprising that OK Go, the kings of the viral video drew such a large crowd at the Lands End stage on Saturday afternoon. The set was an equal mix of their three LPs and it was the type of fun-loving crowd that would cheer whenever the grandma in the front row appeared on the big-screen. Singer Damian Kulash, making electric blue sexy, descended into the crowd of “fucking dirty sinners” for a solo rendition of “Last Autumn Leaf,” and the band even invited their original guitarist, Andy Duncan, now presumably a dad, on the stage for oldie “Get Over It.”

In their most endearing moment, the four Crayola-colored dudes donned white gloves and clacked their way through “Return” on the “instrument that god himself invented – the handbell,” Kulash announced. A mic stand may have been knocked over and the melody was indecipherable, but people laughed along anyways.

 

That’s So San Francisco

Organizers have always been committed to their “Eco Lands” mission. From the solar-powered Panhandle stage to the on-site farmers market to the free valet bike parking, Outside Lands smacks of the Bay Area. But this year’s bourgeois move was the addition of a food truck hide-away in the treed hills between the two largest stages. Presumably going for realism, the trucks were aligned along a horse path reeking of manure.

 

Biggest Dance Party

It’s complicated to call Girl Talk‘s set on Saturday night a performance: Gregg Gillis’s premade set rang forth over the crowd’s heads for over an hour last night as he acted as kind of hype man up on stage surrounded by 50-plus people on stage.

Lights flashed, toilet paper rolls of streamers were thrown out over the crowd, audience members set off floating lanterns and sparklers as the set went through selections from previous albums as well as mashups incorporating newer radio hits like Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” and Adele’s ubiquitous “Rolling in the Deep.”

The ever-pleasing combination of poppy background chords over Rick Ross-like rap kept the party rolling as crowds sang along to snippets of hits from over the years — and gladly went “little bit softer now” and “little bit louder now” to a culmination over a mashup with the Isley Brother’s “Shout.”

 

The Next Big Thing

The accordion was the instrument du jour of Sunday, when one act after another rocked the squeezebox. The folk stylings of Beirut and The Decemberists (also suffering from the worst genre double-booking of the fest), picked up with the distinct and piercing wheeze of the accordion. And on the female front, Arcade Fire’s Régine Chassagne turned the comical instrument into an arena weapon while Mexican pop-starlet Julieta Venegas proved that it had in fact migrated south of the border. Watch out, ukulele: your days are numbered.

 

Canadian Civil War

Closing night became the battle of the frozen North, between Deadmau5 and Arcade Fire on opposite ends of the park. On one side was glowstick-laced head-banging; on the other was collective humming.

Unlike the soft-rock of Junip earlier in the day, the stage setup for the Canadian DJ DeadMau5 included a huge rising platform upon which he perched and watched (mostly through mau5-mask eyes) the crowd below. Dubstep-inspired drops turned the entire setup into a light show, with background flashes as well as the platform — and even the signature mask — casting the audience’s faces in white glow. At one point it appeared that Zimmerman may have hurt himself onstage, but he rallied to the end: even out beyond the packed crowd, exhausted festivalgoers stopped and stared for the vast closer “Moar Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff.”

Meanwhile, on the main stage, Arcade Fire gave a pitch-and-everything-perfect show to bring Outside Lands 2011 to a harmonious finish. As a warm up, Arcade Fire singer Win Butler had jumped on stage with gospel singer Mavis Staples earlier in the day to help cover “The Weight.” By nighttime, Butler was ready to show the expectant crowd just why the band had earned its Grammy.

The show kicked off with a marquee mini-movie calling up suburban-satanic imagery, with karaoke-esque visuals playing behind the band, dressed for an 80s prom afterparty. Accordion-punk classic “No Cars Go,” off 2007’s Neon Bible, was the first to get the crowd jerking, whereas the high-energy double-dose of “Month of May” and “Rebellion (Lies)” burned off the foggy chill. The encore “Wake Up” and “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” lacked some of the pizzazz and flair from the band’s inflatable-ball cascade at Coachella this year, but the sprawling park grounds didn’t need any more decoration.

A version of this review appeared at treeswingers.com on Saturday, August 13; Sunday, August 14; and Monday, August 15.

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