Day 2 – Sunday, August 23
Andrew Jackson Jihad
The half-joke folk-punk band Andrew Jackson Jihad seemed to bring in the younger crowd, briefly making the fest look like a Warped Tour parking lot. But those young fans were yelling out Jihad’s diary-like lyrics at the top of their lungs, with plenty of moshing, crowd surfing, and chanting thrown in for good measure, making it one of the more energetic sets at the fest.
Mac DeMarco
Mac Demarco, the new leader of indie rock, brought his crew of pranksters and was a crowd favorite. Seeing him evolve over the years has been a bit strange, given he now has hundreds of fans screaming his name, but he’s still the same guy with the same (toothless) smile. Having acquired a new guitarist over the last year, it seems Mac now steps away from solos in order to be more of a frontman and rhythm guitarist. Some of the new songs from this year’s Another One were slow and keyboard-based, but he was able to pull them off flawlessly, even in a festival setting.
Belle and Sebastian
Lead singer Stuart Murdoch made sure to remind the crowd the band didn’t have to work tomorrow (knowing full well most of the audience did) and played a high-energy set to make up for the blue Monday ahead, complete with about 30 fans dancing onstage the entire time.
Morrissey
Going into the fest, I was eager to see who would be the biggest asshole, Morrissey or Kanye, but those hopes quickly fizzled out. Morrissey did start off his set with a backdrop of the queen giving two middle fingers, and played disturbing visuals of a slaughterhouse during “Meat is Murder” and police brutality videos during “Ganglord.” He even took jabs at Donald Trump’s bid for presidency, begging the crowd not to vote him in. But all in all, the set was more politically charged than actually douchey.
