Sweetlife Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion, May 30-31, 2015

The Sweetlife Festival aspires to be Austin City Limits. It’s not there yet. They’ve got music, food, and fun, but on a much smaller scale than ACL.

Examples:

FOOD – Lots of local food, but where ACL makes sure that the menu covers all allergy and special diet needs and posts menus online, in advance, Sweetlife doesn’t. They tried, but my dairy allergy wasn’t well met. The vegan options were slim after the only vegan food truck bailed. Another food truck (Sprouted Pot) advertised a couple vegan options, but put sour cream and cheese on them. They might want to look up “vegan” in the dictionary. Also, ACL had a fantastic wristband system that let you link a credit card to your wristband and pay with the band at all food outlets. Many of the Sweetlife food outlets only took cash, which was annoying to discover on the first day. One positive: LemonadeLove -  the only kiosk for non-alcoholic frozen drinks. The line was insane, but the product was good. I know they are local DC, but I can't find a link for them, just a few hashtag mentions on Twitter that don't seem to be about the same company. I wish them luck.

MUSIC – ACL had 39 acts per day on a total of 7 stages. Sweetlife had 21 acts per day on 3 stages. (One of those stages was a tiny one for local DJs.) They could have easily put all the acts on a single day, but instead they spread it to 2 days. I imagine they did it to increase the food sales and reduce the stage rigging/renting expenses.  Problem is, the two festivals were priced exactly the same, so Sweetlife continues to feel like a rip off.  Both festivals tried to appeal to a variety of genres, though ACL has more cutting-edge alt and EDM acts acts plus country, kids music, and gospel. Sweetlife did alt, EDM, and urban.

FUN – ACL has lots of vendor activities, art, and local wares shopping. Sweetlife had a little of that, some of it identical to the most recent ACL. Just on a much smaller scale.

ACL sells out every time to huge crowds for two weekends. Sweetlife never does, and more than half the pavilion seats were empty, which looked BAD from the perspective of the performers on stage.  It also doesn’t function as well as a festival because there isn’t enough churn to keep people moving between stages. You need enough acts competing for the same time slot that most people have to make hard choices about where to be when and don’t just park themselves at one stage all day.  There was also the elitist vibe of sitting in the mostly empty pavilion while so many people baked in the sun.  They should have done something random to fill up more seats – like a lucky winner who walked in every so often, or scavenger hunt, or pick up trash. They even tried a trash pick-up program like ACL, but the rewards were not desirable – water bottles and cheap sunglasses. They should have done a shirt and made the rules of the program more obvious.  Oh, and the shirt designs were as uncreative as you can get- just white words on gray. No images at all. Not worth buying at all. Another random bitch – what was the mainstage light designer thinking? He pointed 90% of the lights into the audience, blinding us and obscuring the artists. Lights should be used to help the audience see the artist.

Overall, not an awesome festival, but local and close to my home, so still worth it to me. Now for the acts.

Saturday, May 30, 2015

The Bots

The Bots were a garage rock duo of black men who wore all black (including a big black hat on one of them) on a black stage. If I hadn’t been near the front, they would have been impossible to see. Horrible sound mixing – the instruments were much louder than the instruments so I couldn’t hear the vocals and it was painful to listen to, even with earplugs.  It was impossible to tell if they were any good with the sound quality so bad.

Aurora

Aurora is a Norwegian woman who does haunting, pretty songs with a lilt in her voice. She was expressive, cute, and friendly on stage, with a free-form way of dancing and a quirky Nordic fashion sense. I’d recommend seeing her if you like her recorded sound. Published future tour dates are all in Europe.

Misterwives

Misterwives – A six-piece band with a female lead on vocals. Dancy alt music with some brass. Good interaction with the audience  - they looked like they were all having a good time on stage. The singer sounded like an old-school crooner sometimes, and she had serious vocal chops.  There was a nice bit which a vocal-trumpet call and response that sounded impressive- and she apologized more than once for the quality of her voice because she was ill. Her stage act gave me the impression of an aerobics instructor-she had SO much energy. There was even a feminist bit involving pushups.  There was another bit where the vocalist and drummer swapped places for an old cover song. There were lots of fun interactions with band members. This act made some new fans at the festival. They were a frenetic fun-house for their last number. Really great performers. Playing Sunday night, November 8 at the 9:30 Club in DC.

St. Paul & the Broken Bones

St. Paul & The Broken Bones hail from Birmingham, Alabama and have a retro sound, a little like Fitz and the Tantrums, but more southern gospel-inspired. Lots of brass. The lead singer is a large man with a HUGE personality.  You know those business men you sometime meet who look like fat balding losers, but they wear a nice suit and have an overabundance of chutzpah and end up winning everyone over for it? The singer was kind of like that. Easy to dismiss as first glance, but with powerhouse vocals and no timidity. That man was wildly entertaining.  Chad told me that he ended up writhing on the stage like he was struck down by spirit at Coachella. I didn’t see that at Sweetlife. I left early for another act and regretted it. Note: I just noticed that they've added a Saturday night - Sept 12 - show in Baltimore. I might be interested in going.

SZA – I saw a couple minutes. A young pretty black woman with a foul mouth. Her music did not make an impression on me.  She’s got friends in high places – there are lots of famous guest vocals on her recorded works.

Sinkane – I HATED this act. It was very jammy/jazzy and abstract. Left after just a couple songs.

Allen Stone

Allen Stone – I can’t believe I had to sit through a few of his saccharine pop/R&B songs because there was NOTHING ELSE. I put my earplugs in tight and read a book. The bear of a pianist wearing a vest was an eyeball-searing picture to behold.

The Bear

Ben Browning – Just another DJ. Who the hell cares?

Lucius

Lucius – Amazing vocals, as always from this alt duo. Still have the matching hair and outfits - yellow tights and black dresses this time.

Bleachers

Bleachers – It took this long for the tech people to put up an alternate image on the giant LCD screen behind the mainstage, which seemed a waste of al lot of AV money. Same exact show I saw months ago, word for word. Guy pop – good enough.







Tove Lo wins the award for the least appropriate outfit. A worn out tank swimsuit with booty shorts and a bow on her butt. She had the star quality of some random chick selected from the crowd – so almost none.  I don’t even remember her music. According to a Washington Post review, she eventually resorted to flashing her mosquito-bite boobs to the crowd. I missed that part.

Billy Idol

Billy Idol is so OLD. His face looks ancient, but then he made a big production of stripping to show off his abs, which are surprisingly good for a 59 year old man.  He sang some really bad new songs, then some embarrassing renditions of his old material. I felt like I was listening to a bad cover of his old songs, not the real deal. He seemed a bit like a doddering old dude – trying too hard. There were maybe 6 changes of shirts and jackets, 5 of which displayed his abs and 1 of which looked like ladies lingerie. Funny thing was, they were all so similar that I couldn’t tell most of the jackets apart.  He did some tongue flicking that gave me the heebie-jeebies – so gross coming from an old man.  There was a Tarzan call. There was posing with his arms raised, waiting for everyone to take photos, there were endless drum sticks and picks and extra copies of set lists tossed into the audience by the handful. There was a guitar-synth gimmick that might have been fresh in 1983. I was embarrassed for him – he was trying too hard. Nail on the coffin – he encored forever when the crowd was anxiously awaiting Kendrick Lamar and just wanted him to go away.

Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar is a genius rapper and one of the hottest acts of 2015, and the darling love of my friend Trish, so I had to watch the beginning even though I hate rap. Trish tells me that Kendrick’s lyrics are full of poetry and commentary about social justice. I can’t validate that. Music reviewers tell me that his new album is genre-smashing and incredible. I haven’t heard anything that appeals to me from it. But the crowd LOVED him. As I was leaving the 40-something lady in front of me was complaining “why did they end the day with HIM??” to her much older husband. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She had to walk by the same crowd I did to leave and they were INTO Kendrick – you could see endless people stretching back into the night, arms waving.  How could you NOT end with him? High point of the night according to Trish (that I missed) was when Kendrick brought a random girl from the crowd up on stage to rap a song with him and she nailed it.  Watch the video on Sterogum.

Sunday, May 31. 2015

Holychild

Holychild – Holy moly, I loved this band! What fun energy! The singer was vivacious and sexy, doing a bold sexy pseudo-belly dance, flaunting attitude with a smile.  The rest of the 6 piece band was composed of young men, 2 backup singers and 3 drummers/synth players.  I am not certain which of those 5 men were actually the other half of the official duo. The singer also used a loop repeater. There were no stringed instruments.  The men were dressed in island apparel and had a lot of tinsel on stage.  There was something different and interesting with the performance of each song. In one song, the back-up singers used tinsel pom-poms. In another, they hammed it up acting out the lyrics, in another the singer jumped out into the audience and lapped the pavilion, sitting on people’s laps while singing to them. The group formed in 2012 at GWU, my alma matter (finally something I like about my school!) They said they were touring in support of a new album, and it appears that they are based in LA now. Other highlights: the backup boys twerking and doing choreographed dances. The Asian boy was particularly hilarious and engaging. The other backup singer was the best looking male on stage, but needed to loosen up a bit more, though you could tell he was trying.  I would LOVE to see this band again. The music was fun and dancy, and I loved the song Running Behind. Trish missed this act because of traffic – very sad. Published future tour dates don't include DC yet, but there are a lot of holes in their schedule. They will be at ACL this fall, though alas, I will not.

Sun Club

Sun Club – Average alt/garage rockers barely of out of their teens. Hairy guys – looked like the guys asleep in the back of the class. The guitarist said a couple sentences to the crowd that included 3 “cools” and 2 “fucks.” Not a well-spoken bunch. Local act - out of Baltimore.

Raury

Raury – A critically-acclaimed young black man soloist who traveled with an all-black band. He’s sometimes folk-rock, sometimes dreamy smooth, a little rap – very much his own thing. Unfortunately, the sound mixing sucked. The instruments were too loud for the vocals.  Raury looked a little like a young Michael Jackson. His movements were big and flamboyant, which was effective on stage. He said he was from Georgia.

Charli XCX

Charli XCX – Slick pop music. She brought a great stage with her, and the costumes of her all-white-girl band were cute zebra stripe dresses, but something fell flat for me. She had great stage presence and moved well on her mile-high platform heels – she was visually playing to the back of the house – but there was something too rehearsed about the act. The audience was with her, though. Maybe the production was too slick for my taste. Of maybe it was that same one-trick-pony dance moves and cussing that annoyed me.

San Fermin

San Fermin – Greatest disappointment of the festival. I had such high hopes and fond memories of this group! Dashed, dashed all –woe unto me! Maybe that’s a bit over the top, but I was disappointed. They lost their female lead singer Rae Cassidy and replaced her with Charlene Kaye. Charlene is not nearly as talented. And, they were doing songs from their new album, which isn’t anywhere near as good as their first album. That’s a serious sophomore slump!

Phantogram

Phantogram – I really don’t like them live. They wore the same outfits on stage as the last time I saw them (black and white). The start of the act was really disappointing – like they were all playing different songs at the same time. There was way too much base and it was often hard to hear the vocals. The vocalist did a lot whipping her hair over her face, I think purposefully so she didn’t have to look at the crowd. When she spoke, I wished she hadn’t – she sounded ineloquent. Only part I liked: I was impressed by her bra – it looked very cool.

Vance Joy

Vance Joy – Aussie singer-songwriter which some very popular songs. He stood there with his guitar on stage in the spot light with his unruly curly mop of hair, smiling and singing. Cute guy, nice voice, nothing to his performance. Didn’t talk all that much.  He had very annoying lights on stage aimed into the crowd.  Here's my video of "Your Mess Is Mine."

BANKS

BANKS – Riddle me this: What do BANKS and Lorde have in common sonically? Whatever it is, it grates on my ever loving nerves! I hate this music! The only song I like by BANKS is Begging for Thread, which sounds nothing like the rest of her music. Her music was broody and pseudo-poetic. She was wearing a black bustier that create a weird visual effect on the projection screens when she danced. Her ultra-pale décolletage seemed to move a half-second after the top – like she was dancing behind a clothing cut-out that wasn’t quite timed to her movement.

Marina & the Diamonds

Marina & the Diamonds – She’s Welsh – I just looked it up, which explains the nice accent. Great costumes, elaborate stage props of giant fruit, a “Froot” lettered shiny tiara and cherry earrings – and it still took me half the act to understand that Froot is the name of her 2015 album.  Duh. Braindead much?  Marina had an impressive voice and amazing presence.  She was comfortable talking to the crowd, though she spent most of her time looking regal, controlled, and sultry. Marina did a vocal trick that was pretty cool and sometimes flashed a big expressive smile that was charming.  She had an obvious gay following in the audience.  I can’t name anything she sings, but it was a fun dance/pop show.

I took off after Marina.