Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival: Day Three

Sunburns and chilly San Francisco winds don’t mix. The cool Bay Area air settled into Golden Gate Park for Day Three of the second annual Outside Lands Festival on Sunday, thinning out crowds and leaving many a shivering concertgoer wishing they’d brought more clothes once the sun fell beyond the Pacific horizon.

Cage The Elephant took to the Twin Peaks stage yesterday afternoon with a determination to up the energy ante early in the day, and by most accounts they succeeded. Live-wire frontman Matt Shultz was an epileptic spectacle, throwing his body all over the stage between several bouts of stage diving and randomly grabbing fans by the face. For the band’s finale, Shutlz jumped into the crowd a final time, standing on a fan’s shoulders before dropping down in the middle of the crowd to sing the final chorus amongst his newly devoted followers.

Providing a Hip-Hop flair for Day Three was Atmosphere, who recruited the soon-to-be-legend Brother Ali as hype man for a set that spanned the act’s considerable catalogue. Anyone familiar with Ali knows that the man spits inimitable flow, and once the world hears his new album, Us (out Sept. 22), people will be outright amazed that the legally blind albino MC takes a supporting role to any rapper. It’s far and away the most brilliantly-narrated work to be released this year, and comparisons to Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3 aren’t even fair – to Jay-Z (yes, it’s that good). But supporting kinship is just how the Rhymesayers family rolls, and I’ve got a feeling Ali will be helping out his Minnesota brethren no matter how hot his name gets. But I digress.

Sean Daley, aka Slug of Atmosphere, spat his heart out to provide some of the day’s only Hip-Hop in lieu of the Beastie Boys’ cancelled headline slot. Interestingly enough, he was curiously overshadowed by the crowd’s apeshit response to Notorious B.I.G.’s Where Brooklyn At, which filled the speakers as New Yorker duo Matt & Kim took over the Panhandle Stage for a bizarrely awesome set of indie-spazz gems.

As Matt reveled in the enthusiasm & fired off one-liners to the receptive crowd (“So, we decided not to buy health insurance this month so we could get a t-shirt gun”), Kim did the booty dance on a few numbers before offering a little advice to the ornamentally challenged: “I gotta tell you something very important. There are only two times to take your hoochie hoops off. When you’re gonna fight and when you’re gonna play drums, so that you don’t get the sticks in there,” referring to her large hoop earrings.

After a shit-eating-grin version of Freebird, the duo wound their set down with an instrumental remix of Final Countdown before dancing off the stage to an Outkast song.

Indie monsters Modest Mouse suffered from the unfortunate occasion of being billed at roughly the same time as The Dead Weather, who drew an electric buzz of anticipation among the thousands huddled in the Twin Peaks pit a full thirty minutes before their set. The previous days’ warmth was replaced by a chill descending from the bay, leaving the masses clinging to each other to keep the shivers away – that is, until the Nashville quartet took to their instruments.

Before The Dead Weather played so much as a note, the crowd’s enthusiasm was at near-hysteria levels. Tracks like 60 Feet Tall and Cut Like A Buffalo were soaked in gasoline, with Mosshart’s jagged, aggressively confrontational presence juxtaposing Jack White’s beat-bursts to create the spark that made each song ignite. The tremors and warmth-huddling was traded for leaps and body rock from the crowd, who weren’t fooled by the suggestion that, just because White’s behind the drum kit, we’re supposed to believe he’s not the driving force behind this band. Mosshart, Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita are remarkable in their own right, but White’s stage presence is, well, 60 feet tall, especially when he steps from behind the kit, straps on an electric and tears off an absolutely ripping dirty-Delta blues solo.

The sexual tension between White and Mosshart, whether feigned or authentic, is immensely palpable; sharing a mic, the two wailed in unison while staring into each other’s eyes, leading many to wonder what the hell’s going on between the two. If it’s a device to add flare to the show, it certainly works. With an explosive sexual chemistry, they’d be fools not to play it up.

After a very strange-looking prep dancer (we’ll call him Ginger Smurf), M.I.A. arrived in a hideous shiny jaguar print dress and proceeded to fail hard at getting the same energy going at a massive festival that she’s so good at doing in an intimate club setting. Barking her lyrics over deafening bass while male dancers gyrated ridiculously, the crowd didn’t seem to take to her at all and began thinning out early in her performance. They weren’t relocating to wait for Tenacious D’s festival-closing set, either; a good percentage of the people were simply tired of the cold, tired of M.I.A. and really not looking forward to a billing choice that still has this humble reviewer scratching his head. Who the hell thought Tenacious D would be a good replacement for the Beastie Boys?

The D opened with Kielbasa, giving a shout-out to the Beastie Boys and… you know what? I can’t do this. Tenacious D are a novelty act that’s lasted about a decade past their expiration date, and they shouldn’t have closed the festival under any circumstance; it’s not as if the Beastie Boys’ cancellation was last-minute. This is the equivalent of going to a fireworks show on the 4th of July, only to have the grand finale actually be some morbidly-obese mouth-breather walking up and throwing a wet hot dog at you. That’s it and that’s all, folks. Outside Lands 2009 was a triumph, and we’ll try not to hang on to the final impression. Check out our fantastic pictures instead, and we’ll see you next year.

Antiquiet’s complete coverage of Outside Lands can be found here. All of our pictures from the festival can be found on our Facebook Page.

All Photos: Alicia Roldán & Rick Pickett for Antiquiet