Lollapalooza Day One: When Big Gets Humongous

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 6, 2011 5:30PM

Coldplay photo by Jim Kopeny

At the rate it's going it won't be too long before Lollapalooza begins to swallow all of downtown Chicago. The festival footprint grows year after year, allowing for more space for foot traffic and larger stages, and this year the sheer scale of the goings-on is slightly stunning. Lollapalooza organizers have erected a well run city within our city for attendees' enjoyment.

This is the first year that the festival completely sold out ahead of time, and the capacity was increased, but it certainly didn't feel any more crowded than in previous years. The expansion of the grounds really does help everything keep from feeling too overstuffed and we had no problems getting from one end of the park to the other and back pretty quickly when we needed to.

Reviews by Kim Bellware

Tennis took to the stage just after lunchtime, and we wondered if their sun-dappled tunes about beaches and sailing would lull the warm crowd right to sleep. Live, the band is reliably snappy, and their first major festival performance kept that constant. Tune after tune Tennis floated bright, clear songs with a wholesome Jan & Dean-like jangle and thick, beachy basslines into the park. The block of tunes covered most of their Cape Dory debut, adding some extra punch to the gauzier songs like "South Carolina" and "Bimini Bay." Frontwoman Alaina Moore, who had dealty with a fritzy keyboard all set long, went from dreamy crooner on "Marathon" to almost growly surf rocker near the end of "Pigeon," while guitarist Patrick Riley (Moore's husband/erstwhile shipmate) and drummer James Barone created the Spector-like wall of sound behind her.

The usually strong Mountain Goats struck an off chord for their early evening set. Goats leader John Darnielle confessed toward the end of their performance that the band hadn't made a setlist, but most of their show seemed like a less rousing carbon copy of their show at the Vic earlier this April. The impact of lyrics as literal and personal as Darnielle's get lost in the large festival setting which may have explained why we--and the audience--were left a tad underwhelmed. Still, if ever there were an earnest and hardworking frontman, it's John Darnielle. The Mountain Goats had some strong turns, particularly with "Birth of Serpents;" a cover of Styx's "Babe," meanwhile, felt like a strange choice. The meager crowd started to fill out toward the end of the set when the Mountain Goats launched into the Chicago favorite (if not shamelessly pandering) "Cubs In Five." Maybe our cynicism is misplaced and the Mountain Goats really do have a deep, abiding love for the Windy City: in addition to Cubs fandom (at least in song) they regularly hail the Chicago group Silkworm, playing a track from the band before being joined onstage by Wye Oak's Jann Wesner. Wesner helped the Mountain Goats with vocals for "This Year" as they wound their set down. The band gave a few more thank yous and heartfelt words to the crowd before taking off, missing only by minutes an ominous smoke that started creeping around the front of the stage.

Fans at Perry's Stage photo by Jim Kopeny

Former Chicagoans and perennial jokesters OK Go make us feel like we're dating the class clown: the hilarity and lightheartedness and obvious love of fun are great, but when it gets a little too, good God is it get tiresome. The band came out dressed in dapper suits, per usual, though this time their suits were monochromatic, each member in a different color so as to create a cute rainbow effect onstage. For all their antics, OK Go is pretty much the perfect band to play at a huge outdoor festival like Lolla; with their balls and bells and treadmills and zingers, they've grown very good at playing with a bunch of distractions. They go after the audience's attention with a vaudevillian flair, and they win it nearly every time. Early in the set a few of the easily recognizable numbers like "A Million Ways to be Cruel" turned out startlingly bland. The lull, however, was short-lived as OK Go kicked up the tempo as they reached the middle of the set. Some intense rocking and occasional banter had the group looking good until lead singer Damian Kulash started riffing with the audience about music being for "dirty, evil night people." We'd seen it before and knew that they were building up a joke where some ridiculous gimmick would be the punchline. And then it came: Handbells. The guys donned white gloves for a tintinnabulous version of "What to Do." While the intended effect was probably "angelic," "funny" or maybe even "impressive," it simply rang as contrived and too damn quirky for its own good. We found the truly funniest part of their set to be when the band made a plug for Facebook as they played on the festival's Google Plus stage. By the time the band came to their viral video breakthrough hit "Here it Goes Again," the energy was back up and the crowd was back to spazzing out. We especially liked their old school track, "Get Over It," the song that gave them their college radio/CMJ crowd breakthrough. It was simple and rocking and slightly scruffy and seemed to be what the band was about before they discovered the instant rimshot. A rendition of "Skyscraper" was a sort of "OK Go by numbers" song, the filler before they ended with the hit everyone was waiting for, the sing-a-long tune "This Too Shall Pass."

As we waited for Coldplay to start their headlining slot of the evening, we finally figured out what that smoke from the Mountain Goats set was all about. Nearly a decade since "A Rush of Blood to the Head," and Coldplay still loves their lasers and had been quietly filling the north end of the park with fume-free vapor so that their laser light component would be visible. Despite giving us some initial panic that we were in some John Carpenter movie, those lasers turned out to be pretty damn cool. So was Coldplay. We've kind of dismissed the band over the past few albums as having gone MoR, but by the time Chris Martin and company smashed into an awesome version of "Yellow," we say undeniable proof that Coldplay definitely still "has it," at least when it comes to live performances. The older songs in the band's catalog, those from Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head have held well, but even more impressively was the Coldplay's ability to play these ten year old songs as if they were touring to promote them for the first time. More than intensity, there was a terrific presence in the songs. The band introduced several new songs, including the opener, "Hurts Like Heaven." Maybe it was the crowd's sheer enthusiasm to see Coldplay finally play Lollapalooza--they've been around for nearly 15 of the Festival's 20 years and have never played the fest--or maybe the audience was genuinely connecting with the band's new material, but whatever it was, excitement levels were charting pretty high the entire two-hour set. The aforementioned lasers, along with some seriously pretty fireworks and the glittering buildings enveloping Grant Park created a backdrop that was nothing short of amazing. "In My Place," "The Scientist" and particularly "Shiver" seemed to draw adoring reactions while exemplifying why many have argued for a solid decade that Coldplay is one of the best bands in the world. Martin seemed humble and focused, while drummer Will Champion was this fireball of unadulterated excitement and kit-bashing power. Shortly after "Violet" something appeared to go wrong with Jonny Buckland's guitar and he threw it across the stage. Whatever Martin is like in private, the world knows him as the frontman of a huge band and married to a famous actress with whom he has a few children with funny names; the rest of the band tends to retreat into the background, so it was fantastic to see the rest of Coldplay live, playing and geting an actual glimpse of how they truly power the music. "Politik" and "I Used to Rule the World" stood out in the second leg of the set, with Buckland and Champion keeping a positively frenetic pace up during the more driving moments of "Politik." A few bodies started filtering out as the set wound down, only to scurry back once Martin tinkled out the opening notes of "Clocks" for an encore (the lasers went nuts yet again for that song!). Martin then started a ballad-y version of "Rehab," a tender nod to the late Amy Winehouse. He sang the chorus through a few times--almost wistfully--before segueing into "Fix You" and the not-so-great "Every Teardrop is a Waterfall." Despite a bit of schlock that crept in with the last song, Coldplay was a standout closer for the festival's first day and reminded us not to count them out just yet. If Friday was any indication, they still have loads in store.