Neil Young and Crazy Horse

Photo by J. Dennis Thomas

The lighting and production budget for a Neil Young and Crazy Horse show looks to be roughly a few hundred dollars, or whatever it costs for a very large draping with the band’s Native American astride a galloping horse logo on it. Nothing else. No dramatic lighting, no background videos, or other bright sparklies. They’d be wasted anyway since all you need is to watch the wayward guitar titan stand in a tight triangle with his bandmates in front of a simple drum kit and listen to them try to bend time and space for two hours.

Starting out on Saturday night with an 18-minute churning overhaul of “Love And Only Love”, Young led the group into the epic new “Walk Like A Giant”, revisited classics like “Down By The River”, “Needle and the Damage Done”, and “Cinnamon Girl” and ended with an affirming “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” that, even with Young in his mid-‘60s, was more rebellious than celebratory. Which is how it should have been for the man who walked on stage looking like a burnout from Canada but left it bigger than God.

The Roots

Photo by Dave Mead

The Roots throw so much out there live, and are such gifted and precise musicians in most post World War II genres of popular music, that it frequently takes a few seconds to realize where they’re headed as they stylistically track jump from rap to funk to R&B and straight-up rock. This was the case on Saturday even when guitarist Kirk Douglas started peeling off the iconic opening lines of Guns ‘N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and the thought balloon over this writer’s head would’ve read “Wait, is that…? It can’t be. My God, it is!” Whether reconstructing their own catalog highlights like “Proceed”, “Seed 2.0”, or a monster redux of “You Got Me”, the Philadelphia crew was on fire for an hour even when one of several cloud bursts drenched the stage and the festival grounds.

One thing the rain didn’t dampen, though, was the fire of Jimmy Fallon’s house band, who by virtue of its cush TV gig gets to pick and choose its live show spots, and channel all the members’ chops and enthusiasm into big deal events. Put it this way, not many touring bands feature a full-time sousaphone player, but The Roots do and the guy playing it (Damon Bryson) was doing 180 degree spin jumps in unison with Douglas and bassist Mark Kelley for much of the show. There might not be a more entertaining group out there right now.

Rufus Wainwright

Photo by Allyce Andrew

Even in a creative and liberal haven like Austin, Rufus Wainwright will still tend to be a fish in somewhat shallow water. It is still 10 gallon hat Texas, after all, but the accomplished crooner was every bit of his showy self on Saturday afternoon during a set that showcased his personal and nuanced songwriting while also paying respect to his place in a family of accomplished musicians; father Loudon Wainwright III is still a titan of American folk music along with his mother and Canadian folkie Katie McGarrigle. His mother got her due first with a powerful and soulful rendering of “I Don’t Know” by backup singer Krystle Warren, while son did an occasionally playful run through dad’s “One Man Guy”.

On his own material like the political (but not) “Jericho” and “Rashida” he was in complete control, modulating his supple voice up and down and commanding the showmanship that traces back to previous generations and names like Elton John and Leonard Cohen. Not that Wainwright was overly serious either, and the fact that he could openly and comfortably deliver “Montauk”’s lines about his daughter and living with her two fathers in the middle of a wide open field in Texas was even more reason to celebrate.

Dev

Photo by Matt Ellis

Sometimes you go to a festival set purely for the expected car wreck. That was the case with Dev, an L.A. would-be dance club superstar who traffics in the sort of no-brain-required banging club jams that have slowly taken over America and given Kesha and those of her ilk a staggering amount of cultural relevance over the last couple years. So you’d expect that sort of music – optimally delivered in clubs and a tight concert cavern where bass tones can rumble pelvises appropriately – coming off at just after noon outside on a cloudy, humid Saturday would go over about as well as a fart in a spacesuit.

But damn if the charismatic 23-year-old who seemed to have Red Bull coursing through her veins didn’t just draw a crowd of probably a couple thousand early arrivals. No, she had a whole lot of them jumping and cutting loose to catchy cuts like “Bass Down Low,” “In The Dark” and at least a partial cover of Far East Movement’s “Like A G6.” As the crowd wandered away from Dev., her DJ and pair of backup singers when the show was over there’s a good chance most didn’t remember much beyond a stray chorus or a sampled keyboard line. But they remembered the endorphin rush they got at an unreasonably early hour from a new face who looks like she has a knack for making carefree club jams for the indie set.

Afghan Whigs

Photo by J. Dennis Thomas

“Your attention, please…” No, Greg Dulli didn’t greet the Afghan Whigs’ crowd on Friday with that sneering opening line from the title track of 1993’s Gentlemen, but would anyone have been surprised if he had? One of the most consummate and criminally overlooked (in the larger culture, anyhow) lead singer personalities of the ‘90s alternative rock heydays, Dulli still has a gift for turning plaintive and limp, emo-ish lyrics into serrated blades he’ll turn on anyone within reach. Walking out on stage dressed all in black – how incongruous was it to see this band outside under a hot, high sun? – the Whigs were their anticipated abrasive and noisy selves.

A trio of guitars fought each other (by design) to grab the spotlight while Dulli alternated between the glam and soulful song postures that have always been the band’s sonic calling card. Clearly comfortable back with his Cincinnati brethren after a dozen years apart you could even see him smiling on and off throughout the set. And when he did finally croon the opening request to “Gentlemen” roughly 20 minutes in, it was moot anyhow. Every eye within hearing range was already fixed directly on him.

Iggy and the Stooges

Photo by J. Dennis Thomas

“We’re The Stooges. We’re from hell.” Actually they’re from just outside Detroit, which, when you think about it… eh, that joke’s been done to death. You could actually call any performance by these punk founders “Let’s all watch a 69-year-old (Iggy Pop) try to shimmy and fracture his pelvis into a dozen pieces” but that’s a lot of copy to squeeze onto a concert poster. The Stooges are such a known quantity at this point that you practically go in with a checklist of what needs to happen for the show to qualify as a success. “Search And Destroy”? Check. “Raw Power”? Check. Iggy inciting a crowd of 40 audience members to rush the stage during “Shake Appeal”? Why, sure. A tenor sax freakout on “Fun House”? Of course.

Iggy was in his early 20s when he first sang about having “a son called rock and roll.” That son had a son called punk, who had a son called dubstep, and ol’ granddad is still up on stage sweating through his too-tight black jeans and getting down on all fours and fighting with a mic cord in his mouth like a leash on “I Wanna Be Your Dog”. It’s theater as much as it’s a concert at this point, but as long as they can drag themselves on and back off a stage there will always be something triumphant about their spirit to keep on, even if before too much longer that means trying to shimmy with a walker in a back brace.

Delta Spirit

Photo by Dave Mead

In interviews, San Diego’s Delta Spirit admit they’re in some ways a bi-polar band, presenting moving and precisely crafted pop rock on records and tossing any notion of polish and restraint over their shoulder live in favor of a more exposed nerve and over the top rock spectacle. That partly explains why just over halfway through he band’s Friday afternoon set singer/guitarist Matt Vasquez let his other four bandmates work on an extended bridge during the shout-along mania of “Trashcan” so he could climb more than 30 feet up the stage right support scaffolding and dangle his feet in the air when he wasn’t urging the crowd to chant in unison and pump their fists.

Do they need to employ such antics to pull off a successful set? Probably not but with three albums under their belt and less than 10 years as a band they’re getting right to the point where they should be expected to figure out how to marry their ears for hooks and songcraft with the intensity expected of a live show. It was there in selected moments – on the moving and political early cut “People, Turn Around”, and on the breezy new “California” – and made a case for why we should hope Vasquez can keep his feet on the ground long enough to let these four grow into their gifts.

Los Campesinos!

Photo by Allyce Andrew

Gareth David – the singer of Welsh noise popsters Los Campesinos! – is one in a long line of proudly divisive rock frontmen, in the tradition of Art Brut’s Eddie Argos or The Fall’s Mark E. Smith. If his in-and-out-of-tune talk singing was your thing then he’s the perfect centerpiece for his band’s urgent and energetic racket, which is often moving in several directions at once. If it wasn’t then – much like several crowd members on Friday afternoon – it was time to head elsewhere. That’s a shame since when the small army playing guitars, drums, bass, keyboards, glockenspiel and more got into a handful of songs where they were all moving in pretty much the same direction – the slowly-flowering, grandiose “You! Me! Dancing!” chief among them – they were a simply great pop band.

Two Door Cinema Club

Photo by J. Dennis Thomas

Back in February, during a visit to the offices of Austin’s C3 Presents (the company that books Austin City Limits Festival, Lollapalooza, and a rapidly expanding portfolio of events all over the world), there was a buzz as staff there reacted in mild amazement at some concert industry gossip and what they perceived as a bargain price secured for Ireland’s Two Door Cinema Club to play this year’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival (not a C3 event). There was consensus that the band was due for a big year and offers were quickly agreed upon to book the indie dance rock band for both Lolla and ACL. So a lot of people were expecting great things from the young band.

Turns out those folks know what they’re doing, as TDCC was greeted on Sunday afternoon to a massive crowd at the festival’s main stage, the lot of them jumping along energetically to crisp, bouncy pop like the new “Handshake” and the Death Cab For Cutie-on-caffeine fun of “Eat That Up, It’s Good For You”. Good pop music flourishes in any environment and from just about the start of their set it was evident that Two Door’s brand is the stuff that can connect in an open field of several thousand just as well as in an well-appointed and acoustically friendly theater. That’s the real stuff, and sets like theirs on Sunday can be springboards to even larger settings down the road.

Weezer

Photo by Dave Mead

Say whatever you want about Weezer’s last 10 years (though I’ll go honey badger defending 2002’s Maladroit, purely on the backs of “Dope Nose” and “Keep Fishin’”) but their string of regrettable late-career albums have birthed a surprising pile of lesser modern rock radio hits that fit in pretty close to perfect with their canonical self-titled debut (Blue) album. When you mix and match the band’s chronology as on Friday evening’s set you see that in reality Weezer was always more tilted toward Boston’s arena guitar pop than Pavement’s muddled slacker anthems.

Given that, it’s weird that what’s seen by many as the group’s crowning work – sophomore effort Pinkerton – in large part sounds like the sibling that was mixed up with another infant in the maternity ward even if “El Scorcho” still packs a goofy wallop. Of the rest, “Undone (The Sweater Song)” still feels singular even if it has always hung most of its power on Rivers Cuomo’s soaring closing solo, but “Buddy Holly”’s vague sketch of a retro romance is no more lyrically developed than whatever “Pork And Beans” or “I Want You To” are about.

What matters, though, is that Cuomo and his bunch are a post-classic rock classic rock band who still (mostly) look and play like they did when Bill Clinton was still in his first term, and they show no intention of doing much different going forward.