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sinceileftyoublog · 3 years

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Landlady Interview: Landlady’s Fourth, Best Album

Photo by Adam Schatz

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Adam Schatz loves music. It seems like a basic statement to make about a musician, especially one who has led his most successful band for 10 years and played on a wide variety of records for much longer. But on Landlady’s upcoming self-titled, self-released record, out next Friday, their fourth and first in four years, Schatz pays tribute to all the songs and albums and bands he’s loved over the years, in the car and on the radio, as a consumer and appreciator of art, even if they didn’t directly inspire his music. Better yet, he doesn’t directly refer to any titles specifically in his lyrics or instrumentation, save for an offhand mention of a beloved Beach Boys song. Instead, Landlady is a testament to being in a band, anchored by the skill of Schatz and the three other prolific players in the band, drummer Ian Chang (Son Lux), guitarist Will Graefe (Okkervil River), and bassist Ryan Dugre (Eleanor Friedberger). For four people who live their lives surrounded by other musicians, even in non-music contexts, the creativity clearly wears off.

The basis for Landlady was when the current incarnation of the band, the first time they were a four-piece, were touring in Europe in 2019, and Schatz found a period of five days where they could hammer out songs by day and, in the true spirit of Landlady, listen to records at night. Fast-forward to a week long recording session in upstate New York, and Schatz had what he needed to finish off the record, every decision made with the intent of capturing a live band. The harmony is remarkable; voice, piano, and guitar fill the contours of “The Meteor”. Schatz’s warbling singing emulates the nervous tremolo guitars of “Take The Hint”. The instrumental falls out in the perfect moment in the chorus of pop ditty “Rule of Thumb”. And vibraphone-laden closer “Bulldozer” eventually morphs into a time-signature-complex fast-paced boogie. If there was a lot of post-production on Landlady, you wouldn’t know it. It exudes the type of second-nature looseness you’d expect from a live recording session from a band that oozes musical knowledge, both theoretical and popular.

The COVID-19 pandemic and absence of touring has given Schatz to really reflect on what it means to be a professional musician, and in conjunction with the release of Landlady, he’s been writing various informative, humorous and creative pieces in a variety of publications about his interactions with the biz. For one, his monthly income right now is in the form of his Patreon, where for a couple bucks he’s offered deeper insight into Landlady songs, including those so far released on the upcoming record. He’s also published a satirical Talkhouse piece on how to write your own artist bio and wrote a piece about learning to play a complex Randy Newman song on piano over the course of lockdown. (Newman approved.) Most notably, in an essay associated with the album, Schatz non-linearly recalls almost his entire life as a music fan and touring musician, reflecting on life on the road and the deaths of two dear friends, The Teenage Prayers’ Terrence Adams and Jessi Zazu of Those Darlins. (At one point in the essay, Landlady, driving straight from Seattle to San Francisco in the rain, spun out on the road perfectly synced with the climax of Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta”; death almost became them.) And Schatz is also donating 5 dollars of every digital sale of Landlady to The Okra Project, an organization “that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people.” In essence, Schatz treats his relationship with his fans, the music listening public, his band, and the world at large as a symbiotic one, thriving on a collaboration of not just financial morality but mutual empathy.

I spoke with Schatz over the phone from his new home in East Dover, Vermont last month about Landlady, the associated essay, playing on others’ records, and The Okra Project. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: What do you think is unique about this record as compared to anything else you’ve released in the past?

Adam Schatz: It’s hard to say. Each one feels better to me when we’re done with it. Each feels tighter than the last one. This one was a four-piece for the first time. We used to have two drummers, but one of them moved to the West Coast, and with the economy of touring, it was worth seeing how it felt [with four members when touring the last album]. It ended up being the version of the band that’s toured most consistently. So this is a document of a band getting to that place where we can read each other’s minds. A lot of the arrangements came together in the studio as opposed to in rehearsals beforehand. The older you get, the more you lose that luxury of everyone being around.

SILY: Was there anything new or specific that informed the lyric-writing process?

AS: You know...everything. Everything’s new. Everything’s specific. How’s that for a non-specific answer? [laughs]

I take pretty long breaks between doing this stuff. I’m sort of always recording little voice memos and nuggets of things that will eventually become songs. It always feels like a couple of years between concentrated songwriting sessions. On a personal level, it feels like, “Okay, you’ve got to get your shit together because you’re bringing this stuff to other people.” It’s funny, because I’m sort of gearing up for that again now. This took longer to come out than I wanted it to, and what else am I gonna do right now than get ready to make the next one if I can? There’s always a separate lyrical dump of a million thoughts and ideas I write down whenever I think of them, but 99% of those things never make them beyond that folder. It’s circumstance: what you think through, what you’re listening to at the time, what you allow yourself to be able to say, perspectives you feel comfortable portraying. It’s never conscious. All this stuff, I’m only able to think about when I go back and reexamine my work, which luckily isn’t a drag for me. I like the things I make, so it’s fun. I don’t love the sound of my voice, and I think most people don’t, but it’s an interesting thing. For my Patreon, I’ve been doing an in-depth song breakdown every month, and I’ve been doing it for songs on this record. It’s been lined up with every single that’s come out. I’ll put out the single and then do a couple pages of writing. I’ll sort of just bop around between the circumstances of writing, recording, and producing the songs, and then I’ve started including little stems from the record sessions, like isolated tracks and things you don’t necessarily hear when it’s all piled on to each other.

SILY: There seem to be a lot of lyrics about fire and heat. Is that something you noticed or intended?

AS: No, I didn’t. There’s "The Meteor”’s lyrics, but that song is about a meteor--sort of--as far as I know. That’s all real. That thing’s burning up. It’s an element. I’m watching snow melt right now. I don’t have the answer you’re looking for. I wish I did--that would have been great.

SILY: Why did you choose to release “Supernova” as the first single? And can you tell me about the video?

AS: I’m pretty bad at knowing which songs to put out. If more than one person tells me one is a good idea, I usually just go with it. It was also definitely the first song we got together for the record. It’s the oldest one on the album and has been kicking around for a while. It feels the most anchored where we’d even played it live. Most of this record, we haven’t yet. All other albums, we road-tested the material before tracking it. Probably a few people on my side of things suggested it would be a good one to put out there first. Usually, when I think about what to release as a single, I think about what’s gonna be good in the streaming world and all that crap. I sort of always have to check myself and see which songs have choruses, because it’s usually half or less than half depending on how well-behaved I am. I try to make a point to have everything I write be hooky in one way or another. It’s what I drift towards, so I’m never worried about that. But a chorus is a time-tested way to get someone to recognize a song. “Supernova” checked all those boxes: not too fast, not too slow, showcases the production range on the record. It felt like the best candidate.

SILY: On “Supernova”, you sing, “Why did my friend have to die?” Are you talking about either of the friends you write about in the essay?

AS: I am talking about either of the friends on the essay.

SILY: Did the thought process for releasing “Supernova” also apply to singling out “The Meteor”, “AM Radio”, and “Sunshine”?

AS: You’re trying to get people excited about what’s coming next. On the record, there are some songs that are quiet, some that are short, which I loved putting in there as connective tissue as things that work on their own but don’t make sense as singles, and others are a little long for being singles. It also changes every time we put out a record, what’s customary. Around the time of our first record, it was only 1 or 2 songs and then drop the record. People now put out, like, 5. It doesn’t matter. I try to not lament too hard about the state of things, because you can only help what you can help, and whatever’s happening with streaming, those are facts, and I can say what’s right or wrong about it, and I will, but I’m going to try to build a microeconomy of people who are going to give a shit about the record and buy it and remember that we’re human beings and this is a human exchange. At this point, for this record, it’s like, “Let’s put out a bunch of things,” and it’s nice to have a new song out for Bandcamp Fridays.

SILY: "Sunshine” is a slow-burning change of pace.

AS: It’s sort of the opposite [of the others]. That one, we’ve played live a bunch and I’ve been doing in my solo shows a lot. A lot of Landlady songs don’t feel right doing solo because the band arrangement is too important or they’re not conducive to what I love about playing solo, which is being able to improvise and change things pretty dramatically. “Sunshine” is such a good one for both. It’s the same chords over and over and over again. It’s either one verse or four verses, depending on what you call it, and they happen twice. It’s open-ended. We drew a contour of what we wanted to do in the studio. When we perform that song, the choices people make are different. It feels like a step in a new direction to us and for me as a songwriter. It’s near and dear to me and felt like a good one to put out there.

SILY: Is there an overall mood you’d describe the record as having?

AS: Is there one that you would?

SILY: Uneasy.

AS: Sure. That’s okay, I guess.

SILY: It’s definitely a good thing. Like on “Take The Hint”, any time there’s a tremolo guitar effect, and the relationship between the music, lyrics, and arrangement in general.

AS: It’s why we’re not on many playlists and played in many coffee shops. None of it’s really conscious other than me wanting to not be bored and make music I want to listen to and sound exciting. A byproduct of that is our records are active listening. When our fans find it and listen to it, it’s a great avenue for discovery. It’s not music to drink coffee to, though you can once you know the record. I was at a coffee shop one time with some friends and they were playing a Dirty Projectors record, and I was like, “This is the most distracting fucking thing.” That music is not built to be cruising above your head. It’s hit you in the face.

I try to approach the production and arrangements with a bit more patience than we normally do, roping in our frenetic energy. I’m never worried about taming us. It’s never gonna go too far; if we try to be focused, solid, and patient whenever it feels right, it makes the crazier moments mean more, I think. A lot of really nice moments of that on the record.

SILY: This album’s very much inspired by all the formative music in your life you’ve listened to in cars, and on “Molly Pitcher”, you mention “God Only Knows” a couple times, which a lot of folks consider one of the greatest songs ever written. What’s your relationship to that song or Pet Sounds or The Beach Boys in general?

AS: Pretty late in life discovery of that stuff. Sort of a certain category of band where you hear one version of them, and the right person tells you, “No, they’re actually cool,” and you listen again and it reshapes everything you know. It happens with The Beach Boys. It happens with The Beatles for sure. It happens with The Kinks. I don’t think it happens with The Rolling Stones. I can appreciate them more and more also when I listen to them, but I’m never surprised by it. I always think it’s so weird they’re compared to The Beatles as a face-off situation. They’re such different beasts.

“God Only Knows”, I think in that song I picked because it was a good lyric for our song. [laughs] But the sentiment is nailed there. I want to paint this picture of us listening to a song loud in the car. That’s gonna do that, but it’s helpful from me from a wordplay perspective to pick a song with a title that could also mean something else.

I think “Molly Pitcher” had been written before we started doing this in the van to kill time but also find something pseudo engaging on social media without being totally soul sucking. Around 2017, we were doing these harmonies in the car, and one of the last ones at the end of the first tour we were pulling back into Brooklyn, under the BQE, which is always a really bad reentry when you live in New York. You’ve been on the road where things are hard but almost every other city is easier to reenter. You always hit traffic on the bridge, and you get off and there’s some horrible sound from a truck on the highway. It was dark at night, and we were singing that harmony, and it was a special moment. It makes the whole thing kind of double meta, where it’s a testament to my penchant for trying to hit on universal ideas in a way that doesn’t feel vague or general but, “This means something to me, I bet it means something to you too.” Then it can loop back around on my own life again and again. Driving in cars with friends growing up, and that’s still happening, and that’s kind of what the essay’s about, too.

SILY: There are some lines on “Nowhere to Hide” that make me think you’re talking about touring, where you sing about how your food’s gone bad and “give me a home here and there.” Were you feeling that: “Where do I live?”

AS: No, I forget. Some of that song’s about my grandfather who lived in Maine. Some of it’s about other stuff that I don’t know anymore. So, to that degree, sure, you could be right. That song isn’t really about tour. None of them are, really. “Molly Pitcher” is named after the Molly Pitcher Service Area in New Jersey, and “Bulldozer” sort of is about touring.

SILY: Do you think of some of the shorter instrumental tracks on here like “Western Divide” as interludes, or do they stand alone as full songs?

AS: I think they’re full songs that stand alone. That was sort of a fun challenge in putting them together. I knew I liked the idea of shorter songs living between longer songs, and in some ways, they function the way an interlude would function, but I wanted to have more meat on those bones. There were two more songs that up until pretty late in the process I was planning on finding a way to put in as that type of song. One of them we started playing live, and the loud band version is so good. But I was working too hard to make it fit where it wasn’t the best life it could live. It should just be on the next record as a better recorded version. The other one wasn’t feeling good enough on its own. It was feeling interludey. I had to tell myself, “You haven’t finished writing this song yet. There’s probably more coming after this ends. You’re psyched on the idea of doing cool, weird interludes, but it’s not good on its own.” So we cut it. “Western Divide” and “Take the Hint” are the ones that are really short. “Lights Out” is the in-between. It doesn’t really have traditional song form, but it’s longer. I love how that turns out, too. Short songs are something I tried on the first Landlady record, and it’s something I always loved about the Pixies, and the songs I had been writing since I was a kid were always too long.

SILY: How did you approach the order of the tracks in general on this album?

AS: I don’t know. The last two records we did with Hometapes, who are not a label anymore but dear friends, they sequenced. They put an order together, sent it to me, and I maybe had one question, but not much. It was cool to work with people whose input you might follow blindly. With this one, suddenly, it was me in charge of all of it, so I fooled around until I found an order that felt good. Some songs went where they had to go, like “The Meteor” had to go first. Ryan [Dugre], our bass player, even said that. Hearing our drum groove, it had to be the opener.

SILY: Was your decision to self-release this because Hometapes is no longer a label?

AS: By the time the last record came out, they knew it was gonna be the last record they put out, so we called it a co-release between Hometapes and Landladyland. This one we did a fair amount of trying to get someone else to want to put it out. When after a certain point it didn’t happen, I just wanted to put it out. I didn’t know the date until the election happened. After that, I was like, “I think I feel comfortable putting music out.”

SILY: Would have been a bleak alternative.

AS: It’s all bleak, but it’s a strange question. You ask yourself, “When’s a good time to put something out?” And your body’s telling you, “Never! It’s a good time to run a lumber mill and volunteer and learn things about yourself.” But building a microeconomy around what you’re doing and testing out the Bandcamp vinyl thing which was such a success but felt risky. You never know how many people actually care and how to make the thing work. I’m still very much in debt after this record, but we’ll see what happens!

SILY: Why did you decide to self-title this record?

AS: I didn’t have a better idea. I tried. Usually, I do it after a song name, and none of them felt right, and the ones that would have been right, I checked and they were other albums by other people with those titles. I thought “Tooth and Nail” would have been a good album title, but if there’s too many with the same name, it feels silly. For a while, I wanted to call it “Landlady’s Fourth Best Album.” I like it. It worked well for the album art. Everything fit the idea of what came after in a very spontaneous and accidental way. It was the benefit of deciding to do it myself last year and letting things take the time they took. I hired Case Jernigan to do the “Supernova” video last March or April, and he turned it in and we saw what it was and the band artwork at the end of it, which felt like a pretty ridiculous and compelling album cover. Also the band identity, making it clear this was a band record and performance. It was 6 days capturing this in the studio, and I spent many months toying with it on my own, but every choice I make is in service of communicating the energy of people in a room playing together.

SILY: So you don’t think this is your fourth best album? You actually think it’s your best?

AS: Yes, you misheard me. It’s “Landlady’s Fourth, comma, Best Album.”

SILY: In between this and your last Landlady record, you played on a lot of records, like Adia Victoria’s two records and last year’s This Is The Kit record. Did participating in those and others shape making this record?

AS: In the same way that everything shapes everything, where I’m a product of my experiences and am trying to always improve and get better and love working with people and producing. There are so many versions of that for me. It all ends up. I can’t point to any one thing and say, “This led to this.” I play on the Adia record, I’m up there for two hours, play a bunch of stuff, and it ends up on the record or it doesn’t. But there’s plenty of history with me and Adia who have played together and toured together and made music together. It’s funny, the documented recording is a small percentage a lot of the time of your relationship with someone and how everything connects.

This Is The Kit had done a U.S. tour in 2018 and were in New York and needed a sax player for a show, so I got called because we had some mutual friends, and we hit it off right away. A year later, they were doing another U.S. tour, and I offered to open solo and play in the band. It’s not something I ask to do that often, because it’s an incredible hassle to play in someone else’s band. There are plenty of fun moments, but you’re on tour. But they’re really incredible people, and Kate [Stables] and I became really close really fast. So it felt great to work on the new stuff with them. The drag was that we were scheduled to do it all in person last April, but then I had to record by myself. They tracked the band and I laid down a bunch of ideas for every song. The producer, Josh Kaufman, I know really well, and I knew to play ideas I thought they would enjoy and to bring my energy into their universe, which is what I think about when someone brings me in or I bully my way into a project. I think I have something to offer, with the sounds I have access to and the perspective I bring to the music that’s my own. That’s a joy for me to put into other people’s world. Landlady is my world with my people, and we don’t have to tiptoe. It’s the ultimate freedom to go for whatever we want to go for, and we see what comes out.

SILY: Why are you donating money to The Okra Project for this record?

AS: We need to find a better way for this thing to make sense. This thing meaning being a person on earth and finding what other people have done wrong. I want it to be built into the economy of the project. The price is gonna go up. It’s 20 dollars for digital, which is traditionally high, but I’m gonna donate 5 of those dollars every time to The Okra Project, and that’s an ongoing thing. It’s an organization I believe in, working with trans people of color. It’s such a bare minimum, but if it’s something everybody can work into their work, it’s a better support network.

SILY: Are you doing any live streams or socially distant shows?

AS: No. It’s such a hassle to think about. The simplest answer is we can’t afford it. You think about anyone you’ve seen that looks good, and you’re basically making a live record that exists only once. The people who did that, and I did one with Sylvan Esso last year that was totally wonderful, and the fans got it, and they had the means to produce it, but I don’t have the means to produce it on my end. If I’m getting together with my band somehow, I’d rather just be eating snacks because it’s been so long. The idea that the next time we see each other we have to dive into production mode for something that’s not going to be as good. I’d rather ask people to have patience, and when they can see us live, they’ll see us live.

SILY: Are you working on anything else at the moment?

AS: I’m slowly kicking around new songs. I’ve been going slow on those but want to step back on that gas pedal to see what comes out. I’m working on my third sample pack for Splice of loops and sound design. The first one was loops and synthy stuff, the second, bass clarinet, this one, lap steel guitar. It’s been nice to have something to work on steadily. It’s good. It’s jobby. I’m working on a Landladyland podcast, and another comedy fictional podcast.

SILY: Anything notable you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately?

AS: Since moving, I haven’t had internet, so I haven’t been streaming at all. I’d been away from my record collection for the past year, so it’s been amazing to listen to my records again. That’s been the best. Yesterday, I was listening to this Keith Jarrett live record that blew my mind. I hadn’t heard it quite that way before. There’s also a radio station in Northampton that our radio picks up, and they have this show called Funky Fridays that has been consistently awesome. One night was all James Brown features. The other was all New Orleans, like deep Meters and Allen Toussaint, which forced me to grab all those records from my collection and listen to those. I’m trying to read The Brothers Karamazov and a Marx Brothers biography at the same time. We’ve been watching The Larry Sanders Show. I have them all on DVD. The finale’s tonight, I think. It’s gonna be very sad.

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sinceileftyoublog · 6 years

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Riot Fest Review: 9/14-9/16

Beck

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Was it back to chaos for Riot Fest, which seems to find itself in some sort of trouble every few years? Okay, it’s not like they were in trouble with the city aldermen as in 2015. But they were facing lots of backlash from fans waiting ever so patiently for that second wave only to find out that previously announced headliner Blink 182 would be replaced by Weezer, Taking Back Sunday, and Run The Jewels--less than two weeks before the festival. The aftershows, daily lineups, and schedules were announced shortly thereafter, leaving full-time workers like me without time to hatch a plan to skip work and catch Liz Phair and Speedy Ortiz Friday before 2 PM. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be an out-of-towner.

Nonetheless, at the actual festival, Riot Fest went on mostly smoothly. Lines for the entrance, port-a-potties, and beer were never excessive. The vibe was chill and strangely devoid of explicit contemporary politics. (I saw just as many awesome Mars Attacks! t-shirts as I did ill-advised joke MAGA hats--the count was, thankfully, a mere one). Per usual, the music was embedded in a previous era, bleeding down to even the stages you came across: I walked by right as K. Flay covered “Flagpole Sitta” and The Frights covered Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me”.

But perhaps the most important difference was whereas in past festivals, I found it easy to be cynical, judgmental of empty punk idealism about being whatever you want to be in the face of more concrete structural issues relating to class, race, and gender (ok--Suicidal Tendencies signer Mike Muir offered plenty of eyeroll-worthy motivational speeches), this time around, the words and actions of many bands, plus their gratefulness and desire to put on a great show for the crowds, offered more weight than making a statement. Whether it was Weezer’s classy move to cover Blink’s “All The Small Things”, Father John Misty’s surprising lack of sarcastic banter, or the sound of classic Smiths songs coming from someone who isn’t an insufferable blowhard, Riot Fest this year seemed--dare I say it--nice? Of course, there was worthwhile activism. Pussy Riot’s performance (shouted out by Front Bottoms lead singer Brian Sella) carried weight due to recent news of a poisoning of spokesperson Pyotr Verzilov by the Russian government. Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan urged the crowd, simply, to “vote.” But the most inspiring was the simple earnestness of the bands, a feeling that came across as actually genuine.

Run The Jewels

Riot Fest 2018 celebrated music and life--and no set did so more effectively than Run The Jewels. “We came to burn this stage to the fucking ground,” declared Killer Mike before the duo (and their venerable DJ Trackstar) launched into Run The Jewels III highlights “Talk To Me”, “Legend Has It”, and “Call Ticketron”, the crowd embracing every opportunity presented to go nuts. “Gold” was dedicated to “the better half of the human species;” at various points throughout the night, Mike and El-P told the crowd to keep their hands to themselves, unafraid to point out that harassment predominantly affects women. (They missed an opportunity to perform sex positive anthem “Love Again”, though.) And then “Down” was dedicated to Mac Miller and, accordingly, anyone who has left the earth too early. Mike shared a moving, powerful story of visiting the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and reflecting on his mother’s suicide attempt, imploring the crowd to reach out and take care of each other.

Beck

With the other headliners, Weezer and Beck, you knew what you were gonna get--a nostalgia trip, a good time, great bands, and unselfish frontmen. Rivers Cuomo and company burned through their hits, good and bad, and the hits of other bands, whether they were slated to play Riot Fest (the aforementioned Blink cover) or not (Green Day’s “Longview”, A-Ha’s “Take On Me”). Of course, Weezer proved they were still goofy, inevitably playing their hit cover of Toto’s “Africa” and ending their set with a minute of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”. Beck’s set, meanwhile, was all sheen, even the former fuzz and buzz of songs like set and Odelay opener “Devil’s Haircut” falling into the adept hands of dynamically smooth musicians. Beck’s harmonies with the synth, keytar, and tambourine players/backup singers thrived on songs that aren’t even really sung, like “Loser” and “New Pollution”. Midway through the set, the band went acoustic for “Lost Cause” and Morning Phase standout “Blue Moon”. Sure, the set was almost entirely lacking surprise, Beck introducing songs with unambiguous puns containing the titles. But the thrilling encore, which included “Where It’s At”, an introduction of every band member with an interpolation of a song showcasing their skills (Gary Numan joined here for his “Cars”), and “Where It’s At” again, was what truly merited the plethora of beach balls that were previously bouncing throughout the crowd during lesser, newer, poppier songs.

The Front Bottoms

Many bands earlier in the day brought the same level of positive energy. The two best pop punk sets I saw were from The Front Bottoms and The Wonder Years. The former band changed time signatures expertly, their secret weapon Jenn Fantaccione, who played everything from trumpet (“Vacation Town”) to ukulele (“Maps”) to violin (“The Beers”). Drummer Mathew Uychich, wearing a Cubs shirt, led the band’s disco breakdowns with fervor, while Sella, armed with an acoustic guitar and the power and clarity of his voice, brought the basement show to a stadium sized sound on “Cough It Out”, “Au Revoir (Adios)”, and “Twin Sized Mattress”. The Wonder Years were certainly less instrumentally dynamic but no less exhilarating, celebrating the release of this year’s Sister Cities by working the crowd to jump and scream along. Lead singer Dan "Soupy" Campbell did a little too much letting the crowd sing for my taste, but at least the band’s setlist was structured admirably, saving highlights from their previous three albums, like “There, There”, “Cardinal”, and “Came Out Swinging” for moments of equal reflection and excitement. And Superchunk, while not quite pop punk, played a set that was nonstop anthems. Many of the songs from this year’s What a Time to Be Alive stood out, Jon Wurster effortlessly translating the title track’s beat, Jason Narducy’s high notes filling in admirably for Katie Crutchfield on “Erasure” (the crowd did the baritone of Stephen Merritt) and Laura Ballance on “Break The Glass”.

Superchunk

Now Cat Power was there for those who craved something different. Very soft, admittedly better for Pitchfork, Chan Marshall’s buttery, beautiful voice isolated amidst hints of synthesizer, guitars, and drums was nonetheless a refuge from sets that lacked subtlety. She started with a couple songs from Moon Pix and the title track to her upcoming Wanderer, which features Lana Del Rey (Marshall covered Del Rey’s “White Mustang” during her set). Marshall has a known history of stage fright due to substance abuse, which has subsided and been replaced by a funny and empathetic stage presence. For some reason, she pretended to hit baseballs into the crowd during “Metal Heart”--it was wonderful. Any sound issues that came up were resolved with sensitivity among band members. The crowd was enraptured. Marshall left the stage with a salute, mentioning that you’re supposed to salute a certain way to signify you’ve never lost a war. Well, she’s lost a few wars but is all the more powerful for it.

Cat Power

HEALTH put on an obliterating set laden with sound issues to the point the band had to cut it short. They claimed the heat was affecting their guitar pedals and synths but didn’t really offer excuses. Instead, they made it work, grateful for the crowd’s patience and devotion to the spiraling head-banging of John Famiglietti and pouding drums of BJ Miller. The tender, soft vocals of Jake Duzsik undercut the darkness of the music on songs like “New Coke”. Even Elvis Costello, recovering from cancer treatment, found a way to overcome his obstacles. If he had trouble keeping up with his own verses, his voice and guitar playing were still on point, making you realize why “Miracle Man”, “Pump It Up”, and “Radio, Radio” were classics in the first place.

There are always bones to pick with a festival. Mostly, as compared to previous years, this year’s full album plays were underwhelming, and the fest missed out on opportunities for other full plays (Interpol doing Turn On The Bright Lights instead of half of their set being post-Antics material would have been amazing). But considering the circumstances, Riot Fest--like its best performers--went on despite odds and troubles and succeeded through its unselfishness and confident curation.

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