opened up and began to rain. High winds
accompanied the deluge, and I was
actually worried that they might cancel
the show, but the band and its crew
soldiered on, and the only hiccup occurred
when guitarist Peter Buck slipped on a
puddle during the band’s entrance. The
band opened with Accelerate’s “Living
Well Is the Best Revenge,” which flowed
immediately into “What’s the Frequency,
Kenneth?” and the rest of the set leaned
pretty heavily into the band’s more rock-
oriented songs. Michael Stipe has aged
fairly well, and despite the fact that it
was only their second show into the tour,
he was every inch the frontman. Whether
he was crooning, shouting, lending his
support to Barack Obama, or even just
taking off his shoes to avoid the same

 

fate as Buck, the crowd was transfixed
by him. The band alternated between
old and new—even treating the crowd
to only the second live performance of
Automatic for the People’s “Ignoreland”—
—before rolling out a blistering encore
that consisted of “Orange Crush” and
“Man on the Moon.”

The Flaming Lips

   

 

Death Cab for Cutie

Day 2: Early morning
drinking, Brian Posehn is
made of farts, & Robert Smith

drowns his sorrows in food.
Despite the presence of The Cure, Sunday
was widely regarded as the weakest
day of the festival. Consequently, I
passed on the 8-bit instrumental beats of
Truckasaurus (and a slew of other acts)
to engage in one of the festival’s other
draws: hanging out and drinking in the
sun with friends and other like-minded
music fans.

Consequently, I didn’t make it
to the festival grounds until Tegan &
Sara were starting their set on the Main
stage. The precocious twins played a
short set that consisted of equal parts
quirky guitar-drive pop rock and sibling
banter. They drew mostly from their
last two albums, but paid tribute to their
long-term fans by closing with “Living
Room.”

The Presidents of the United
States of America were up next,
and despite a generous helping of
enthusiasm, they couldn’t lift their set
above or beyond the reams of novelty
and nostalgia that songs like “Lump”
and “Peaches” conjure up.

Instead of checking out The
Kooks or Stephen Malkmus, I waited in
line at the Comedy Tent to check out The
Sarah Silverman Show’s Brian Posehn.

His act was exactly the same as when I
saw him a while ago in Vancouver, but
it didn’t stop me from laughing when he
talked about how he looks like a big pile
of farts that put on a man costume.

After ditching Posehn’s show a
little early, it was back to the Main stage
for Death Cab for Cutie. The band’s
latest, Narrow Stairs, debuted at number
one a few weeks ago, but the little
indie band that could still didn’t seem
capable of owning such a large stage.
The only moment where they came
close was during the closing number,
“Transatlanticism,” where drummer
Jason McGerr—who works as an
instructor at the Seattle Drum School—
absolutely pounded his kit for almost
two straight minutes while Ben Gibbard
crooned “I need you so much closer.”

Despite Gibbard’s ringing
endorsement (“I’m so goddamn excited
to see the Cure tonight you wouldn’t
fuckin’ believe it”), I wasn’t all that
stoked to see the Cure. I stuck around
for the first half of the set, and while I
feel bad admitting it, the most striking
aspect of the show was how fat frontman
Robert Smith has become. It was like
he had discovered that boys don’t cry,
they just eat cake. The fact that he also
seemed completely unwilling to engage
the crowd with anything resembling
stage banter didn’t help distract me from
his apparent thyroid problem.

Day 3: The Hives threaten to
blow up the Gorge, The Mars
Volta suck, and the Flaming

Lips arrive via UFO.

Despite my best efforts, I still got
wrapped up in some more early morning
boozing, but I did make it down to the
Gorge in time for the Hives. The band
never fails to put on a clinic about what
live music should be about, and when
I maneuvered myself close to the front

 

June 2, 2008

 

of the stage, frontman Pelle Almqvist
could be heard apologizing to the crowd
that the band would only be able to give
about 70 percent on this particular day,
because if they gave the full 100 percent,
then the power of their rock n’ roll would
cause the Gorge to collapse in on itself,
thus killing everyone at the festival.
In a festival filled with predominantly
antisocial indie bands, the Hives were
an energetic standout (at one point
Almgqvist quipped that he was “the
fuckin’ Energizer bunny”). Almqvist and
guitarist Nicholaus Arson spent a fair
amount of the set mixing with the crowd,
and the crowd was left wanting more by
the time they closed with “Return the
Favor” from the recent Black & White
Album.

Built to Spill were up next, and
while I didn’t really pay a lot of attention
to the Idaho quartet, the debt that Ben
Gibbard owes to BTS frontman Doug
Martsch was immediately apparent.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 15

Battles