Wed 15 Aug 2007

While some magazines will unleash multi-page spreads, overly wordy ruminations, and photos that really should have been blurred out, we’ll keep it simple and short. Andrew went to this year’s Lollapalooza and here’s what he had to say:

Lollapalooza 2007: The Highs and The Lows
by Andrew Winistorfer

The third year of Lollapalooza in Chicago was hotter than the surface of the sun for two of three days, but most of the music was hotter. Here’s a brief look at the highs and lows of the festival.

HIGHS:

Ghostland Observatory: Playing on the first day after a particularly uninspiring Fratellis set, this new ‘it’ band danced and screamed their way through their debut album Papparazzi Lightning, converting everyone who saw them into fans.

The Roots: This hip-hop band’s set on the second day was like a block party with 15,000 attendants. The band barely stopped playing, flying through their own hits and rap hits like “Rapper’s Delight” and “Apache.”

Interpol: Thankfully they skipped most of the duds off their new album (except “No I in Threesome,” which is just as bad live as it is on record) and played what amounts to a superb greatest hits set. While an unlikely choice opposite of Muse as a headliner, they pulled a large crowd, and put on an excellent show.

LOWS:

Tapes n Tapes: Last year’s greatly hyped blog band played a flaccid set on day two. Something about the band’s music makes it impossible to transfer live apparently. The singer’s voice was unintelligible and the band played like they were hoping to get off-stage as quickly as possible.

Cold War Kids: Perhaps the most disappointing concert of the festival, this band had one of the most attended afternoon sets on day two, and seemed to crumble under the pressure. They never got up any momentum, playing every slow song on their album first, before heading on to crowd favorite “Hang Me Up to Dry,” leaving most fans bored and disappointed, and casual listeners heading for cooler ground, far away from the band.

Amy Winehouse: Playing a widely attended set on day three, the queen of drunk English soul bored most of the audience with what she didn’t do: cuss at the audience, fall down drunk, or make an ass of herself. What was left was a middling set of faux-R&B that no one really cared about.