Once again we were up early, and we caught the first performance on the Woxy stage that morning by the local Denver band A Shoreline Dream. We’re all about diversity, and speaking of which, the fest could definitely have used more metal, but the nu-emo, kinda high school dramatic edge of A Shoreline Dream just didn’t connect. Long, dreary songs with a drop D bassline and super-downer words projected on a screen (like “fallout” or, I think, “salty”?) made for a less than stellar listening experience.

Back at the MadeLoud stage, we caught Jim McTurnan and his new backing band, the Kids who Killed the Man (or just the Kids for short). The band played a nice, spry set of up-tempo power rock tunes, which has been McTurnan’s specialty. Ripping riffs, pounding drums and shared vocals dominated the set, and it concluded with a slower, building number McTurnan jokingly described as “self-indulgent.” Really though, the set was anything but, and gave the early part of the day the pulse and energy it would need to continue late into the night.

Staying put, we caught Anni Rossi (interview forthcoming!) doing her thing on our stage. Rossi is kind of a soft spoken badass – she recorded her last album Rockwell with Steve Albini, is signed to the legendary 4AD, and was just on tour with Camera Obscura. So, you might expect the multi-instrumentalist to toot her own horn a bit, but Rossi lets the music do the talking. With a tremulous, higher register voice, Rossi was accompanied by a percussionist who played a minimal drum set without cymbals, and instead just snare, a tom, and bass drum. Though it’s difficult to make out lyrics to live music unless we’re talking about opera with subtitles, Rossi’s songs were filled with references to bees, migration, and even a nod to Denver in there somewhere. Her songs begged for closer listening, which will be our pleasure. Also, she’s really funny.

From there we parked at the main stage to catch part of Rahzel’s set. Rahzel, if you don’t already know, gained notoriety in the pre-YouTube days for his beatboxing, most specifically on the song “If Your Mother Only Knew,” during which he simultaneously does the beat and the melody. Yes, that’s his main thing. And yes, performing live he made as big a deal of it as you could possibly imagine, and even included some fake pantomiming in which his DJ “quits” so that he, Rahzel, had to do everything. Ah geez.

As excited as we were about Neon Indian, it turned out the Woxy stage was now disproportionately crowded, and a long line had formed outside the already-packed room on the premise that a few folks could get let in if attendees got bored and wandered out mid-set. So instead we hiked back up to Monotonix at the SoCo stage. Weirdly, the punk Tel Aviv band had decided to take it to the floor, and a swarm of attendees covered up the group from view. Weirder still, the stage itself was crowded with more than fifteen photographers all angling to get the perfect shot of this unconventional performance. As different as it may have been, it meant most of us couldn’t see what was going on. What’s the point of a festival performance if you’re just going to act like you’re playing a Thursday night gig at Rubber Gloves in Denton?

In the interviewing years since we’ve last heard from them, the Dandy Warhols have been doing just fine on their own, in-fights with sugar daddy/tormentor Capitol Records aside. In fact, their high-profile performance and huge, stage-length banner inscribed with their name and seal (including a pot leaf and VW bug) must mean that while they haven’t had a proper hit in years, they’re not starving. Live, the band is pretty solid, if not entirely fascinating to watch. It would’ve been nice to hear more of Zia McCabe’s vocals and keyboards, though that might have just been part of the psych-rock milieu. Either way, the set ranged from “Bohemian Like You” to “The Last High” and back to the late ‘90s with “Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth.” Oddly enough, the latter seemed all but unrecognized by the crowd – it’s almost as if the band could have another hit with that song if they re-released it to their new fans who were all of seven years old when it first came out. The only truly abysmal moment was a performance of the song "The Legend of the Last of the Outlaw Truckers AKA the Ballad Of Sheriff Shorty,” which is exactly as bad as it sounds.

Speaking of the generation gap, we sauntered up to the SoCo stage just in time to hear The Thermals pound through Sonic Youth’s “100%,” though the audience, again, seemed nonplussed. “That’s a song by Sonic Youth,” said lead singer Hutch Harris, and I think he and I felt very old just then. Next up on our stage was the French Horn Rebellion, a goofy dance duo fronted by brothers Robert and David Perlick-Molinari. In short order they had climbed on top of the speakers and hurled themselves into the crowd, all between silly in-band banter. David pretended to quit the group, and was hastened back only by Robert’s French horn solo. Songs weren’t so much songs as quick farces, like the funky “Up All Night.” Too dorky to be hip, the band fully embraced having a good time, with pretty enjoyable results.

A scheduling snafu resulted in Passion Pit and Phoenix swapping stages, or times, or something, so we warmed up as the rain began to drizzle down to the ukey Rachel Goodrich and her band. Joined by a sunglasses be-speckled rhythm section, Goodrich ran through light-hearted and skippy tunes while a girl in a dazzly dress in front of us made an unwitting partner dance with her to every number. I don’t know what sort of cocktail of X and alcohol she had consumed, but by the look on her face I think she should patent it. The festival’s unofficial theme song could have been Goodrich’s “Dope Song,” given the amount of pot smoke wafting in the air all weekend. She closed with the cute “Light Bulb," and had the audience clap along to the off-kilter chorus.

We journeyed up to the main stage to catch Phoenix. The band, led by the charismatic lead singer Thomas Mars, is no stranger to festivals, but it was still surprising that Phoenix's sound translated so well as a co-headlining act at a major festival. While ostensibly a rock band, so much of the band’s recorded output heavily resides in big electro hooks and not stadium guitar bombast. Still, the set featured mostly the latter, with an extra instrumentalist often jumping onto additional percussion to accompany the already-beefy drums. Kind of strange, really, but the Parisian group fit perfectly between high European fashion and delectable ear candy. Tasty without dumbing it down, the group cranked through favorites like “Too Young” and pushed through an extended version of new single “1901,” complete with Mars tossing himself into the crowd.

At this point our time at the festival had reached into the twelve-hour range, and crankiness and weariness were starting to take their toll. Chromeo was indistinct and bass-y from our distance, and sticking around for the Mars Volta was nixed. Someone may have even referred to the band as a “terrible emo jam band,” but that was just fatigue speaking. Until next year, with love.

Check out our photos from Monolith here!