Alternatives to an indie-drenched summer-festival season emerge
From dance tents to dance music, this summer's finally starting to look a little brighter.
While the stinging pain of not being able to see Christina Aguilera lick a dog bowl onstage during her recently cancelled tour may never go away, the rise of summer festivals may help salve those wounds. Today alone, two festival lineups have been announced, including the inaugural lineup for the North Coast Music Festival in early September.
North Coast is primed to offer a more inclusive bent on typically single-minded festivals in a Pitchfork Music Fest-style setup: For three days in Union Park over Labor Day weekend, indie-electronic acts like Boys Noize, Flying Lotus, and Phantogram will join Summerfest-approved bands like Disco Biscuits and Benny Benassi. Like at Pitchfork, hip-hop is underrepresented, but at least De La Soul and headliners Nas & Damian Marley help add some variety to the bill—as do The Crystal Method, a DJ set from Moby, and a headlining set by quintessential jam band Umphrey’s McGee. It’s also going to be a more affordable outing than most festivals, with single-day tickets running $35 and three-day passes at $65 (until June 13).
The other announcement out today is the full list of performers at the 13th annual Chicago Folk & Roots Festival out at Welles Park on July 11 and 12. At a $10 donation asking price, it’s an economical way to feel cultured and worldly, especially since everyone from Pitchfork 2008 players Occidental Brothers Dance Band International to Saharan nomadic super-group Etran Finatawa will be performing. There’s also an all-day dance tent, to help you perfect your awkward moves with “participatory lessons and workshops…[to] join in the collective groove.”
Less newsworthy, but still interesting, is the recent announcement of the upcoming and mysterious Neon Marshmallow Fest, running from Aug. 19 through Aug. 22 at the Viaduct Theatre. Similar to last year’s experimental/noise celebration Bitchfork, which famously ran up against its namesake Pitchfork, Neon Marshmallow will unleash a wave of below-the-radar experimental musicians performing some 90 sets. There’s not a ton of information out about it yet, but one of the main draws is UK’s Astral Social Club, a mostly solo project of Neil Campbell who helped sow the roots of post-punk in A Band and later played in drone ensemble Vibracathedral Orchestra—also, it’s ASC’s first U.S. appearance in a decade. Other highlights include Regression (Nate Young from Sub Pop noise-act Wolf Eyes), Unfact (David Wm Sims of The Jesus Lizard), lo-fi psychedelic folk artist Julian Lynch, and Brooklyn improv-noise sextet Excepter. And at $75, four days of headaches is a bargain.
