Best Fest Bets: Vans Warped Tour

Overbooked band lineups, baking in the sun, bottled water being rationed out as if we were living in some post-apocalyptic dystopia that’s been dried up of natural resources—why, oh why, despite all this, are summer festivals so popular? Four words: We bleed for music. Let The A.V. Club help you ease the bloodletting (and sort through all the crappy opening bands) with our festival picks. In this edition: The Vans Warped Tour, which takes over Invesco Field today, and features more bands than any one person can humanly stand in one day.

3OH!3
The last thing the world needs is another Beastie Boys, though it’d be selling Boulder’s 3OH!3 short to write it off as another group of white kids trying to co-opt rap. True, Sean Foreman and Nathaniel Motte are a couple of white kids who rap, but 3OH!3’s heavy, ugly, hilarious music owes as much to metalcore and electro as it does to thug sludge like Master P. The duo is up for a Best New Artist VMA this year—against the likes of Kid Cudi and Lady Gaga—and it’s (still) incredibly silly to think that that all it took to get our area code in the mainstream was a couple of college students with a sense of humor and a drum machine.

InnerPartySystem
Pennsylvania’s InnerPartySystem aims squarely for the over-produced, over-dramatized catharsis and choruses that play right into emo’s rather clumsy stereotypes, but wraps it up with extra syncopation, synths, and electronic beats. The four-piece may not be breaking much musical ground, but its live shows—a spectacle of colored lights and video projections—are worth, at least, a walk-by.

Less Than Jake
Less Than Jake’s breakthrough album, 1996’s Losing Streak, was well-received by fans of speedy, hyperactive ska-punk, thanks in large part to non-stop grassroots touring and a mid-'90s revitalization (and subsequent backlash) of the genre. The band has stayed atop the pack since, not venturing too far outside its poppy formula but penning catchy songs nonetheless. In 2006, In With The Out Crowd found the band still jogging on a musical treadmill, and dissatisfaction with its major-label backer’s demands for a radio-friendly sound led LTJ to return to its roots on last year’s self-released studio disc GNV FLA, which doubles as a love letter to the Florida ska scene. 

P.O.S.
With 2009’s Never Better, P.O.S. moves into position as possibly the best MC to come out of the Twin Cities (watch out, Slug), and a major force in the thriving Midwest hip-hop scene. His first two records, Ipecac Neat and Audition, brought together his love of rap with his other job as a guitarist and singer for punk outfit Building Better Bombs. Never Better—which features cameos and production help from his colleagues in the Doomtree collective—again combines punchy beats with murky distortion, and the result is his best work yet.

The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band
If your idea of “big” is two dudes and a lady with a guitar, a drum kit, and a washboard, you’ve already grasped the subtle intricacies of The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band. The raucous, bare-bones trio would be right at home on the Fat Possum roster circa 1999. The Reverend’s 2006 breakthrough, Big Damn Nation, produced by members of Squirrel Nut Zippers, is steeped in Delta blues and no-fi recklessness. After a slight detour into early-20th-century spirituals on 2007’s The Gospel Album, the band returned to its stomp-blues milieu with last year’s The Whole Fam Damnily.