Day two of the 15th annual Sasquatch music fest in George, Washington yielded strong indie acts from Seattle, irreverent comedy from Moshe Kasher, melodramatic space opera from M83 and plenty of middle-aged men screaming.
Check out more photos from day two here.
Early Saturday afternoon yielded at least two promising Seattle indie acts on the Bigfoot stage, the dream-pop group Hibou, and La Luz, a four-piece all-female group with a restless take on surf-rock. La Luz loaned a disposable camera to the crowd with a caveat: someone will crowd surf, take a selfie, and hand the camera over to someone whom the crowd will also pick up – then the cycle continues.
La Luz performing on Bigfoot stage during Sasquatch Music Fest on Saturday, May 28. (Emerson Malone/Emerald).
Oakland-based comedian Moshe Kasher did a 45-minute set in the Chupacabra tent. He reminded everyone that our grandparents were once as lewd and vulgar as the rest of us and applauded A$AP Rocky for his novel lines from the previous night’s set, such as “Shake that ass girl, make that coochie wet.”
“A$AP Rocky can’t melt steel beams, guys,” Kasher said. “Think about it.”
Kasher was followed by his wife Natasha Leggero, who paused to mention: “I’m not a very high-energy comedian, but I feel like I have to compete with that.” She then pointed to the Bigfoot stage, where Ty Segall’s set of apocalyptic desert rock had just started.
Also competing with Segall was Protomartyr at the adjacent Yeti stage. The band is composed of frontman Joe Casey and his bandmates, who all appear to be roughly ten years his junior. All Songs Considered’s co-host Robin Hilton once said Casey “looks like a math teacher who formed a band with three of his students.” There’s already a Tumblr devoted to music writers struggling to describe Casey’s stage presence (“he’s like an inverse Bono”).
Moshe Kasher at Sasquatch Music Fest’s El Chupacabra Tent on Saturday, May 28. (Emerson Malone/Emerald).
The post-punk group has a dry and bruising stage presence. Casey alternately bellowed into the microphone and kept his mouth plugged with a Bud Light.
Actor John C. Reilly made a cameo on the main stage to plug Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats before their set. He later introduced Major Lazer on the same stage.
Digable Planets took the main stage with early-90s island hip-hop cuts like “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” and “Pacifics (NY Is Red Hot),” and the crowd packed itself in soon thereafter for the histrionic space opera of M83. Metal scaffolding columns fastened with giant glow sticks were placed around the stage. The glacial aesthetic was broken when curly-headed singer Jordan Lawlor suggested “let’s have a party” before getting into the anthemic oh oh oh-ohs of “Reunion.”
If M83 really wanted to have a veneer of icy contempt for its fans, they could have taken the route of Preoccupations, who started 15 minutes after M83 at the fest’s smallest stage. In late April the band changed its handle after controversy over its previous name Viet Cong. This was Preoccupations’ first show of 2016 and thus the first time the group has played under the new name.
The industrial art-rock outfit was a late addition to the concert and was thus absent from the Sasquatch app’s schedule and lineup. Even if it were on the festival’s schedule or on the app, “Preoccupations” is a name that is instantly overlookable, especially when it’s sandwiched in a 9 p.m. Saturday slot between Tycho, Major Lazer and M83.
Preoccupations at the Yeti Stage. (Emerson Malone/Emerald).
Attended by a modest scattering of a few dozen devotees, Preoccupations’ set opened with the murky doom of “Continental Shelf” from the Viet Cong record. Frontman Matt Flegel didn’t need to come out and declare “let us have a party.” There was no banter, no real introduction. Bass feedback droned through the silence between the set. Guitarist Daniel Christiansen’s abrupt chords stomped on Flegel’s sporadic thanks to the crowd.
During one quiet moment, the introductory blips from “Midnight City” echoed to this shadowy corner of the festival grounds. And later silence overcame both band and audience when Flegel asked, “You guys know M83 is playing, right?”
“That’s the name on his driver’s license: M83,” he snickered, forever fixated on band monikers.
The crowd dissipated quickly. Someone asked Flegel for the setlist, which he folded into a paper airplane. He tossed it and it flew into the photo pit.
Vocalist/bassist Matt Flegel of Preoccupations folded the band’s setlist into a paper airplane and tossed it to the thin crowd. This Sasquatch performance marked the band’s first time playing as Preoccupations since changing from their prior moniker, Viet Cong. (Emerson Malone/Emerald).
