Day Two of Bumbershoot 2016, climatically at least, couldn’t have been more perfect. Glittering blue skies invited warmth (but not too much) from Mr. Sun, the mildest of breezes cameoed just often enough to keep it from getting too toasty, and it didn’t start cooling appreciably until after the sun receded. You couldn’t have asked for a more impeccable summer afternoon to be lallygagging around the Seattle Center grounds. Thousands agreed, packing up the grounds more substantially than Friday.
I didn’t catch nearly the volume of music on Day Two that I did on Day One. That said, there was some choice stuff to be had from this corner.
The Great: British singer Desi Valentine was one of the few straight-up, old-school soul acts on hand for Bumbershoot 2016. He and his ineffably solid band delivered a warm sound—sort of retro, squared—that drew equally from sixties-vintage Motown and from Thatcher-era English neo-soul acts like Culture Club, The Style Council, and The Fine Young Cannibals. Not all of his material’s quite worthy of his limber voice just yet, but it all goes down smooth, and the guy’s got his expressive soul-man delivery down to a fine art.
The prohibitive layout of the Fisher Green stage made shooting Portland’s Radiation City exceptionally dodgy, but at least they sounded great. Lead singer Lizzie Ellison was forced to cover the vocals without the added harmonies of group member Patti King (who’s touring with The Shins at the moment), and she was little short of stellar, hitting expressive high notes that likely woulda put most of the more famous and bigger-selling artists on the fest lineup to shame.
Former local boy Reggie Watts has been maintaining a comedy career for so long that a lot of people have likely forgotten what a powerful, gifted singer and songwriter the guy is. His tight, enthralling set was a nice reminder of that fact. Last but sure as hell not least, I skipped what was surely an ace set by Run the Jewels to catch a band of underdogs in the form of Madrid quartet Hinds. It probably sounds pejorative to call any all-female band adorable, but damned if the Spanish quartet’s scrappy but sunny brand of guitar pop—and their wonderfully scrappy but sunny delivery of it—didn’t feel like it generated much of the glittering sunshine on hand.
The Really Good: New York hip hop band Flatbush ZOMBIES delivered a rousing set, with MCs Meechy Darko, Elliott, and Zombie Juice striding back and forth on the Memorial Stadium stage and growling out their rhymes with enough intensity to turn the words into percussion in their own right. And Explosions in the Sky’s variety of instrumental rock (indie-prog?) inspired much slow-mo head-bobbing and atmospheric immersion.
The Rest: My quixotic attempts to shoot Macklemore and Ryan Lewis came up snake-eyes due to an already over-packed photo pit, and I only heard one full song, but he sounded just fine, I reckon. The hour-plus I wasted on said quixotic quest also meant I saw only the last five minutes of Jagwar Ma’s Fisher Green performance. Based on the tasty rave-worthy Britpop grooves they were pumping out, it was my loss.
Crap! I Missed It: I missed four likely-great local sets at the KEXP stage. Pony Time’s garage-spastic ditties, the dreamy pop of Lemolo, Manatee Commune’s buzzed-about ambient electronic pop, and the skittery, Television-influenced rock of Dude York were all sorely missed.
