I only shot five bands on Day 3 of Bumbershoot 2016, probably my lowest single-day total since I started covering Bumbershoot for the SunBreak eons ago. Fortunately, all five performances were worth my time, so it was all about quality, not quantity.
The Great: It’d be very easy to go into jaded rock-writer mode and dismiss Grave and the Pink Slips just because their lead singer Grace “Grave” McKagan shares DNA with one of Seattle’s most beloved musical sons. But I’m not gonna go there, largely because, well, the band delivered big-time live. McKagan’s a screaming, pouting, always-magnetic frontperson with a vocal and physical presence somewhere between Courtney Love and Patti Smith. There’s an element of calculation to her persona, sure, but there’s also no doubt she was hurtling herself into it 110%, and with a solid band behind her firing off a can’t-miss (for me, at least) weld of The Kills, X-Ray Spex, and pre-Nirvana grunge, I’m sure as hell buying what McKagan and her band are selling.
It’d likewise be easy to go into jaded rock-writer mode in the context of Melanie Martinez, who very quickly rose to fame thanks to her showing on The Voice TV series. But Martinez has capitalized on that fame by molding sing-song mainstream pop into her own skewed image. Martinez uses preschool imagery and deceptively perky pop hooks to filter very adult themes of love, sex, and corrosive relationships—potent metaphoric semaphore for how little human interactions change after childhood. Onstage, Martinez was more interested in warped pop theatricality than fetishizing or sexualizing pre-adolescence: her ambition and vision are less about channeling Britney Spears circa “Oops, I Did It Again” and more about creating a sort of female, baby-doll-dress clad Ziggy Stardust-style alter ego. It’s a schtick that she played to the hilt, and her singular voice—oddly, kittenishly playful and off-the-rails spooky all at once—sounded great live.
Speaking of theatricality, Erik Blood’s great KEXP performance was thoroughly submerged in it. Blood and his sonic cohort Irene Barberic took to the stage in costumes and makeup (Blood in kabuki Alejandro Jodorowsky mode, Barberic in kabuki new wave mode), and for the first number or two a troupe of dancers in druidic robes traversed the front of the stage and the audience. Blood’s immersive symphonies to an electric God are genuinely impressive without any gilding, but the guy’s performance-art presentation kinda knocked my socks off. Barberic’s voice served as a gorgeous, organic contrast to the layers of sound.
Tame Impala’s variety of psychedelia has often trafficked in the introverted and the insular, so it was definitely a pleasant surprise to see how well the band’s sound filled the Memorial Stadium. Band leader/mainman Kevin Parker actually worked the crowd with some rock-star aplomb, leading the sizable crowd in handclaps and taking time to coax much swirly joy and atmosphere from his guitar. And hearing the psych-glam stomp of “Elephant” exploding live from stacks while a sweaty audience bounced in unison provided me with one of my favorite live-music moments all festival long.
The Really Good: I only caught the last song of So Pitted’s Fisher Green set, but it was as neck-snapping and ear-pulverizing as I coulda hoped for. I also caught a smattering of Colorado funk collective The Motet’s set, which sounded like lost theme songs for a bunch of 1970s TV cop shows (that’s a compliment).
The Rest: It doesn’t matter that Billy Idol’s voice sounded utterly shredded during his turn on the Fisher Green stage, or that he veered off-pitch a fair amount of the time. The guy cemented his rep as one helluva showman, delivering the fist-pumping and carefully-orchestrated sneers with a Rat Packer’s sense of showbiz flourish. Most surprisingly (and impressively), Idol’s set was the only one I saw all Bumbershoot that united the large millennial contingent, AARP-eligible old-school hipsters, and soccer moms and dads alike. Hearing this disparate bunch shout out the lyrics to “Dancing With Myself” damn near made me misty-eyed.
Crap! I Missed It: The closely-clustered music schedule forced me to miss an exceptionally great handful of local acts: Thunderpussy, The Flavr Blue, Shaprece, and Deep Sea Diver. My loss, I’m sure.
