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North Coast Music Festival Sun Sep 06 2015

North Coast: Day Two In Review

North Coast Music Festival 2015 (photos by Rena Naltsas)

North Coast Music Festival's day two lineup was infused with stellar acts and standout performers. From D'Angelo and the Vanguard, to Chromeo, to The Roots, to Galactic with Macy Gray, a variety of musical legends entranced audiences with their unique sound in Union Park, amassing doting crowds of longtime fans. Julian Ramirez and Abigail Covington reviewed some of the best sets of the day, setting the bar quite high for the final day of the fest.

North Coast Music Festival 2015 (photos by Rena Naltsas)

The Gold Web

Another great group that I just lucked upon was The Gold Web, self described as Chicago's Art Glam monstrosity. The four-piece band definitely looked the part with their intensely gaudy attire. You know you're in for a treat when the lead singer is dressed in black feathers and another member is described as a human disco ball. As much as their costumes attracted us, it's their music that got me to stick around. Within moments of listening to them, I was completely hooked.

Plenty of bands come to mind when you see The Gold Web, what with the stage presence of Of Montreal and flashes of sounds comparable to MGMT, but The Gold Web set themselves apart by managing to find some originality to their glam style. Their songs have a certain affinity to them, fitting right in place with the weirdest of glam rockers.

The group hit their stride towards the end of the set, introducing the song "Coming" as a song about, you guessed it, coming. Between their garish movements and the chants of "Goldilocks!" for the drummer, there isn't much not to like about these guys. They finished their set with the fantastic "Friends" and the bordering on anthemic "Drones" that had a few festivalgoers shouting its chorus well after the show. Hopefully these perfect weirdos are destined for bigger crowds.
-Julian Ramirez

Galactic and Macy Gray

It shouldn't be a surprise that listening to Galactic live is a breathtaking experience. Add Erica Falls and Macy Gray to the mix, and the experience goes out of this world. Could I have stopped myself from making that pun? Sure, but I'm still up in the stars after their performance. (Sorry, I'll stop.)

Galactic started out with the tremendous instrumentation that really blew me away. I immediately thought, this is what music should be, joyous and spontaneous. They followed that up by introducing Erica Falls, whose voice just boasts a gentle jazzy poise. It's a contrast to the raspy, but equally wonderful, voice of Macy Gray, who strutted to the stage in all her lovable glory. Between "Do Something" and "Relating to a Psychopath", Gray expounded on the best things about Chicago through queries to Google. She said that Google called the Chicago men buff, and touted the women above all others. "Google says: in Chicago lives the women with the greatest vaginas in the world!" The whole interlude was exactly Macy Gray.

Gray returned after a costume change, with "Sex-o-matic Venus Freak" and a few from her new album with Galactic. She and Falls were also surprised with a birthday cake before ending their set with the most obvious missing piece of a Macy Gray show, "I Try." Hearing the hit song with Galactic in charge of the instruments could have been the most joyous moment of the set, seeing their collaboration reach such a tremendous peak.
-Julian Ramirez

North Coast Music Festival 2015 (photos by Rena Naltsas)

Chromeo

You know a Chromeo show is about to start when the stagehands rip off the cloth and reveal two pairs of legs holding up parts of Dave 1 and P-Thugg's setups. The crowd erupted just as the sounds of a storm brewing rumbled from the speakers. They quickly got cut off as Chromeo's "intro" echoed their name through the park before they dove into "Night by Night" and then the amazing "Hot Mess." In no time, everyone was letting themselves go to the music.

Dave 1's antics on stage are full of over the top bravado, raising his shiny chrome guitar high over his head before having it become as phallic of a symbol as can be. P-Thugg on the other hand is a little more calm and centered, relying more on hyping the crowd through his talk-box/vocoder. Still, every once in a while he took his bass guitar and joined Dave 1 at the front of the stage for some all-out rock star poses.

For "Over Your Shoulder", Dave 1 asked the security not to overreact, they were going to ask the crowd for a favor and they were going to be civil. it was a surprisingly courteous way to go about getting as many girls on top of guys shoulders for the duration of the song. Slowly but surely, girls were rising to the occasion, often times asking complete strangers if they would mind lifting them up. It was a sight to see.
-Julian Ramirez

The majority of my North Coast day two experience was spent waiting in anticipation for D'Angelo. Though I enjoyed parts of Chromeo's set and got a kick out of their staging, which was replete with many pairs of freestanding legs in high heels and mirrored columns, I found the majority of the show unfocused. They did, however, do a killer rendering of White Women's "Lost on the Way Home" for which I was very grateful. After Chromeo, the majority of the attendees wandered over to watch The Roots, while I staked out ground for D'Angelo at the then emptied 312 Stage.
-Abigail Covington

The Roots

I had originally planned on leaving The Roots early in hopes of getting a prime spot for D'Angelo. There were a few things wrong with that plan, for instance, NCMF may be one of the easiest and most accessible festivals to try to get close to the stage at pretty much any time, and D'Angelo would have a late start. But the biggest snag to the whole "leave early plan" was The Roots themselves, a band that I adore, one that would surely put on a set to remember.

They started things out with the opening tracks off of Things Fall Apart. the Mo' Better Blues dialogue of "Act Won" and "Table of Contents (Parts 1 & 2)." From there ,The Roots hit every possible stop, essentially acting as a microcosm of the NCMF experience as they moved through every possible genre. The set felt like a medley of the band and their interests, never settling on any one. Hip hop led to jazzy freestyles, to Damon "Tuba Gooding Jr" Bryson letting loose before the dance party that Kool and the Gang's "Jungle Boogie" started.

Towards the middle, the band members took a small break, which allowed for Johnny Ellis to throw down an on the fly DJ set. Ellis mixed and mashed songs together at breakneck speed, working every piece of his equipment to its every extreme. Ellis ran his fingers across his setup gracefully, akin to that of an eloquent pianist at work before suddenly smashing his chin and elbow on the beat machine to roars from the crowd. He transitioned between moments of memorable glee like the "baby, baby, baby" exclamations from James Brown's "I Got The Feelin'" to a Super Mario 8-bit chiptune masterpiece.

The final half of their time was filled with even more callbacks to The Roots' interests and influences. You could hear dashes of De La Soul, more James Brown, Sugar Hill Gang's "Apache", and an elongated rendition of Guns and Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" that showcased "Captain" Kirk Douglas's guitar talents. He was freaking out on the guitar, completely letting everything burst out. After that riveting performance, The Roots started a rearranged version of "The Seed 2.0", which, despite the hefty change to its instrumentals, the crowd recognized immediately. The Roots finished off the set with "Black Thought" and ?uestlove playing off one other, harkening back to their beginnings and sending the crowd off completely satisfied.
-Julian Ramirez

North Coast Music Festival 2015 (photos by Rena Naltsas)

D'Angelo

Like The Roots who played before him, D'Angelo is known for his ability to improvise and jam, and this performance delivered on those capabilities right from the start with a 10 minute take of Black Messiah's opener, "Ain't That Easy." During the performance, D'Angelo allowed his drummer, the incomparable Chris Dave, to zigzag across his snares and hi-hats, which caused the whole song to shimmer and reverberate within itself. D'Angelo's band, The Vanguard, were as much a part of the show as D'Angelo, with his guitarist Isaiah Sharkey performing an outstanding snippet of "Spanish Joint" that then led into a sprawling and extended version of "Really Love."

D'Angelo left Sharkey in charge during the intro in order to facilitate a wardrobe change, but upon his return his flamenco guitar-styled solo drew to a close as D'Angelo approached the mic. With an unfaltering falsetto, he sang "When you call my name, when you love me gently," and as he the sang his way through the ode to the softer side of love, his backup singers improvised on top of some laid-back choreography. Throughout the track, Kendra Foster exchanged smirks and glances with D'Angelo and their chemistry was palpable. As was the chemistry between D'Angelo and his Jimmy Jam lookalike guitarist, Jesse Johnson. The two came together for a jam on an impressive unfurling of "The Charade." This performance had everyone in the band strutting their hardest and to tremendous effect. D'Angelo created participants out of the attendees as everyone in their crowd raised their right fist and took in the gospel that D'Angelo was spreading.

If there can be any complaint about the D'Angelo show, it's that the concert was simply too short. Another 15 minutes would've allowed room for an awesome version of "Untitled (How Does It Feel)", but North Coast is strict with its cutoff. Everybody who was in attendance, many of whom had come to North Coast just to see D'Angelo, were left wanting more, which is exactly why D'Angelo should come back to Chitown, and soon.
-Abigail Covington

North Coast Music Festival 2015 (photos by Rena Naltsas)

My notes for D'Angelo and The Vanguard look like they were written by someone too excited, too giddy to ever compose a legible sentence. I think I scrawled out "D'Angelo/Vanguard/ Black Messiah/It's Happening" all in capital letters that ignored the constraints of the lines on
the page.

The whole evening became a beautifully hazy vision as soon as D'Angelo stepped out, joining The Vanguard on stage. Dressed in his tattered overcoat and topped with an immaculate white wide-brimmed hat, a halo for the modern deity, D'Angelo confidently took control of the NCMF crowd. His stage presence is wrought with the mystery of his decade and a half absence that makes him more majestic than he normally would be. The extended performance "Ain't That Easy" was the perfect way to start the set, letting everyone know that this level of mastery would be the dominating theme of the performance.

His performance last just short of an hour and was filled with some of the most boisterous and downright funky sounds of the year. Old favorites "Brown Sugar" and "Spanish Joint" sounded new and fresher than they had any right to while Black Messiah tracks like "The Charade" became the ones that felt strongest and most powerful. D'Angelo's voice was just on fire the whole night, going from guttural and frightening moans to high pitched screeches that added pointed exclamations to perfect songs. He was a man on a mission, between his magnificent guitar and keys, giving me and NCMF a show many years in the making.
-Julian Ramirez