Ranking the shows I attended for the last five years into just twenty-give top concerts was difficult, and it was especially so for the middle of the list. Who’s in the top fifteen? Let’s find out.
#15: Moon Duo – Levitation Austin / Feels So Good Records – October 30, 2022
Moon Duo closed the 2022 Levitation Music Festival with one of their special “light ship” shows. They play inside a projection screen box with the psychedelic light show being projected from behind them onto the screens. They end up silhouetted and the visuals emerge from their music rather than being cast onto it. No joke, I went into a trance at one point during this show and it was a perfect ending to a great festival.
#14: Castle Rat – September 26, 2025 – Levitation Austin – Austin, TX
Castle Rat set a massively high bar to begin the 2025 Levitation Music Festival, combining stoner metal with a live-action Dungeons & Dragons campaign that included a battle with a death goddess, a druid playing drums, and all of us helping protect a book containing wayward souls. Their merch line after this show lasted twenty minutes per person for hours.
#13: Osees – Old National Centre – Indianapolis – October 22, 2025
This list would be incomplete without at least one Osees show, as they are perhaps the best touring rock band in the country. This show was in a small performance space no bigger than a wedding reception hall and had minimal air conditioning. I knew it was going to be loud and sweaty as soon as I walked into the place, and I was proven right. The mosh pit was surrounded by four stone pillars, one on each corner, and somehow I avoided being slammed into one of them. Osees blasted the place, leaving a lot of people who’d never seen them before in shock.
Speaking of blasting a place, Slift wrapped up their first U.S. tour at the 2022 Levitation Music Festival and left nothing in the tank. I don’t know how the stage didn’t collapse during their set, nor how any of us weren’t launched into orbit. Everyone knew we’d just seen, heard, and felt something transformative.
#11: Weird Al Yankovic – Lerner Theatre / Elkhart – July 26, 2022
This tour showcased Weird Al’s “non-parody” songs because he wanted to highlight his amazing band. It’s easy to forget how good they are. They can play multiple genres, sometimes in the same song, with ease. This was part-comedy show (with the great Emo Phillips opening), part-musical showcase. They didn’t play a single parody until the encore, and those were in a medley, and it was still one of the best shows I saw in all of 2022.
The top ten is looming! Come back tomorrow to see who made the list!
If you weren’t aware, The Black Angels are currently on tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut album, Passover. They’re playing the whole album front to back and a second set of favorites and new material. Their recent return to Chicago’s Thalia Hall was a sold-out affair with spooky psych-rockers L.A. Witch opening for them.
I think this kind of lighting follows L.A. Witch wherever they go.
L.A. Witch played a smoky, spooky set of psych-rock mixed with California garage rock and a bit of doom metal. Their drummer, Ellie English, is sharp and puts down heavy krautrock rhythms at times. They also have a cool wall-of-sound vibe to them that washes over you and can induce a hypnotic state.
Same thing with The Black Angels, really.
Passover launched the careers of the Austin, Texas psych-heavyweights, and the album is still powerful in its message of the insanity of war…which is, unfortunately, also still relevant twenty years later with even just the first two tracks: “Young Men Dead” and “The First Vietnam War.”
“Black Grease” has always been a favorite of mine, so it’s a treat to hear it live, and “Manipulation” has grown into one of their best live pieces as Christian Bland and Alex Maas trade lead vocals throughout it and everyone gets trippy with it. After seeing Stephanie Bailey pound her kit during the back-to-back endurance contests of “Empire” and “Better Off Alone,” my guess is that she carb-loads like a triathlete before each show. By the way, she came out on stage on crutches and still rocked the entire set.
After a brief break, they came back with the ever-cool “Bad Vibrations” and then multiple new tracks: “Push It” (not a Salt & Pepa cover), “Daisies,” and “Turkish” among them. Their new album is going to be a stunner if these are any indication of its sound.
The bad vibrations are actually pretty good.
Don’t skip this tour. The new edge to the Passover songs is heavy and sometimes menacing, and the new songs will amaze you.
The numbers get smaller, the concerts get bigger. Here are more of the best shows I attended in the last five years.
#20: Frankie and the Witch Fingers – The Brass Rail – October 08, 2021
FATW always brings the fire, and the small stage in Ft. Wayne, Indiana (a little over an hour drive from my house) could barely contain it. They were still somewhat unknown back then and are rocking major festivals and releasing double-albums by now.
#19: Deap Vally – Thalia Hall – Chicago – February 10, 2024
How could I not see Deap Vally’s final tour, let alone at one of my favorite venues? The duo unleashed a roaring set that left everyone wanting and hoping for more at some future date. Will it happen? No one but Deap Vally knows, but they left us with a great gift if that was the final curtain.
#18: LCD Soundsystem – Aragon Ballroom – Chicago – May 26, 2024
This wasn’t the first time I’d seen LCD Soundsystem, but it was the first time I’d seen them with my fiancé, who’d become a fan of them early in our dating life. Seeing them after a few years of absence and seeing her joyful reaction to their fun, danc beat-filled show was a lovely moment.
#17: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Sleeping Village – Chicago – March 28, 2023
Holy crap. This was the first time Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs played in Chicago and I almost didn’t go to this show. I didn’t decide until a day before it, as I felt like I needed to be there. I’m glad I listened to my gut because this was such a strong set that I was surprised the back wall was still standing by the end. They were a bit surprised by how many showed up to see them and I became a big fan that night.
#16: The Damned – Concord Music Hall, Chicago, IL, June 02, 2024
Here’s another band I wasn’t sure I’d get to see live…enough though I’d seen them before this show. Confused? That’s because The Damned reunited their 1980s lineup that included Paul Gray and Rat Scabies for this tour. This lineup, with Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible, was the lineup of The Damned I’d heard when I discovered them back in high school. They put on a great set that had me smiling and moshing the entire time, and Rat Scabies’ heartfelt reaction to the crowd cheering for him was lovely.
We’re almost halfway through the list? Who lies ahead? Come back tomorrow!
Just like my list of the top 25 albums I reviewed over the last five years, I decided to create a list of the top 25 concerts I attended in the same time. It was a harder list to make, although the top five were fairly easy to choose. Who put on the best shows? Let’s find out.
#25: The The – Salt Shed, Chicago, IL, October 25, 2024
There are many bands on this list that I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see live. The The is one of them. This show included two sets. The first had them playing their newest album, Ensoulment, in its entirety. The second was a “time traveler” set that included all older material, starting with “Infected” and ending with “This Is the Day.”
This was Yin-Yin’s first show ever in the United States, and they won over the entire crowd at Levitation last year. Their blend of funk, Euro-disco, and psych-rock was an instant hit. Everyone on and off the stage had a great time.
#23: Jon Spencer – Stockroom East, South Bend, IN, July 11, 2024
Jon Spencer and his backing band featuring two members of The Bobby Lees played about forty minutes from my house in a tiny venue and in front of maybe fifty people. They completely shredded the place, hitting it as hard as they would a big theatre and leaving many who’d never seen his live show slack-jawed by the end of it.
#22: A Place to Bury Strangers – Empty Bottle – Chicago – May 30, 2022
Any APTBS show is an experience, and this one in my favorite Chicago dive bar was especially wild. They were feeding off the crowd’s energy and crushing everyone and everything in sight. A friend of mine, a bassist for a Chicago death metal band (Aphixiator), was impressed by the power they generated. I think the walls shook for hours afterwards.
#21: Gang of Four – Far Out Lounge – Levitation Austin, November 01, 2024
Here’s another band I wasn’t sure I’d ever see live. Gang of Four showed that they were still powerful, relevant, and sharp. Seeing so many other GOF fans going bonkers with me was a highlight of the Levitation Music Festival that year.
Whew. It’s already heavy and loud. Who makes the top twenty? Come back tomorrow to find out!
L-R: Yours truly, Julian Ruiz, Joey Cook, Ryan Fuson
Three of the psych-rocker lads from Holy Wave, Julian Ruiz (drums), Joey Cook (guitar), and Kyle Hager (keyboards, guitars, vocals) were kind enough to sit down with me outside the Far Out Lounge at this year’s Austin Psych Fest not long after their as-usual fine set Friday night. We talked about their latest album, Five of Cups, working with Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, horror movies, ramen, and lyrics changing on the fly.
7th Level Music: Good set as always. Every time I’ve seen you guys, it just kills. The Studio 22 and B-Sides album just came out, which is great. Thanks for putting that out there. What are you working on now?
Julian Ruiz: That was about fifty percent new songs [during our set].
Joey Cook: We’ve got a new record coming out July 10th (i’mDADA).
Kyle Hager: Did you say you DJ at Notre Dame?
7LM: Yeah, I’ve been DJing there for twenty-plus years.
JC: I think that might have been the first we heard of us [being played] on college radio. [Would that have bee] when Relax came out (2014)?
7LM: Yes, since Relax.
JC: Yeah, we got an e-mail saying, “You guys are on this radio station,” and we were like, “What? There’s somebody at a college radio station playing us?”
7LM: Speaking of Relax, I’m a horror movie geek, so whose idea was it to put Nosferatu on the cover?
JR: That’s the one guy who’s not here (lead singer Ryan Fuson).
JC: Me and Andy (Julian) came up with the album title.
KH: That (image) was the counter to “relax,” I guess.
7LM: Was there any word about Frankie Goes to Hollywood jokes?
JC: That what it came from. We were playing a show at (downtown Austin venue) Cheer Up Charlies and I would see that [Frankie Goes to Hollywood] shirt that would just say “Relax” on it.
JR: I love those shirts.
JC: I thought, “We should call the album Relax.”
KH: It’s a good fuckin’ message though.
7LM: It is. You know, I was going to bring that up. Jumping ahead, the messages on Five of Cups are even more relevant now…Trying to stay positive in this environment.
KH: Yeah, it’s…it’s been a decade so far.
7LM: That’s a good way to put it…It’s been a decade for sure.
KH: We’re probably closer to what people experienced in the Forties or Sixties, at least in my lifetime.
JC: We thought Interloper was the sad state of affairs record, and we had no idea what was coming.
KH: We didn’t know how sad it was going to get. We recorded it in 2019 and put it out in July 2020. It was right after the pandemic, we released a new record and were like, “Fuck…”
JC: And we had momentum. We were touring a shit-ton, and we were just on our game and then it was like, “Okay…”
7LM: Was working with Lorelle Meets the Obsolete [on Five of Cups] something you’d tried to do for a while and it finally worked out?
JC: Yeah, we meant to record at their place in Ensenada (Mexico) in 2021 and I was working here at a food truck and I broke my finger and had to have surgery on it. We had all planned this trip to go record there and I had to not go because I had to have the surgery, but we finally made it out there last year and did a record with them.
KH: The new record has them on several tracks. Lorena (Quintanilla) sings one of the songs on it again (as she does on Five of Cups’ “The Darkest Timeline”).
7LM: Are there any other bands you’re hoping to work with?
JC: The guy who produced the new record is Joo Joo Ashworth. He played in a band called Froth.
JR: He produced and engineered the whole thing.
JC: We’ve been friends with him for a long time and always wanted to collaborate with him. We’ve always loved Froth and everything he touches. He was, even more than Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, more of a collaborator on the record. The tone of it, and stuff like that.
JR: It was a culmination of a plan we’d been trying to do for so long.
JC: It was such a bummer when I broke my finger. My doctor said, “You’re never playing guitar again.” He did a great job, though. I barely play now.
7LM: Are you doing any more touring soon?
JC: Yeah, this fall we’ll be doing tours. East coast, Europe, then west coast in the fall.
JR: We’ll be in Chicago [at the Empty Bottle] August 13th.
7LM: This is something I ask every band I interview: Do you have any favorite misheard versions of your song lyrics?
JC: We make our own versions.
KH: Ryan also changes the lyrics.
JC: He doesn’t remember his lyrics.
JR: Ryan always keeps everyone on their toes.
JC: We create alternate versions every single night.
KH: I don’t even remember what the chorus of “Western Playland” (from Freaks of Nuture) is, but I know that Ryan sings the way the Brazilian guys sing it. When we were in São Paulo, he was like, “Oh, that’s better.” He just sings what they came up with.
7LM: I asked Oliver Ackermann of A Place to Bury Strangers that, and he told me he loves when that happens because it means the song takes on a whole new meaning for each listener.
JR: Yeah, for sure, and I’m glad they’re listening to the lyrics.
7LM: Is there a way you choose who sings what? Kyle, is there a time when Ryan says, “You know what, you should sing this.” or vice-versa?
KH: Me and Ryan bring ideas to the table, but also, especially when Julian writes a song sometimes he already has a vocal idea and he sings it, but a lot of times either me or Ryan will gravitate towards singing.
JR: They’re the main singers, so when we have ideas we go to them.
KH: If one of us says, “Hey, I’ve got a vocal idea for this,” then we’ll start running with it.
JC: We would rather them sing.
KH: It happens pretty organically. It’s not like, “I’m singin’ this one!” It’s like, “I’ve got a cool idea. What do you guys think?”
JC: What instrument you play on the song is determined by who shows up first. Everyone wants to play the bass line first.
JR: I think Ryan really wants to be the drummer.
KH: We don’t switch [instruments] as much on stage much anymore. Half of the stuff that I’m playing, even from the old stuff, but especially from the new stuff, that’s not what I wrote on the song. The guitar parts on the new songs, its half stuff I wrote on guitar, half stuff somebody else wrote on guitar, plus what somebody else wrote on keyboard a little bit.
JC: Sometimes you have to hear your part being played by something or someone else. We have backing tracks with three of us playing guitar on the same song, and none of the keyboards get to be played, so you think, “Oh, there’s my keyboard part.”
7LM: You guys have so many psychedelic influences, but are there other outside ones? There are some songs where I think, “That’s almost a metal riff.” or there was some stuff you were putting down, Julian, that made me think, “That’s almost like krautrock.”
JR: Oh yeah.
JC: I think we’re all super into that krautrock stuff.
KH: Growing up in El Paso, everything was heavy music. That was the scene we all came up in. We all started off playing in hardcore and hardcore-adjacent bands.
[At this point, Alex Maas of The Black Angels stopped by to say hello, and, “I wasn’t able to see your set, but I heard several people said they laid down and closed their eyes, and just melted into the ground.” He also described Holy Wave’s sound as “an enchanted scroll” to his son.]
JR: It (“holy wave”) is a spell…
JC: There is a card in Digimon called “Holy Wave.”
7LM: Now I have to ask, are you guys gamers?
JC: Me and my wife play Mario Party a lot. We play FIFA a lot.
KH: Legend of Zelda is the only thing I really game hard with.
7LM: I run a D&D games almost every week with some buddies of mine. I once wrote a whole campaign based on The Sword’s Age of Winters album.
KH: Oh, that’s cool.
JC: The guitarist from The Sword, Kyle (Shutt), is a good friend of mine. He’s a coworker of mine. He’s a bad ass dude.
JR: A legend. Ryan’s super into board games.
KH: The guy who’s going on tour with us, Dylan, is the guy to talk to about D&D.
JC: He was having D&D parties during the pandemic.
7LM: I always like to ask this: I once heard an interview with Ray Charles in which he said he sometimes got bummed out because people only wanted to talk with him about music. So, is there stuff outside of music you guys are really interested in or are fascinated with?
JC: Food. In the van, it’s like a constant list of grocery items and food stylings.
KH: Geopolitical hypotheses.
JR: Kyle is like a history master. Everywhere we go, he tells us what’s going on.
7LM: Any particular part of history?
KH: I majored in anthropology and minored in history, so I wanted to be able to put things into a cultural perspective to help everybody respect the meaning of a place. Like, was it a river that led people to live here? Was it a railroad that ran through here? Why does this city exist? Why are there enough people here that some of them would come to a Holy Wave show? I like know that when I go to a place.
JC: Everyone kind of works in TV and film. We all do art department stuff.
KH: If anybody out there needs something…
JC: Holy Wave Art Department! We almost titled the next record Art Department.
JR: When we stay [with friends] in Phoenix, there’s usually a horror movie going on in the background. [Last time], it was Terrifier. Insane, dude. I’m kind of a scaredy cat, but that one was kind of light-hearted in a way.
KH: That one’s weird. It’s weird to think about what the crew was doing while they were filming. That’s what creepy to me.
JR: Yeah, someone’s just eating a slice of pizza. It’s like, “Oh God, lunch was supposed to me thirty minutes ago and he’s still going…”
JC: Last year, we all worked on an indie movie (Two Sleepy People), and I was the art director, and Justin was, too. Ryan was the production designer. We went and saw the movie in the theatre and we were putting all this stuff in there, so we were saying, “There’s Andy’s couch!”, and the main character, he’s looking in the fridge, and he closes the fridge, and there’s a picture of Kyle smoking a cigarette. You can Easter egg yourself into some shit.
7LM: The first or second Psych Fest I ever came to, my late wife and I ate at his ramen place where I was told some of you guys used to work.
JC: (the long-since closed) Daruma?
7LM: Yes! I miss that place. Our waiter asked us who we were excited to see and we told him, “Holy Wave.” He said, “Oh, man! A couple of those guys work here. They probably made that broth you’re eating.”
JR: I worked there for, like, seven years.
JC: Yeah, he was in the kitchen, and Eric, our bass player worked there.
KH: Joey kind of worked there.
JC: Yeah, I worked for the company. At one point, we all worked at a ramen shop. What’s crazy is that our new bass player who’s filling in for Eric after this show, he also worked there. He was a server there. He was our bass player before Eric.
7LM: So, where should we get ramen now?
JR: There’s a place right there (pointing across the street), Tatsu-ya.
KH: That’s where Ryan works.
JC: If you want that Daruma ramen, they have it at Komei. That’s more of a sushi spot.
7LM: When we came back and saw Daruma was closed, we were like, “Nooo!”
JR: It’s so good.
JC: Yeah, it’s the best one.
Holy Wave melting people into the ground at Austin Psych Fest 2026.
Take psych-rock / ye-ye giants The Limiñanas and combine them with DJ / producer Laurent Garnier and what do you get? De Pelicula – a super-groovy, super-trippy album that tells the tale of two lovers in a film soundtrack format. The album’s title even means something akin to “like something out of a film.”
“Saul” is a mysterious track about a man who loves film and music but isn’t happy with life until he meets a young woman and decides to leave everything behind to follow her. Saul (“A small town guy.”) and this woman, Juliette (A “beautiful and gentle” prostitute), are prominent figures throughout the record. “Je rentrais par le bois…BB” (“I was returning / coming home through the woods…BB”) is a slightly frightening psych-drone track with Garnier’s synths creating a weird landscape and Marie Limiñana‘s beats creating a slightly paranoid sense.
“Juliette dans la caravanne” (“Juliette in the trailer.”) has Saul meeting Juliette in her 1960s trailer for a rendez-vous that changes his world and unsettles him. “Que calor” brings in Spanish lyrics instead of the French you’ve heard so far. Lionel Limiñana uses a mellotron and organ to neat effect here and the entrance of his fuzzy guitar turns your head into a strong wind.
“Promenade oblique” is another solid instrumental track with a groovy bass line from Lionel. “Te tournes en boucle” (“You’re turning / going in circles.”) is a twisting, looping track that details Saul feeling lost until Juliette shows up to pull him back into a clearer headspace. “Steeplechase” races along with some of Marie’s snappiest drumming and Garnier’s spy movie car chase scene-like synth pulses.
“Juliette” is the tragic backstory of the female half of our lovers in this tale, told through haunting synths and raging guitar. Juliette, born to a single drug-addicted mother, drifts into drugs and eventually kills a pastor who takes advantage of her…only for her to end up a party girl on drugs and having sex for money. “Ne gâche pas l’aventure humaine” (“Don’t spoil / waste the human adventure.) repeats the lyric of “Je t’aime.” (“I love you.”) again and again as siren-like synths give us a warning of what’s ahead for our star-crossed lovers.
“Au début, c’était le début” (“At first, it was the beginning.”) has Garnier taking lead vocals that sound like he’s mourning for lost times, reflecting Saul’s wish for something better for he and Juliette. He doesn’t get those better times, however, because at the end of the album, on “Saul s’est fait planter,” (“Sault got stood up.”), Juliette leaves him. She gets on a train and never returns. That’s French cinema for you.
It’s a cool record telling a cool story with cool grooves. You won’t regret taking this trip.
Here we are. The top five albums I reviewed in the last five years. I revised this list of all twenty-five records several times. It wasn’t easy to get here, but here we go.
#5: The Black Angels – Wilderness of Mirrors (2022)
This was a great return for my favorite band. The Black Angels came back in 2022 with anger about the past and hope for the future. It was a psychedelic, heavy reflection on the current times, what came before, and what was looming.
#4: Shame – Drunk Tank Pink (2021)
The album’s name refers to a color that’s often painted in jail cells to calm rowdy people. This post-punk album blends rowdy rage with punk riffs and cutting lyrics about how bonkers the world was back then…and still is.
#3: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Land of Sleeper (2023)
Good heavens, this thing is massive. Pigsx7 unleashed an album that was designed to shake us out of our doldrums and also explore the weird world of dreams and how they merge with reality. It rocketed into my “best of” list for 2023 upon my first listen, and their tour for this was solid.
#2: A Place to Bury Strangers – Synthesizer (2024)
Speaking of albums that landed in my “best of” lists for a particular year and then never moved out of it, how could I not include an album by APTBS that, no joke, you can turn into an actual synthesizer. The album cover is a circuit board. You can create music with this thing. Plus, the whole album shreds. It’s a stunning work that I think only they could imagine and then execute so well.
#1: Matthew Halsall – An Ever Changing View (2023)
I almost didn’t hear this album or discover Halsall’s work. It got buried in a big stack of unread e-mails and press releases and I didn’t open the file until late fall of 2023, not long before I was about to make my “Best of 2023” list. Lo and behold, it was the most beautiful album I’d heard all year. “Ambient jazz” doesn’t describe it well enough. It’s an album that instantly changes the atmosphere around you for the better.
There you have it. Up next, my top twenty-five concerts of the last five years…which was more difficult to determine than this list.
We’ve reach the top ten albums I reviewed in the last five years. It gets more difficult to make these lists as the numbers grow smaller, but here goes.
#10: Yard Act – The Overload (2022)
These post-punkers seemed to come out of nowhere and hit us with multiple sharp singles from their debut. The whole album was witty, biting, and wicked.
#9: King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard – PostDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation (2023)
Part-thrash metal, part-environmental activism record, all great. The title and cover image alone let you know you’re in for a wild time, and King Gizz pull no punches on it.
#8: DITZ – Never Exhale(2025)
A whole post-punk album about tension – a topic that post-punk does very well, as do these Brits. The cover image conveys the sense of the record and, like the music, puts you on edge and keeps you there.
#7: Aaron Frazer – Introducing… (2021)
Stepping out from his main gig with Durand Jones and The Indications, Frazer dropped one of the best soul records of recent memory and probably got a thousand date offers just from the first couple tracks.
#6: Gum / Kenny Ambrose-Smith – Ill Times (2024)
This dynamic Australian duo created a cool, electro / dance-rock record that tackled grief and uncertainty. It made you want another one from them right away. I still do.
Who made the top five? Come back tomorrow. It was a tough call, but I made it.
Here we are at the top 20 albums I reviewed over the last five years. Read on to see who made the list!
#20: BODEGA – Broken Equipment(2022)
Sharp, witty post-punk that the world needed then and still needs now. Songs like “Doers” both poke fun at and slap around over-achievers and the work grind, while “All Past Lovers” is a heartfelt love song.
#19: Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg(2021)
Speaking of good post-punk, Dry Cleaning’s first full-length album was a great dose of it. Weird guitar, heavy bass, funky drumming, and odd spoken lyrics? I’m all in.
#18: TV Priest – Uppers(2021)
More damn good heavy post-punk here from these Londoners. The whole album is sweaty, gritty, and growling.
#17: Bonnie Trash – Mourning You(2025)
Holy cow. This record is heavy in both tone and emotion. It’s an album about grief and how it can crush you if you’re not careful. There is beauty here. It’s not just gloom. It’s a stunner that captures all of the emotions you feel after a heavy loss.
#16: Meatbodies – Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom(2024)
These guys were my favorite discovery of 2024. It’s groovy, heavy, and trippy psych-rock that we need more of in this day and age.
Come back tomorrow to see who’s in the top fifteen!
The final day of the 2026 Austin Psych Fest was the most humid of the three, and easily the most soulful. The festival bumped up all the sets by an hour, presumably to avoid the thunderstorms predicted to roll in around 10pm that night just as the final set was about to end.
As a result, I wasn’t able to get in a disco nap before the festival and trotted my slightly sunburned body to the Far Out Lounge just in time to catch Night Beats play a solid set of psychedelic, fuzzy soul rock. It had been a few years since I’d seen them, and they haven’t lost a step. They still deliver the goods.
Night Beats rocking day beats.
Up next were the funky Dumbo Gets Mad, who had everyone happily dancing in the hot sun without a care. Finding shade is a skill at this festival. You have to claim spots early or rely on the charity of others to squeeze you into a shady space. The occasional breeze elicited happy sighs from the crowds, and it kept hitting at good times during DGM’s set to make dancing all the easier.
No anger here, just fun vibes.
A big crowd had assembled for La Lom, who hit the first note exactly at the start of their set time. The Los Angeles trio played a fun set of instrumental cumbia, rockabilly, and border rock. Everyone was smiling during this set. Couples were dancing and making out. People were cheering their ancestry as La Lom announced the origin of several tracks (“We’re going to play a song from Columbia!”, “This is an old one from Mexico!”).
La Lom shaking hips everywhere.
Trish Toledo was the next artist on the bill, bringing her Latina soul siren vocals to the second stage with her killer backing band. She started with her version of Diana Ross’ “Bad Girls” and proceeded to win and break hearts from there. Everyone was spellbound by the end.
Trish Toledo wrapping everyone around her fingers.
The night, and the festival, ended with the big sounds of Thee Sacred Souls. Much like La Lom and Ms. Toledo’s sets, everyone was buzzing and happy during it. The heat and sun didn’t matter (“It’s like being in a club at 3am,” said lead singer Josh Lane). People all around me were dancing, cheering, smooching, and loving the opportunity to go out with dance grooves to carry them home.
The thunderstorms hit almost an hour later, preventing me from getting to the late night show downtown. That was a bummer, but overall it was a good time and, as always, an excellent blend of genres and bands from all over the map.
And now, my random Festival Awards!
Best set: The Flaming Lips. The sound engineering was top-notch and it was a fun set list. On a personal note, they were one of my late wife’s favorite bands and they played the night before our 29th wedding anniversary, so that was special. I got choked up during “The Golden Path.”
Heaviest set: The Black Angels. Good heavens, the modern versions of the songs from Passover somehow have even more fuzz and weight on them.
Shame on You if You Missed It set: Almost Heaven. They were the second set on the first day and put on a sharp, post-punky / electro-funky set that had a lot of people buzzing by the end of it and wearing their new band shirts over the next two days.
Wildest set: J’cuuzi. Absolutely bonkers and a ton of fun. Crazy costumes, exotic dancers, glam-punk riffs, a spinning chair substituting for a stripper’s pole, and more stuff I’ve forgotten were all crammed into it. They opened the festival and set a high bar for everyone to follow.
Loveliest set: Trish Toledo. This was like a cool breeze refreshing you after a long day. The soul ballads and psychedelic funk sounds were a great addition to the festival. This was another set you’ll kick yourself for missing if you weren’t there.
Sweatiest set: Night Beats. Lead singer and guitarist DannyLee Blackwell’s shirt was soaked enough for him to win a wet t-shirt contest by the end of this. The fuzzy, guitar-roar sounds were sweaty, too. Everyone in the crowd was sweating, at least a bit dehydrated, and yet ready for more by the end.
Happiest set: La Lom. Everyone was dancing and smiling the whole time, including the band. The back-and-forth cheering between La Lom and the crowd reflected how everyone was participating in a big party and not caring about the humidity.
Most Happy to Be There set: New Candys. I didn’t get to see every band at the festival, but of all the ones I did see, the Venetian trio seemed to be the happiest to be there and hanging out with the rowdy crowd and a bit surprised at how many people came to see them.
Trippiest set: Holy Wave. These guys do psych-rock very well and are local favorites. I usually see them in dark venues or at night, but the afternoon sun only seemed to make them sound brighter and dreamier.
Most Shredding in a Set: Ty Segall. There were a few times in his raucous set that he just unloaded a crate full of mega-riffs. How a mosh pit didn’t break out during this is beyond me. It must have been the heat.
Keep your mind open.
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[Thanks to Cheyenne Doerr for the press credentials and support.]
