All Points West

Photo: Bedder/Getty
Nevermind the slew of commemorative cash-ins and merchandise that have emerged in time for the 40th anniversary of Woodstock; Sunday at All Points West almost turned out to be a living, breathing, squelching, real-life re-enactment of the epochal 1969 mud-bath.

(Check out the best of All Points West, in photos.)

Early arrivals to day three of the festival were first denied entry and subsequently herded into the nearby ferry terminal like poncho-wearing refugees as torrential rain battered the site, which was still struggling to soak up Friday’s downpour. Rumours quickly circulated about a possible cancellation before the sky began clearing at around 2 p.m. Despite that, most fans arrived onsite well after 4 to find that main stage (Blue Comet) openers Steel Train and the Gaslight Anthem had been cut and the park now looked like little more than a green and brown swamp with concession stands floating on top. The mass, sludge-based anointing began en masse — and most of it was involuntary.

To their credit, the tens of thousands who braved the punishing weather, foul smells and indignity of being treated like cattle remained in good spirits and their first reward was a fizzing opening set from Silversun Pickups. Such was the desperation to hear something other than rain and thunder, the Los Angeles quartet could have walked onstage and played Liberace numbers and most of the crowd would have lapped it up. Thankfully though, they stuck to their moody, melodic West Coast shoegaze. The much-loved “Lazy Eye” is still an ace up the band’s metaphorical sleeve but cuts from their recently released album Swoon easily eclipse that early career highpoint and show how quickly they are progressing.

(Read our report on Coldplay’s day three headlining set here.)

Any remaining bad vibes dissipated by the time British indie mainstays Elbow began their set. Adored in his homeland for his genial nature as much as his gorgeous voice, singer Guy Garvey affably chit-chatted with individual members of the huddled masses assembled in Lady Liberty’s view and encouraged them to add some extra power to the hymnal chanting of songs like “Grounds For Divorce” as if he were addressing old friends. The Manchester five-piece toasted the crowd and slammed down a shot before playing the meditative “Weather To Fly.”

And then there were Echo and the Bunnymen. Backstage frontman Ian McCulloch offered Rolling Stone a stiff drink and a long conversation covering everything from urinating horses to “knock knock” jokes, but onstage band stuck to its formula: they play wondrous songs with minimum fuss, and fans listen with maximum awe. It’s been their working method for 30 years now and it once again proved effective as members of nearly all the day’s other bands hustled over to watch the band play. It was essentially a greatest hits set with the emphasis more on greatest than hits. The band tossed in ad-libs and audibles almost at will (”Villiers Terrace” for instance became “Roadhouse Blues” at the drop of hat while “Nothing Lasts Forever” instantly morphed into “Walk On The Wild Side”) and the Donnie Darko devotees weren’t denied their moment either as “The Killing Moon” aptly rang out as the sun went down.

Those looking for a contrast to the softer, indie-centric lineup didn’t need to look far as over on the Bullet Stage were the ever-reliable Black Keys, playing just behind headliners MGMT. Over the past few years, the Akron, Ohio blues rockers have quietly become one of America’s most respected bands by continually pledging themselves to the stripped down simplicity of rock & roll. Patrick Carney’s drumming is rarely less than apocalyptic, singer Dan Auerbach doesn’t just play guitar but throttles it, and the raw, whiskey-soaked tones of his voice convey more emotion than any assemblage of words could ever do. And when they put it together during “Thickfreakness” or the sinister stomp of “Strange Times,” it was a pulverising combination. As they played to an increasingly carefree crowd of mud-zombies who seemed content to leave their clothes, shoes and other human traits deep in the Liberty State Park soil, it was difficult to imagine a context in which the Black Keys primal power could make more sense.

More All Points West 2009:

• Coldplay Soar With Anthems, Beasties Cover
• Jay-Z Stuns with Epic All Points West Set

Photo: Busacca/Getty

Is there any sight that warms the heart of a rock band more than a sea of upraised middle fingers? That’s the scene that greeted recently reformed British shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine midway through their Saturday night set at All Points West Festival in New Jersey’s Liberty State Park.

(Photos live from All Points West: My Bloody Valentine, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and more.)

Though the gesture was mainly the response of impatient Tool fans reacting viscerally to My Bloody Valentine’s measured, enveloping music, it also handily summed up the mood of the day, one where a lion’s share of the music could be characterized by either ticked-off or tempestuous. If All Points West was a trilogy, Saturday would be its darker second installment.

(Read our report on Tool’s Day Two headlining set here.)

The clear skies and blazing sun were a welcome respite from Friday’s torrents of rain, but large expanses of thick, gooey mud and large pools of collected rainwater still made traipsing the festival grounds a singularly unpleasant experience. By the end of the day one of the larger patches of mud was spotted with several pairs of abandoned flip-flops, helpless victims of the greedy muck.

In theory, Saturday’s roster made a strange kind of sense: Tool are no one’s idea of a conventional metal band, so placing them at the end of a day filled with artists known for their sonic restlessness should have allowed for a welcome dismantling of musical borders. But instead of a warm musical reciprocity, what occurred mostly was separation. Liberty State Park was suspiciously underpopulated for most of the day, most of the acts being greeted with either indifference or hostility — like, for example, that My Bloody Valentine single-finger salute.

Which, to be fair, did not arrive without provocation. Part of the magic of a My Bloody Valentine show is the way the band members — all the while passive and distant — seem to take an impish thrill in pushing their audience to the physical breaking point. Saturday’s show featured their trademark gazillion-decibel onslaught, the twin guitars of Kevin Shields and an eerily trancelike Blinda Butcher punctured by Colm Ó Cíosóig’s astonishing, artillery-style percussion. Even by conservative standards, it was one of the day’s best performances — shocking and transfixing.

Sheffield pranksters Arctic Monkeys have gone a bit grouchy lately, too. They opened their manic set with a barrage of minor-key numbers: “This House is a Circus” was stormy and cataclysmic, frontman Alex Turner bending an endless stream of harsh notes from his guitar. Ditto “If You Were There, Beware,” an imposing sculpture built from jagged, twisting riffs. With a mane of unruly black hair and a severe gaze, Turner has begun to take on the demeanor of a young George Harrison. “I’d like to lighten the mood a little,” he announced before “Flourescent Adolescent.” The sudden shift in tone was welcome.

St. Vincent — Annie Clark to her parents — keeps her anger more expertly repressed. Her tight, toothy set was full of songs with frustrated protagonists: bored housewives, lying actors. Augmented by a flutist, violinist and oboist, Clark reinvented songs from her spellbinding new record Actor, using distortion to warp her butterfly voice, ratcheting up tempos and attacking choruses with impish glee. “You kind of resign yourself to the fact that it may not be the most nuanced performance you give, but it will make up for it in energy,” she explained to RS earlier in the day. “Luckily, I have two albums now, so I have some more rocking, uptempo stuff to draw from. As I was making this record, I knew I wanted to make songs that were more guitar-driven.” Fittingly, Clark’s prowess was on full display: she turned a cover of the Beatles’ “I Dig a Pony” into an opportunity to show off her nimble guitar work, lacing up the center of the song with slick, silvery runs.

The darkness in Neko Case’s songs comes mostly from heartbreak, and was expertly offset by the sharp wit of co-vocalist Kelly Hogan. Hogan acted as a surrogate frontwoman for Case, supplying wry between-song banter, at one point referencing black metal band Venom. Case and Hogan have the perfect partnership: Hogan schticks it up so Case can simply emote. Case’s voice is a wild, remarkable thing, and on Saturday she simply tilted her head back and let it come rolling out, shooting up the center of songs like “That Teenage Feeling” and “Maybe Sparrow” like a bottle rocket on the Fourth of July.

Gogol Bordello didn’t court darkness so much as embrace the inevitability of disaster. Their revved-up Balkan punk sounded like the last dance before the apocalypse, and marked the first instance of audience participation the entire afternoon. Chalk most of that up to frontman Eugene Hutz. He’s a dynamo, leaping and kicking and lunging his way across the stage, often yanking himself from one end of it to the other by the neck of his guitar or standing near the edge, egging on the eager crowd.

Hutz wasn’t the only one given to a bit of audience baiting. “Are you guys here to see Tool?” Judah Friedlander asked early in the afternoon. After receiving the anticipated applause, he added: ” ‘Cause I just beat up the whole band. Bunch of pussies.”

More All Points West ‘09

• Jay-Z Breaks Out Blizzard of Hits, Pays Tribute to Michael Jackson at All Points West
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Vampire Weekend Rescue Rainy All Points West With High-Energy Sets

Photograph by Alex Reside of RollingStone.com

“I know it’s not easy to dance when you’re holding an umbrella,” said Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, essentially summing up Friday’s rainy, muddy, bleak, All Points West Festival in New Jersey’s Liberty State Park. After the rain turned the grassy festival expanse into a bog pockmarked with tiny lagoons, gooey mud obstacles and the stench of liquefied goose shit, the goal of every band would simply be to try and boost the spirits of a shivering, soggy crowd.

(Check out photos from the ground in our All Points West gallery.)

The rain came down in bucketloads around four in the afternoon, distracting comedian Arj Barker from his set. “This is fucking ridiculous,” he said, before asking his water bottle, “You know anything about this, you son of a bitch?” Colorful New York indie-dance troupe Ra Ra Riot responded fast by bringing more energy than their audience, who was busy navigating all the new puddles that surrounded the stage. The band hopped around and played indie-rock versions of tent-revival rave-ups, complete with violin. Dry and perpetually happy, singer Wes Miles remained optimistic, trying his damndest to engage the crowd. “I guess it’s not as wet as it could be,” he said, clearly unprepared for the raspy heckler who shouted, “That’s what she said.”

(Read our report on Jay-Z’s epic headlining set here.)

The only stage covered by a roof became a popular hang-out (though not as popular as the covered “beer garden” tents). Canadian-Australian Xavier Rudd was turning out gospel-tinged blooz, using a Jules Verne contraption to play the didgeridoo and drums at the same time, causing happy sandaled or bare feet to clomp around in the mud or on dirty blankets almost instantly.

Brooklyn’s The National hit the main stage, and played their already moody indie rock to a sea of ponchos and umbrellas. Their anthemic-yet-dreary rainy-day melodies couldn’t break the grey cloud over the audience’s head — especially since lead singer Matt Berninger practically played the entire show with both hands on his mic stand and eyes tightly shut. They did however get some severe head nods and a sea of clapping to 2007’s “Squalor Victoria,” especially when it hit its stunning climax.

Organized Konfusion’s brainy, loquacious art-rap isn’t exactly good-times festival music to begin with, so it definitely hurt that their first show in 10 years was in the dead center of a rainstorm. Rapper Pharoahe Monch tried to convince the crowd to appreciate the rain: “Don’t it feel so good?” No matter what, the front rows were loaded with hip-hop faithful who went absolutely bonkers for ’90s underground classics like “The Extinction Agenda,” “Simon Says” and “Fudge Pudge” which featured a guest verse from OC — who was also kind enough to perform his back-to-basics underground classic “Time’s Up.”

The first band to break the spell of the rain — both figuratively and literally — was Vampire Weekend, who was lively from the get-go, despite water dappling the stage as they played. Koenig was light-hearted and fun, whipping his hair around and talking to the audience like they were his close friends. He asked people to go crazy during the “raincoats” line in “A-Punk” and tried to teach them the histronic screams in “One (Blake’s Got A New Face).” They even got cozy enough to try a new song — something that had the feel of classic VW, the electro feel of the Discovery album Koenig guests on and a beat like U2’s “Bullet The Blue Sky.” Maybe their good attitudes helped, because the sky quickly turned from grey to blue-grey before “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.”

From then on, the mood was infectious. The Pharcyde’s set moved from chill to raucous, climaxing with Fat Lip doing a verse and two choruses of Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative.” Later, when Q-Tip hit the stage, he mixed James Brown vamps with a stream of old classics, eventually getting to a version of “Award Tour” so heated that he just screamed over the chorus.

But the only band to bring true festival drama before headliner Jay-Z was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The first act to bring out props — a giant inflatable eyeball — they were also the first band to truly mesmerize the crowd, thanks to Karen O’s body contortions and vocal acrobatics. Karen was always on the go: flopping around on the stage, running backstage for a quick wardrobe addition, playing peek-a-boo with a scarf. Like a coffee-and-art-school Gwen Stefani, Karen screeched out happy nonsense — “New York, New York! Jersey! Yeah Yeah Yeah!” The presumable climax, “Maps,” was played for its emotional resonance, slowly strummed by Nick Zinner on an acoustic guitar like a power ballad, greeted by a sea of lighters and glowsticks. After that false ending, they soldiered through “Y Control” and “Date With the Night,” concluded with Karen destroying the microphone like she pretty much destroyed every band that played before her.

Why it’s worth baking in the sun to see Heartless Bastards’ Erika Wennerstrom howl in the afternoon heat, squeezing in the tightly packed crowd to catch Jay-Z at his first-ever U.S. fest and pay attention to the Elvis Costello rock of the Postelles: here’s a rundown of 24 must-see sets at this weekend’s All Points West festival in New Jersey. Headliners Coldplay and Tool are clear picks along with My Bloody Valentine and the Black Keys, but what about the National, Gaslight Anthem, Shearwater, Organized Konfusion and Flying Lotus? Two dozen reasons to hit the grounds early and stay ’til the end are right here. And as always, Rolling Stone will be all over APW bringing you reports and interviews throughout the weekend, so stay tuned:

• All Points West’s Best: 24 Can’t-Miss Sets