Rock the Garden at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (20 June 2015)

Rock the Garden just took place last Saturday. This is the second year that the event was expanded to two days instead of one. The benefit to this is, of course, to bring in more bands and save money by re-using the same stage and setup.

If you missed Rock the Garden this year, you can tune into 89.3 The Current on Tuesday, June 30 and Wednesday, July 1 for the rebroadcasts of the music festival.

Additionally, you’ll find our recap below. For more photos, head over to Photos: Rock the Garden (20 June 2015).

thestand4rd

 

In only their third area performance, locals thestand4rd opened up the festival and the afternoon as the youngest act ever to play, and got the crowd going with a slow-simmering 30 min. set.  MC Allan Kingdom has gathered the most buzz of the collective, being featured on Kanye West’s single, ‘All Day’ which also has Sir Paul McCartney on it, and 17 yr old Corbin has previously garnered praise under the guise of Spooky Black.

The slow, looped beats of ‘Binoculars’ were an ideal first-course to the day ahead, with tempo ramping up mid-set for ‘Vital Signs’.  With producer/MC Bobby Raps giving a shout-out to his grandparents in the audience, it seemed like a chilled and relaxed performance amongst a few thousand of their closest friends.

Lucius

 

There’s a mutual love affair going on, and it’s all pretty obvious.  We’ve followed Brooklyn indie-pop band Lucius since their beginnings and have covered every local appearance, each time to greater numbers.  So, it was more than appropriate to have them added to the roster and a bonus that they were also around to see the original painting of their album cover, a 1964 work by Belgian pop artist Evelyne Axell, which happened to be on display at the Walker Art Center.

Any lack of sunshine was more than made up for as singers Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig wore matching lemon yellow dresses and had short cropped red hairdos.  They mentioned getting into town and going “straight to Nye’s – we had some pirogies and do-si-doed”, which endeared them to the few in the crowd that didn’t know them before. Their brief 40 min set consisted of much of their debut album, along with new song, ‘Dusty Trails’ and a cover of the obscure 60’s Ian & Sylvia/We Five song, ‘You Were on My Mind’.

Courtney Barnett

Another first, Melbourne’s Courtney Barnett became the premier Australian act to grace the RTG stage, with a straight-ahead 60 min set,  in support of her Mom+Pop Music/ Marathon Artists debut, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit.

Joined by Dave Mudie and Bones Sloane, the trio emerged in the hot afternoon, amidst a pumped-in fog and donned in all black, and were immediately in top gear with ‘Elevator Operator’.

Lyrically surreal but irresistible, Barnett and co. bravely took a no-prisoners approach, knowing that their stage time was limited and the ferocity of basic rock ‘n roll was the ideal prescription for a festival crowd on a warm afternoon.  Slowing down only for the mid-set ‘Depreston’, she slipped a chugging ‘Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party’ into the set before radio hit, ‘Avant Gardener’, and closed with a shredding ‘Pedestrian at Best’.

Conor Oberst

 

Conor Oberst started his set with a few tracks from his latest Upside Down Mountain, but ended up doing a collection of old Bright Eyes songs (‘Four Winds’, ‘Southern State’, ‘Method Acting’, ‘Poison Oak’ and ‘Easy/Lucky/Free’). The audience didn’t mind one bit, having a great time singing along to all these fan favorite songs.

Oberst’s band was none other than The Felice Brothers, who actually played one of their song, ‘Meadow of a Dream’, midway in their set. Oberst’s wife, Corina Figueroa Escamilla, joined him on stage for ‘Poison Oak’ and ‘Easy / Lucky / Free’.

While many of Oberst’s songs on this set were uplifting and meant for a live audience, he decided to end with a slower song, ‘Milk Thistle’, with its haunting lyrics of like a crying baby at the bottom of a well.

Trivia: Apparently Woody Harrelson, taking a break from filming Wilson, stopped in at Rock the Garden to check out Oberst’s set.

Belle & Sebastian

We’ve been steadily watching Belle & Sebastian as they made their way to Los Angeles, California (06 Oct 2014) and Sydney, Australia (29 Jan 2015)… so by the time they came here, after a nine year’s absent, we kind of already knew what their set and show stopper would be. For those who didn’t follow along, they were in for a treat and loving and dancing to the Scottish band.

Joining B&S on stage were Laurels String Quartet, who actually recorded tracks for the band’s latest Girls in Peacetime Wants to Dance.

Several tracks from the new album were played, which went over well. Particularly ‘The Everlasting Muse’ sounded much better live, with its ups and downs, which did not translate on the studio album.

Fan-favorite ‘Piazza, New York Catcher’ (dedicated to the Twins who partly sponsored Rock the Garden) was done in a totally different arrangement… which is understandable as the band probably got tired of playing the same chords. Thankfully, bandleader/singer Stuart Murdoch did not forget his lines for ‘Piazza’, unlike their 2003 appearance at Fitzgerald Theater, when he had trouble remembering the lines in the song (to be fair, that song has a gobful of lyrics).

As you can see from their setlist, ‘The Wrong Girl’ was chosen over another Stevie Jackson-penned song ‘Jonathan David’. Personally, we preferred the latter, for sure, but that song would require fancy piano playing.

Of course, the two closing tracks, ‘The Boy With the Arab Strap’ and ‘I Didn’t See It Coming’ were absolutely unforgettable. Murdoch walked on the front barrier and asked if anyone wanted to dance and encourage fans to come on stage. About thirty fans jumped to the stage and just had an absolute blast singing and dancing… and, yes, taking plenty of selfies.

NOTE: Thanks to Andrea at the Current for providing much of the set lists.