Lonnie Walker, City Plaza, Friday
We arrive at the first concert of the day after navigating the labyrinth that is the Raleigh Convention and getting caught up in playing with a display of Moog synthesizers. I have tied my press pass too tightly around my wrist, but not even this setback can dampen my enthusiasm for tonight’s lineup. City Plaza is mildly busy. People are taking this time to go get dinner at one of the multitude of glass restaurant kiosks. We do the same, and we sit down to watch Lonnie Walker with our salads.
Lonnie Walker’s voice is a curious instrument, whooping and screaming with reckless abandon. Musically, his songs are rather staid live; a rather passé mix of Southern rock and metal. The only thing giving his performance any energy is his vocals and his charisma, which go a long way to make his set more watchable. The crowd is not feeling it yet, whether because of their post-dinner tiredness or just general interest. The life of a festival opener is a difficult one. You can tell that the crowd is just twiddling their thumbs before St. Vincent and Spoon arrive.
—Drew Haskins
St. Vincent, City Plaza, Friday
She walks out with her band wearing a sparkly black dress festooned with bleeding eyeballs and mouths–an excellent summation of her “art-rock meets punk” aesthetic. She surveys the crowd regally, then jumps into “Rattlesnake,” a highlight from her recently released self-titled fourth album. The crowd is super into it, and the swaying and bopping begins immediately. What many people tend to forget is how excellent of a guitarist St. Vincent is. Simply put, she shreds. It’s like watching a master perform her craft. You cannot fathom how she is able to move her fingers that quickly and create such strange and beautiful noises from her guitar. This will be a recurring feature of the night: St. Vincent shreds, and the crowd goes wild.
After playing “Digital Witness,” St. Vincent finally speaks to her audience. She greets “all of the freaks and others of Raleigh,” and the crowd is in the palm of her hand. She says some platitudes about reaching for the sky and not limiting ourselves, and then she is on to the next song. She does not speak again for the rest of the concert, but she does not need to. St. Vincent has an excellent backing band, adept at both their instruments and synchronous dancing (an addition to her sets that recently debuted on a May episode of “Saturday Night Live”). The songs are perfectly calibrated, from the more ponderous ballads to her funky, punky uptempo numbers. The last ten minutes find St. Vincent playing one large guitar solo sprawled out on the ground, and then it is over. Her band bows in perfect unison, and then disappear. The now-full City Plaza is rapt and clamors for an encore. She does not come out—a minor disappointment in a true masterpiece of a concert.
—Drew Haskins
Spoon, City Plaza, Friday
And what good music it is! The set is tight and focused, and the musicianship is professionalism of the highest caliber. The good things about having twenty years of band experience and eight albums under your belt is that you have a lot of material and a wide and enthusiastic fan-base. The set is packed with all of Spoon’s greatest hits, from “The Way We Get By” to “Do You,” and the crowd sings along to every word. I actually prefer the live versions of their songs to the recordings because they sound fuller and rock harder, and Britt Daniel’s vocal sound smooth and relaxed around the crowd. Unlike St. Vincent, Spoon comes back for an encore, and I don’t think the crowd was happier as it was at that moment for the rest of the night.
—Drew Haskins
Mastodon, City Plaza, Saturday
“This sounds kind of cheesy,” was the first thing my girlfriend told me as I brought back the first of many rounds of (surprisingly good) beer.
“It’s metal—it’s not about originality,” I replied. “Listen to their technical skill—it’s insane. That dude’s got pipes. He screams his head off show after show and is always consistent. That guitarist can play like nobody’s business, and the drummer—he’s…a really good drummer.”
To be fair, front man Brent Hinds really does have insane pipes. And their technical skill is pretty incredible; at one point a several minute-long guitar solo came pretty close to causing an unintentional crowd-wide seizure. But after several long, loud, similar (but good!)-sounding songs, I slowly began to realize just how many overweight dudes in ponytails were in this crowd.
“Screw it, I’m going to go mosh.”
I returned several minutes later, completely drenched in the sweat of some of the portliest pony-tailed gentlemen the crowd had to offer. It was time to go.
—Josh Polikov
Y’ALL, Kings Barcade, Saturday
Kings Barcade was the perfect venue for Y’ALL’s high-energy, jam-laden show. Their extended jams were the high point of the performance, the scorched guitar riffs filling the space with heady garage-psych vibes. I caught up with the guitarist Christian Smith after the show and asked him a couple questions.
The Chronicle: So like…what are you guys?
Christian Smith: I think we’re just kind of like a psych-rock band. We all really respect and admire great song craft and whatnot and we’re also really into great krautrock bands. You know, stuff like Can and Faust and all that. For me, that’s kind of where all that comes from. But psych rock…you know our band is kind of like if the Kinks found themselves at a Can band practice, that would be the way I describe it.
TC: Cool. If Y’ALL got together and taught a class at Duke, what would it be called?
CS: [Laughs] Oh s***… It would be called Fork Bag.
TC: What does that mean?
CS: I can’t tell you.
—Josh Polikov
Krill, Kings Barcade, Saturday
We decided to stay at Kings for the next band, Krill, because some very knowledgeable friends from the [Duke] Coffeehouse told us they were, like, their favorite band.
The venue was slightly more crowded than it was for Y’ALL, and the buzz was just as infectious. Once the three-piece took the stage I could see why. In contrast to Y’ALL’s heady psych jams, Krill’s shorter, jaunty songs electrified the already hyped crowd. We danced like crazy and had a couple more drinks before bidding farewell to the fellow Dukies in the crowd and moving on to the next show.
--Josh Polikov
Dead Gaze, Deep South, Saturday
I’m not really sure how we came to be at Deep South halfway through this band’s set. I feel like we just told Izzi to take us somewhere and we ended up here. Thank god we did, though—Dead Gaze’s fuzzed-out wave of sound melted our faces in the way Mastodon couldn’t. The venue was tiny but we managed to make our way to the front to see the two-piece thrash up close. After a couple of songs Izzi and Danielle’s faces were starting to get a little too melted, so they went outside to re-congeal while I stayed for the rest of the set. We managed to get a hold of guitarist/singer/mastermind Cole Furlow and the drummer (whose name I didn’t catch), so I could ask them if they had anything to say to the students of Duke.
Cole Furlow: Hey Duke students, this is Cole Furlow from Dead Gaze. Come visit Mississippi and hang with us.
Drummer: And uh, school is great. Stay in school.
With these sage, parting words, we headed out to the Fletcher to catch the act I had been looking forward to seeing all night.
--Josh Polikov
Ryley Walker, Fletcher Opera Theater, Saturday
The Chronicle: Anything to say to the students of Duke?
Brian Sulpizio: Try not to spend the rest of your life in debt.
TC: Thanks. What role does improvisation play in your live performance and on the album?
BS: I would say it’s like huge, both on this album and the live show. Which makes it exciting, because it’s different every night and you can kind of play to the room a little bit. It could be like, more or less energetic…I mean obviously Ryley has written these songs, they’re pretty tightly composed, so we know when things are going to happen, and then sort of the energy within those structures can be up or down, depending on the night.
—Josh Polikov
Phosphorescent (solo acoustic), Fletcher Opera Theater, Saturday
It was the end of the night, our headliner — the man whose album I listened to on repeat in the Winter/Spring of 2013. All I needed was to hear “Ride On/Right On” and my night would be complete.
Matthew Houck sounded blissful. After the long night we had, it felt amazing to sit back and let the soulful, beautiful sounds wash over us.
Suddenly, I felt sick. I had to go. I rushed outside for some fresh air. After a vague, indefinite amount of time, Izzi emerged from the theater.
“Did they play ‘Ride On/Right On’?” I asked.
“Izzi: I think so… I got some really good pictures.”
We shuffled back to the Bridge Bus and headed home.
—Josh Polikov
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