Boston Called – 9/26
Reflections on and photos from day two at a divisive fall edition of Boston Calling.
The biannual (finally an excuse to properly use that word!) Boston Calling festival returned to our City Hall Plaza this September, but perhaps with its most tepid lineup yet. I’ve covered every day of every Boston Calling iteration up to now, and this was the first time I’ve opted to sit Friday and Sunday out in favor of other things. There were acts worth seeing each day of course, but the lineups on the whole were more representative of the problems at the heart of Boston Calling than ever before. It’s a festival stuck somewhere between multiple identities, booking acts like Stephen Malkmus, Built to Spill and The Replacements next to Walk the Moon, Bastille and Jack Johnson in a setting that alternates between two stages. There’s dead airspace in these lineups for pretty much every kind of music fan.
The challenges faced by Boston Calling are sympathetic – they have a wide spectrum of people to appeal to, and not a whole lot of space to do it in. The mega-festivals can be everything to everyone by booking hundreds of artists across a myriad of tents and stages; doing it with 10 artists a day in the middle of a city isn’t so simple. The festival has gotten it right in the past – May’s balance of legacy acts, pop upstarts and left-field surprises was probably their finest hour yet – but September fell a bit short of the mark. A smattering of inoffensive folk acts, a light show passing itself off as a rock band and the guy from Fun’s solo show aren’t exactly a winning combination.
There were bright spots though, many of which were on Saturday. Malkmus and the Jicks delivered a loose, fun set that unleashed plenty of tossed-off guitar pyrotechnics and gems from across the post-Pavement catalog (“Jenny and the Ess-Dog,” certified jam “Baby C’mon”). Father John Misty’s detached union of the heartfelt and the cynical felt right at home in a festival setting, and Josh Tillman’s dramatic hip-shaking, mic-stand-waving, drop-to-his-knees stage antics are always entrancing. Sturgill Simpson confused a whole lot of expectant Walk the Moon fans with moody country tunes about cocaine and LSD. Doomtree had an unfamiliar midday crowd admirably hyped, doing solid work as the weekend’s sole hip-hop booking. Chvrches surprised with an assured, energetic set, peppered with vocalist Lauren Mayberry’s frequently hilarious stage banter. Chromeo, though not precisely my thing musically, put on an undeniably fun show that was a blast to shoot when you could catch the strobes bouncing off of the various mirrored surfaces (which comprised most of the stage).
Aforementioned light show Alt-J closed out the night in perplexing fashion, with ping-ponging vocal arrangements and Radiohead-lite electronic flourishes silhouetted by nuclear-bright LED walls. I can see the appeal in a certain setting, but something so lacking in personality felt like a particularly odd choice for a headliner.
I shot all of Saturday (minus first act Grey Season, because I was late) for the Globe, so here are my favorites from throughout the day.
