Day Two of Outside Lands (OSL) kind of felt like Lightning in a Bottle (LiB) — which, IMO, is the best multi-day music festival in California; you can fight me on that… or not —though the latter festival hasn’t taken place since 2019. OSL hasn’t felt that way in many years. Maye not ever before.
The best example of OSL evoking LiB’s similarities was ZHU closing out Twin Peaks. While the transitions between songs could have been tighter, his parade of mashups and fragments evoked LiB’s Lightning Stage, with trippy and vastly improved visuals over previous years. (The ode to “Thriller,” with dancing skeletons miming Michael Jackson’s gaggle of ghouls, was particularly inspired.)
A Bay Area native, ZHU is probably a little too detached from constructing proper songs to achieve genuine pop-cultural penetration, although fleeting covers of Radiohead’s “Creep” and Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” anchor those otherwise aggressive beats, and “Came for the Low” has popped up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe at one point (with Andrew Yang in the video).
Festivals highlight acts whose live show is their entire reason for being.
ZHU’s placement against Lizzo was shrewd — cleanly dividing the festival’s demographics in two. The kids and the ragers headed in one direction, while the over-30s migrated in the other. Sure: Lizzo certainly deserves the main stage, but there’s an unshakeable awkwardness surrounding a headliner who was booked at their peak and postponed twice.
(“Tiger King” feels like eons ago, and it’s been a while since Lizzo released an EP; “Rumors” was her most recent lackluster single, which featured Cardi B, failed to convey that same Lizzo-magic her previous work effortlessly embodies. August’s power-duo collab was not the body-positive flautist’s strongest effort — by a long shot.)
Festivals highlight acts whose live show is their entire reason for being. Not that many people listen to, say, Matt and Kim — but when Matt and Kim are on the lineup, you go see them because they’re so energetic and in love. Now that the 1980s are more than three decades behind us, even their grossest moments are smartly getting revived.
Take the trash-glam awesomeness of The Midnight, a neon pink flamingo of a band with a sax player as dedicated to the life of being an S.F. karaoke legend DJ Purple. Take Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” and raise it to the level of dial-up internet pastels and you have an idea of what this L.A. synthwave situation is about.
Echoes of Lightning in a Bottle could be felt all afternoon. French DJ/producer Shiba San, another staple of that festival, was blessed with a gorgeous sunset. His shiba inu logo, a bit more aggressive than Dogecoin’s, presided over a glitchy house set at Twin Peaks — clearly the place to be for most of the day. No. 1 single under his belt notwithstanding, 24kGoldn couldn’t suppress his enthusiasm, gushing that this was the biggest crowd he’s ever performed in front of. (There’s always one.)
Over at the Sutro Stage, YouTube goofball Marc Rebillet was forced to cancel his set last-minute following an injury, so James Corden’s bandleader Reggie Watts subbed in. Mellow and funky by acid-house standards, Watts is also a bit of a Chatty Cathy, endorsing the use of medical ketamine (or, at least, K usage accompanied by Brian Eno).
Costumes, too, got more elaborate — or at least, more committed. For every sexy cat, there’s someone in a T-Rex suit (try dancing in that all night) or a spaceman in silver lame with a gold fanny pack. Channeling that Samhain energy on the battered and increasingly Glastonbury-like turf, Day Three seems perfectly set for psilocybin-fueled astronautics, what with gauzy, melodic Rüfüs du Sol leading into fellow Aussies Tame Impala.
See you out there, way, way out there.
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