Big Ears - Day, The Last

In comparison to yesterday, today was cakewalk. Sadly, it was also the last day of the Big Ears Festival, which I can now say unreservedly is the best music festival in the country. 

We started the day relatively late at 1:00 p.m.; the past two days started with 12:00 noon sets. Today's first set was by Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend).  He sang fairly traditional pop-rock songs, including the third Nick Drake cover we heard this weekend, and was backed by a string quartet.   A nice, easy-going way to start the day.

The next set was considerably more challenging - a dense, psych-rock set by Montreal's Suuns.  Their loud, sludgey, shoegazey sound was great, but it's more what one expects to hear at a late-night set at some small club, not at 2:00 in the afternoon on a pleasant Tennessee afternoon. 

The next set was a real mindblower - a duet between Kieren Hebdan, aka Four Tet, who we saw last night, and Norwegian saxophonist Mats Gustafsson of The Thing (more Norwegians).  I can truly say that, having gone to shows and concerts since at least 1972, this was one of the best sets I've ever seen.  It's hard to describe how Mats' sax skronk managed to merge with Four Tet's shimmering electronics, but it worked and Mats' intense playing lifted the set into another dimension. It quite literally took me over a half hour to recover and regain my senses. 

It didn't hurt that the next set was by the late Alice Coltrane's former ashram, singing spiritual songs and chants from the recent Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda LP.  It would have been unworldly any other day of the week, but on the same stage that Four Tet and Mats Gustafsson just tore up, it seemed very down to earth. 

Today was nothing if not eclectic, after Rostam's lush pop, Suuns' psych-rock, Four Tet and Mats whatever-that-was, and Alice Coltrane's Hindu chants, we heard the Bang On A Can All-Stars celebrate 30 years of performance, including among other pieces, Closing from Philip Glass' Glassworks LP.

So how do you end an eclectic day like today and a world-class festival like this week's?  What better way than with Lightning Bolt, arguably the loudest, scuzziest, scariest noise-punk band in the world? It was unrelentingly intense and the moshing was intense. The death of music.  There's really nothing that could follow up their set, so it's an appropriate enough coda for the festival, the weekend, and the day.

As I said in earlier posts, I'll follow these daily reports with some more detailed posts about the individual performances.  Tonight, I need to get some sleep - I leave to go back home tomorrow, back to work and responsibilities, and I need my rest. 

We now return to your normal posting.