FYF Fest 2016, Day 2: Hooked on Charles Bradley, spellbound by Anonhi and the goodness that is Grace’s

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Grace Jones at FYF Fest (Photo by Zane Roessell)
Grace Jones at FYF Fest (Photo by Zane Roessell)

Sunday reached the precipice of total insanity at FYF Fest. Almost everything, if pushed to its greatest potential, gets sloppy at the end. The good fatty bits ooze out the seams, order turns to chaos, clean lines become mushy messes. And so it was on Day 2 of FYF, as the evening climaxed with a domino effect of great, big buzz-worthy acts, that people swarmed like ants around almost every stage and oxygen become scarce, like in outer space, when the ship comes too close to the sun. That is to say, Mac DeMarco, Grace Jones, Beach House, Rae Sremmurd, LCD Soundsystem, all bouncing against each other like magnetized worms, brought the festival to an explosive peak.

But it started out pretty easy-going. Preoccupations kicked things off on the Lawn stage. The Canadian post-punk band formerly known as Viet Cong offered high energy to the early crowd. Despite the doom-driven subject matter of their new self-titled album, with songs like “Anxiety,” “Monotony,” “Forbidden,” and “Degraded,” the performance carried unhinged enthusiasm. Over in The Club tent, L.A.’s very own Julia Holter played with a string section, bass, violin, cello and a violist running her instrument through a computer, as well as drummer Corey Vogel. Her music is as captivating as it is challenging, haunting, enchanted, like getting absorbed by a painting from another century in a museum.

||| Photos by Zane Roessell

||| Our Day 1 coverage

Nearby on the Trees stage, a band formed over games of chess, Banks and Steelz, that is RZA from Wu-Tang Clan and Interpol’s Paul Banks, played their entire album, “Anything But Words,” which marries their styles into a cohesive achievement of rap and indie rock. Seeing RZA behind a keyboard is surreal, though. The politeness turned rambunctious when Kool Keith came on stage to perform “Sword In The Stone.”

While the overall vibe at the festival was still pretty mellow at this point, a surprise of the afternoon would have to be the evil grooves of Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, an English rock band that injected a blistering fistful of 1960s heavy metal-inspired apocalyptic rock into The Club tent. Just a quick sojourn to hell and back before Blood Orange took on the Main Stage.

Similar to his performances in the FYF After Dark series, Dev Hynes brought special guests out during the poppy Blood Orange set, including Carly Rae Jepsen, Zuri Marley and a somewhat unprepared Sky Ferreira, who tried to remember the choruses scribbled on a crumpled piece of paper she kept retrieving from her pocket. Among other talents, Hynes displayed some snazzy, wormy dance moves.

[Continued after this fun fan gallery …]

Peppered between the modern forward-looking bands, nostalgia for the early 2000s had a strong footing on the lineup. Saves the Day performing their 2001 emo opus “Stay What You Are” in its entirety pretty much sums all that nostalgia up and puts a shiny ribbon on it, making their sound almost seem new and different in the current psychedelic waters we find ourselves swimming through. Black Lips also brought back some good times from their glory days, though no wieners were flashed. The sound could have been a better for them. The voices were less audible than the bass, and the saxophone looked great, but whatever sound it was making got buried. Nevertheless, “Bad Kids” and “O Katrina” remain Southern-flavored garage punk milestones of toothless charm.

People thought the screen was glitching for Father John Misty‘s performance but, no, the Honeybear lover has a wry sense of humor, and he was quite pleased to play with the Windows screensaver as his backdrop, and “Bonnarroo 2013” flashing behind his emphatic tales of love, lust, existential cynicism, and subprime loans.

Back over on the Lawn stage, Charles Bradley held the audience against his warm, sweaty bosom and soothed us with soul and his wonderful rendition of the robot. Tears welled up all over the place during “Changes,” a beautifully touching song from his latest album of the same title. Wherever he went, funky town, happy place, sexy land, sad face, hopeful clouds, the audience was right there hanging on his every word. What a magical person.

Speaking of magic, Anonhi, formerly Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons), delivered a deeply moving rendition of her latest album, “Hopelessness.” Wearing a black cloak and steeped in shadows, Anonhi’s voice quivered out of the darkness while different faces appeared behind her on screen. Her music cuts to the core in a different way from Bradley’s, that’s for sure, but it is deeply touching in a most vulnerable way.

Revisiting the day’s events right now, it’s rather amazing to squeeze these two performers in one afternoon, as if that were not enough soul nourishment for a day, and then receive the immense delight of Grace Jones, that witchy, wonderful, wild slice of woman. At 68, she electrified the audience with her funny banter, her many hats, and immense bewildering presence, boobies out and body painted. She reigns supreme, beautiful and strange, a breathing, gyrating, hula-hooping work of abstract art. We all bowed down to Grace Jones.

Although it was tempting to crawl up into Grace Jones’ womb and call it a night, there was still so much left to experience at FYF Fest. The Trees stage became madness from Mac DeMarco onward. The crowd was a mass of chunky gelatin and my desire to reach the band cut like a dull knife bouncing off the rubbery skin of people mush. Everyone was thrilled, despite struggling to get closer to those delightful weirdos on stage. For the first time ever, I was grateful that Beach House plays mostly in darkness so it was OK to watch from a distance and sink into their ethereal carousel of dream sounds.

As the night finally reached its post-finale-finales, LCD Soundsystem celebrated their relapse out of retirement with an invigorating set that of course included “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House” and “Losing My Edge,” bright lights, big sound, and atomic impact. At the other end of the Coliseum, Mississippi brothers in rap, Rae Sremmurd — which, by the way, is their label name spelled backwards — worked in unison to manipulate their own crowd into a frenzy with “No Flex Zone,” “Come Get Her,” and “No Type,” which I am still singing because it’s that sticky.