Slant Magazine

The Morning Benders. The Morning Benders was one of the most surprisingly shafted groups in the lineup. Given the buzz surrounding Big Echo, as well as their mtvU spots, you'd think they'd demand a later slot than a 12-o'clock, 30-minute set on the Bloggie stage. That point was reiterated when almost the entire field was occupied by early-risers making a specific effort to catch the band. The Morning Benders certainly seemed grateful, understanding the concerted effort their fans took to get there that early, and like the crowd-pleasers they are, their set was composed completely of material people know. Nothing off of earlier efforts Talking Through Tin Cans or The Bedroom Covers. Every song they played came off of the strong Big Echo. The set sagged in the middle due to a few slower cuts, but the audience was plenty enamored to stick it out, and it all came to a head with the kaleidoscopic, sample-heavy "Excuses," which quickly turned into a full sing-along. It was a summer set at its finest.

The xx. I've seen the xx three times now. Because of that, I'm probably a little more prone to becoming fatigued by their shtick than the casual fan. The band has been touring the same 40-minute record and pair of covers for about eight months now, and I'm as surprised as anyone that they still seem enthusiastic about the whole thing—or at least they're good at faking it. When Romy Madley Croft started slamming down on a cymbal (as he always does) during closer "Infinity," he still looks genuinely enveloped by the song despite repeating it night after night. The band incorporates their iconography into their act in a meaningful way. There's something rather striking about three pasty, goth-lite, barely-out-of-college kids dressed in all black, with a huge monolithic "X" looming over them. The visuals have a cold, majestic effect, especially when it's juxtaposed with atmospheric cuts like "Crystalised" and "Intro." They seem to recognize the power that their minimal, monochromatic cover design has, and it's striking even in the mid-afternoon August heat. As they proved with their Coachella appearance earlier this year, the band is gifted enough to overcome even the brightest of environments.

Cut Copy. This was the act I geeked out about when the lineup was announced, the one I swore to attend even if it meant abandoning Spoon early to snag a good spot, and judging by a few conversations I had with the other people in the first few rows, I wasn't the only one who felt that way. Cut Copy doesn't often get out to the U.S., which isn't surprising for an Australian band, so, naturally, the crowd went absolutely apeshit when the sharply dressed, sharply synchronized foursome kicked off their set (with the single "Lights and Music"). The audience was made up entirely of diehard Cut Copy fans; hell, when the band rolled out the brand-spankin'-new single "Where I'm Going," people repeated the hook like it was a heavily fetishized B-side. Cut Copy's was easily the most euphoric and entertaining show of the weekend.

Phoenix. Audiences still don't really know who Phoenix is yet. They're the "1901" band more than anything else. Even the band knew that they probably weren't big enough to be headlining a night at Lollapalooza. "This is the biggest crowd we've ever played for!" said an overwhelmed Thomas Mars after a couple of songs, and it was true, at least for a while. The deeper the band got into their set, the more the audience began to dwindle. There was even a significant exit after the first song, the immensely popular "Lisztomania." The audience treated older, classic jams like "Long Distance Call" and "If I Ever Feel Better" like unfamiliar tracks from an upcoming record, and some people simply talked all the way through Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix's quieter cuts. Longtime Phoenix fans were certainly pleased with the dedication the band had to their older material, but it just seemed like a weird end to day two—because of the inattentive audience, not the band.

Yeasayer. There was a time when a band like Yeasayer really wouldn't have been welcomed into the indie realm. They're just so cartoonishly weird, and so unabashedly into what they're doing. They'd be more at home opening for the Grateful Dead. But things have changed, and as the indie populace has grown more and more accepting of the formerly blacklisted subgenre of psychedelia, Yeasayer is now a bona fide champion of the indie scene. Watching Chris Keating writhe around on stage like he was having a bad acid trip was easily one of the festival's more odd moments. The whole head-tripping spectacle actually went really well with the heat and humidity of the afternoon. The band's throbbing psych-rock sort of merged with the already surrealistic environment of the pastoral, weed-blemished stage, and they thankfully avoided the missteps on their latest album, Odd Blood, and performed only the most live-friendliest of cuts.

Frightened Rabbit. The well-bearded Scottish quintet sounded a thousand times thankful and vaguely intimidated by the massive American crowd that had gathered to greet them. The band played a solid mix of material from both The Midnight Organ Fight and The Winter of Mixed Drinks, highlights being the stomping, triumphant "Living in Colour" and the mystical, heart-wrenching ballad "Good Arms vs. Bad Arms." Frightened Rabbit is at their apex when they're playing songs about girls, and Scott Hutchinson's strangled howl is even more resonating when heard live. If this is what emo's final evolution sounds like, then I'm more than okay with that.

Arcade Fire. Yes, Arcade Fire was the best band of the weekend (Cut Copy and the Strokes took second and third place, respectively), and yes, the band is plenty big enough to fill a venue of any size. There were some questions from a handful of music journalists about whether Arcade Fire would be able to handle a crowd that literally stretched to the stage on the opposite side of the field, but those were quickly put to rest by big moments like "Neighborhood #1," "Intervention," "Neighborhood #3," "Rebellion (Lies)," and "Wake Up." Arcade Fire's songs transcend any questions of popularity and simply trail off into the sky along with the hearts and minds of everybody watching. Predictably, the slower moments came with the newer tracks: "Rococo" and "Sprawl II" don't have the same immediate gratification, but neither does The Suburbs as a whole. But that didn't matter, as in the heat of the moment, the band really did become the young, beautiful, and stupidly ambitious teenagers they sing so much about, banging on their instruments as loud as they could and getting wild in the purest of ways—through music.