Boston Calling @ City Hall Plaza – May 25 and 26
Words: Andrew Bruss (Day One) and Benjamin Tan (Day Two)
Photos: Andrew Bruss
Day One – May 25 – by Andrew Bruss
Everything about the first day of the Boston Calling Music Festival was Boston Strong. Not a lot of audiences will stand in front of an outdoor stage for 10 hours straight in rainy 40-degree weather but this crowd did. Mayor Thomas Menino took the stage to give the event his blessing and while there is nothing unusual about a mayor this, doing so on crutches with a broken leg at the ripe young age of 70 was both a symbol of strength and a flooding endorsement of the event. And while the show was all about the music, by the time Fun. took the stage, the Boston Bruins had effectively eliminated the New York Rangers from the Stanley Cup Playoffs just a stones throw up the road at the TD Garden and this helped hype up a 19,000 strong crowd that didn’t need a lot of nudging in that regard.
[All Photos by Andrew Bruss]
With two stages set up in City Hall Plaza, the event hosted a single performer at a time while the other stage allowed the next artist to set up and sound check. The first act of the day to really blow people away were the Brooklyn based drum/keys duo, Matt & Kim. Before they even took the stage, the crowd dove head first into an epic sing-along of Weezer’s Beverly Hills courtesy of a well-programmed PA broadcast. Matt & Kim greeted a cold and amped up audience that had to have been the first to go crowd surfing in City Hall Plaza. While the duo’s minimalistic, hard hitting drums and multilayered digital accompaniments are the trademark that found them on the bill, what everyone will remember from this performance was the energy directed towards the stage from the crowd and vice versa. The Brooklynites commented that the two of them are actually native New Englanders and in their many travels, had concluded that only in New England will a band find a crowd so happy to be in front of a stage in the near-freezing rain.
Following Matt & Kim’s main stage performance, Portugal. The Man kicked off a 45 minute set on the smaller City Hall Stage that will take time to fully process and evaluate. My instincts is to call them a psychedelic leaning Umphrey’s-esque jam act with a heavy, brooding Black Sabbath underbelly, but their genre-defying sound is so resistant to being labeled, a room full of music journalists could spend a long weekend camped around a pair of speakers trying to decide how best to describe them in print.
[Thomas Menino]
While Portugal. The Man was dropping jaws on the smaller of the two stages, James Mercer and his current incarnation of The Shins were getting ready to deliver one of the most anticipated sets of the day on the main stage. The Shins may have been the biggest band on the bill, even more established than the evening’s headliner, but by the end of their set it was clear they just weren’t the right band at the right time. People were cold and tired, so high-energy acts feeding off the dedication of ticketholders is what kept the audience on their feet thus far. Mercer and Co. deliver a mellow brand of rock tunes that sound great over a joint amongst friends in a dorm room, but it wasn’t what the audience needed to stay engaged. Plenty of people were seen taking advantage of the event’s re-entry policy and caught some of the hockey game between The Shins set and Fun.’s show-closing performance.
After dark, Fun. hit the stage to what they called the largest audience of their career, and played until curfew. Radio hits like We Are Young and Carry On received predictable sing-alongs and a sloppy, impromptu cover of Paul Simon’s Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard was sure to have won over many of the parents in the audience who withstood the day’s cold weather and unfamiliar performances with something they could connect to.
Before The Shins took the stage, Mayor “Mumbles” Menino came out to tell the crowd he had his doubts about the festival when it first came to his attention. The City of Boston, after all, is very good at saying no to things, which is a large part of the reason this is the first event of its kind to take place within the city limits. But he expressed confidence in the kids in the greater Boston-area to keep their cool and make a good opportunity into a really great thing. His confidence was rewarded as the relatively young audience played nice and had a blast.
Day Two – May 26 – by Benjamin Tan
Boston Calling’s audience quite literally weathered a storm on the first day, and entered the festival’s second day with equal enthusiasm and sunny skies. Boston natives Caspian dared to kick things off with a mostly instrumental set, but impressed the gathered fans with a multi-layered, four guitar blast. Youth Lagoon’s Trevor Powers garnered a following with carnival-like keyboards and piercing vocals, backed with precision by guitar, bass, and drums.
The audience started to grow seemingly exponentially, and Dirty Projectors wowed the crowd with unconventional but powerful three-part female vocals throughout its set. Despite touting two Les Paul guitars, the band played them somewhat sparsely, instead singing over the minimal bass and drums. Dirty Projectors has two great lead singers in the wailing Amber Coffman and the Bowie-like vocals of Dave Longstreth. Ra Ra Riot delivered some appropriately rapid and hectic songs, reminiscent of New Wave with some quirky but perfectly utilized strings alongside the warm synthesizer. The tempo slowed for Shadowcasting, but the song had a different kind of intensity and beauty, with heavy, busy and melodic bass from Mathieu Santos and great singing from Wes Miles.
In a testament to The Walkmen’s years of stellar live shows, The National’s Matt Berninger told a crowd of hundreds, “The Walkmen in many ways kicked our ass and made us a better band.” Earlier in the day The Walkmen rocked the main stage with its bluesy grooves played on vintage instruments – a powerful combination of muddy guitars and drums and soaring keyboards that front-man Hamilton Leithauser nonetheless towers over with every precisely-sung high note.
After The Walkmen’s raucous set began the more quiet, quirky, and truly unique showmanship of Andrew Bird. He performed his first song, Hole In The Ocean Floor, without his band – singing and whistling while surrounded by loops of himself strumming and bowing his violin. The band came out for A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left, with Bird’s electric guitar and Martin Dosh’s busy drumming adding additional layers to the four-man ensemble’s sound.
The festival not only hosted major-venue veterans, shining equal spotlights on up-and-coming acts touring their debut albums. But these newer bands held their own alongside established acts like The National, Andrew Bird and The Walkmen, proving to be just as worthy of Boston Calling’s enormous audience.
Of Monsters and Men played an upbeat, energetic set anchored by the huge hits Little Talks and Mountain Sound, with a trumpet and accordion bringing grand fanfare to the songs. The band also sold the crowd on lesser known album cuts that are just as melodic, driving and endearing. Between the main stage’s two final bands, Young The Giant worked the smaller stage with a mighty presence. Front man Sameer Gadhia has a great voice and amazing control of it, and stands alongside The Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser as one of the mightiest rock singers onstage.
By the time The National took the stage, more people crowded around the main stage than ever before on Sunday. The band’s triumphant headlining performance came at the perfect time: days after the release of their latest album Trouble Will Find Me, and right as the documentary Mistaken For Strangers is on its own festival circuit. The band still performed with its distinct combination of Joy Division influence and hectic but virtuosic drumming, with a trumpet and trombone adding mellow flourishes to the band’s sad but beautiful melodies. But the circumstances of the event amplified the National’s music to a greater scale.
Songs like Bloodbuzz Ohio, Mr. November and the brilliantly polyrhythmic Fake Empire became the crowd-surfing, sing-a-long finales to an epic inaugural festival that came right when Boston needed it most. The crowd, along with the band’s role in organizing the festival, rewarded the National with something the previous acts were unable to deliver: an encore set.
