Sunday, September 12, 2010

Hopscotch Day 2: The Rosebuds, Broken Social Scene, & Panda Bear

Broken Social Scene
All photos by Emily Price
With lots of shade and plenty of room, City Plaza was a great place to kick off the second night of the Hopscotch Festival.

The Rosebuds with Brad Cook from Megafaun on bass and Logan Matheny from Roman Candle on drums were put in a tough position opening the show at 6 p.m. The crowd was still waking up and didn’t quite fill the space between the stage and the sound board, but the band did their best to warm up them up. Lead singer Ivan Howard tried on several occasions to get the crowd to sing along, but didn’t have much success until they played “Nice Fox.” Even then, Howard stopped playing and encouraged the crowd to sing louder before finishing the song.

The crowd packed in quickly for Brocken Social Scene as the band kicked off their set. They struck a good balance their new singles and old old favorites, but unsurprisingly the crowd was more enthused for tunes like “Shoreline (7/4)” than “Forced to Love.” The band sounded great right down to the four-person horn section they brought out. The time limit didn’t allow the band to even scratch the surface of their catalogue, but their extended jam on “KC Accidental” to end the show was quite pleasing.

With the sun now set, Panda Bear took the stage. With a guitar, a table full of electronics and a video screen, it was hard to imagine how engaging his live show would be. The set started slowly and some trippy visuals - mostly just random patterns alternating with images of people or animals - began to react to the music on the screen. The transitions between songs were so gradual that the audience didn’t know when to clap until later in the set when he played his most recognizable song, “Comfy in Nautica.”

Early on, the show was interesting, but mostly because of the mystery of what was to come next. When the realization came that there was nothing more to it, the set became boring. His music is unique, but it can be a chore to listen to live. By the time Panda Bear came out for his encore, the crowd size had dwindled down to about where it was earlier for The Rosebuds with only the most dedicated fans left.

The Rosebuds






Broken Social Scene








Panda Bear

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

BSS' horn line was the hottest part of that show. Where do they find those guys?!

Anonymous said...

The Rosebuds should have been last instead of Panda Bear (YAWN). We left PB's set early b/c it was so bad. A lot of people were confused and thought The Rosebuds were the closing band.