Lollapalooza 2010: The New Pornographers go through the motions, Lady Gaga's monsters rule the park, and Mavis Staples brings her A-game

Day 1, August 6, in Chicago

By Nicholas Jackson
Published: August 7th, 2010 | 12:00pm

Nobody likes waking up this early in the morning, but the crowd at the Ettes solved that problem by smoking pot and loading up on alcohol to make it feel as close to a late-night party as possible in the mid-afternoon heat. Tucked back in a shaded corner of the park, the sun was masked with a cool breeze coming off Lake Michigan, and the energy reflected that. It was electric. Though it’s hard to tell how much of that energy was the product of the music and how much of it was the primal energy that everyone always kicks Lollapalooza weekend off with, this fierce Nashville-based quartet did their part to push the dial to 11. “It’s not as hot as I expected it to be,” Lindsay “Coco” Hames barked from center stage. Somebody standing close by shouted back: “You’re hot. Well, hot enough.” He’s talking about more than the music, but that about sums everything up.

The park was unusually crowded for a Friday morning—the product, as heard throughout the day, of nabbing B.o.B. to kick off the festival—and the Ettes gave the people something to listen to during the mid-day lull. It was likely that not many people had been there specifically for the Nashvillians‎, but hearing their sound as the crowd passed from one stage to the next drew them in. That’s hard to pull off, the democratic beauty of pitting four or five acts against each other, but with wild hair flying and guitars thrashing, the Ettes managed to.

With the short break between the Ettes and Mavis Staples’ set, I thought about the fact that I was about to see a 71-year-old gospel singer do her thing for this assignment while so many other 20-somethings were lining up early to guarantee front row spots for the Strokes, who would perform on the same stage six hours later. One raspy “Chi-ca-go!” from Staples and all doubts were immediately erased. There’s a reason the Staples family has been the family of gospel for 60 years running: skill. Turns out, all of these young kids were here to see her, not the Strokes. And a couple of songs in, when Staples performed her rendition of the Band’s “The Weight” (“I pulled into Nazareth / I was feelin’ about half past dead…”), the crowd erupted. I’m a self-described militant atheist and Staples made me feel like I was having a religious experience. My notes for this set largely consisted of “Holy shit” and variations thereof scrawled all over the pages.

Everyone was clapping and singing along with Staples, and when she filled the space between individual songs with proselytizing, her adoring fans screamed generously. They only screamed louder when Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, who produced her upcoming album in his Chicago studio, joined her on acoustic guitar. Watching these two pillars of the diverse Chicago music scene on stage, it seemed everybody was from the Second City.

Staples is a tough act to follow, but the New Pornographers tried their best. It’s rare to see the entire band assembled now that they all have separate side projects and solo careers, but here they were, playing songs new and old and covering many of the classics that brought them to this point. With all the key members pushing 40, it comes off a bit like a middle-aged talent show, full of promise and potential yet not connecting. You want them to do well—you sing the songs, you perform the motions—but it feels robotic. The most exciting part of the set came from the obvious tension during songs that require a strong female lead. Neko Case is the star of the group, but Kathryn Calder was brought on years ago primarily to cover for her when she was off touring for solo albums. Now that Calder’s a full-time member, she seems to feel entitled to perform the key parts.

At this point, the crowd had built up enough that, to see the Dirty Projectors perform on a stage several hundred feet behind me, all I had to do was turn around. The set was strong but unmemorable. With the sun beating down on the crowd so thick there was no way to hide under the few nearby trees, the energy was at its lowest point of the day. Dave Longstreth and his band of experimental rockers entertained, playing hits from 2009’s Bitte Orca (Domino), one of the year’s most well-received albums, but there was nothing they could do to energize the crowd.

The Black Keys fell prey to the same problem. I stuck around for a few songs and then moved on to look for a place to rest. As I traveled around the park, I heard people talking about wanting to see the Black Keys’ set, but none of them bothered to go and actually see it. The name has appeal, but the music doesn’t. Maybe it’s the Twilight effect? The song they had on the vampire saga’s soundtrack is, after all, probably the most commercially successful thing the duo has released. I, like many others, found a tree to take a quick nap under and prepared for the rest of the night. I awoke to hear Hot Chip end their set by letting me know that they too were “Ready for the Floor.”

There was something strange about the penultimate set. Some of the people probably actually were there to see Chromeo, but it felt like the crowd was just restless for Lady Gaga to take the stage. Chromeo did what they always do, which is enough to get the throngs excited. The duo’s definitely bigger than when they last performed at Lollapalooza in 2008. Or are they? They could just be acting like they are; after all, the Canadian electrofunk group is known for being a bit self-indulgent. In ‘08, there were a number of hits people associated with them—“Bonafied Lovin’,” “Fancy Footwork”—and they played them, much to the crowd’s delight. Two years later, they’re doing the same thing, and there wasn't much recognizable as being new. Not being from Canada, I still have no idea what a “Tenderoni” is. To me, and I think to most everybody else there Friday, a “Tenderoni” is not a term of endearment, but a reason to dance.

Lady Gaga, whose meteoric rise to fame in the past year or two has built incredible expectations, failed to deliver as a headlining act. I’m sure those dressed up as little monsters would disagree (and many were, donning custom hats and costumes all day), and the poor sound quality far from the stage combined with the crew’s inability to properly sync the audio and video didn’t help. But all of the lights, costumes, and bad acting between numbers made the production too polished. I expected a checked-out performance from Gaga, who has enough to worry about with her relentless touring and recording schedules, but she sang like she had something to prove, after last performing at Lollapalooza in 2007. She’s a big presence, for sure, but Gaga built something so big she couldn’t anchor it and it got away from her. Though it started off so packed it maintained a considerable size throughout the set, the crowd started to thin after just a few songs. It was time to go home, they decided. There would be more acts to wake up for tomorrow.

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Read up on Lollapalooza Day 2 coverage here

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