Fun Fun Fun Fest Wrap Up: Day One, Part One

White Denim: Local boys done good White Denim played their 45 minute set to a slowly burgeoning audience after Evangelicals ended theirs, staring with the explosive, mostly instrumental “ShakeShakeShake” and kicking things off from there. The band’s wisecracks hinted at their nervousness - “I’m so nervous,” quipped singer James Petralli, for example, though they found their footing quickly enough, tearing up songs from their EP and throwing in a few new tracks. Drummer Joshua Block is the band’s glue, and is a mesmerizing, almost shockingly good percussionist who leads the charge on the band’s most off-kilter, time signature hopping numbers. Despite a dropped stick and pulled cord here and there, the band’s first festival can only foreshadow a burgeoning confidence for this young act. -Adam Schragin

Evangelicals: Hailing from Norman, Oklahoma, Evangelicals are unassuming-looking as all get out but have a very enjoyable take on indie rock, complete with a high-pitched lead man, two dueling guitars, and an excellent rhythm section. Signed to Austin’s Dead Oceans imprint, lead singer Josh Jones looked nervous and a little racked, but the band coalesced nicely during standouts from their So Gone album. Even after Jones broke a mallet during the first cymbal crash of the opening number, they rallied on like it wasn’t some sort of evil omen. The added benefit of having two occasional keyboard players and the pronounced 80s guitar tone gave a few of the selections surprising New Order bent – just one of the many nice surprises from their set. -Adam Schragin

Saviors: Thick and hearty and not for the feeble, that was Saviors’ set at around 2 o’clock on Saturday. In those respects, I guess, it was kinda like Campbell’s Chunky Soups. The burly metal guitars and pounding rhythm section is a sound that should also be promoted by hulking NFL players and their sassy mothers.

In front of the stage were old punk rockers and newer metal fans wiping away the gooey drips and chunks of a chugging and squealing sound from their chins as the bobbed their heads in approval and tapped their heels. Meanwhile, the drummer, wild in look and form, threw his sticks into the skins with a heavy, thundering beat while a thick mass of black hair in tangles danced against the huge tattoo of an enormous bird with the scales of justice in its center. Fuzzed-over, hearty chords and blaring soloing soared out over heads but within reach. -William Mills

Final Fantasy: Multi-tasking like a fiend, Owen Pallett attempted a true-to-life rendition of his many-layered recorded material all by his lonesome, and the reward was a show that started slow but ended spectacularly. Without the aid of the dozen-plus hands (his own many times over, as well as those of others) that help in the studio, songs from Final Fantasy's two LPs became tangled messes wherein Pallett frantically tried to do the songs justice without trimming them down for solo performance. The effect was a compromise of Pallett's pleasant stage presence, and a somewhat uninspired beginning saved by a surprising final fifteen minutes.

The muted enthusiasm of his performance's first half elicited many of the same complaints that can be heard about fellow violinist Andrew Bird's live shows—too many loops and not enough just letting loose and working with what you've got. Despite this complaint, the ambition was impressive, and Pallett's individual talent and vision were unquestionably on display, even if he at times appeared slightly overwhelmed by daunting tasks of his own creation.

But then there's that final fifteen minutes, which amplified the combined energy of the rest of the set and made the performance as a whole one of the more memorable of Fun Fun Fun Fest: Pallett's sheepish cover of Destroyer, followed by apparently-intoxicated Destroyer frontman Dan Bejar's coming on stage to stumble through an energetic repeat of the same song, followed by Pallett's stirring is-it-ironic-or-is-it-not rendition of Mariah Carey's mid-nineties show-stopper "Fantasy." By the time Pallett—looking like a love-struck and deranged Edward Norton—sang "sweet, sweet fantasy, baby" for the last time, it was clear that this musician-on-the-rise has a lot of future left in him, and maybe someday will find a band worth helping him wade through it. -Nick Courtright

Sick of it All: Sick Of It All introduced their set rather succinctly with the sentence, "This is something we call New Yawk Hardcoah." SOIA haven't changed their seminal hardcore-metal sound one iota in the 20-odd years they've been around, and, true to form, they brought the goods for the kids who showed up to start circle pits, raise middle fingers, and stage-dive. Though scheduled surprisingly early in the day (5:45), the band commandeered a sizable crowd; toward the end of the set, singer Lou Koller instigated something called "The Braveheart;" which seemed to involve splitting the audience into two warring factions and sending them careening into each other. Add in the spectacle of yellow-mohawked guitarist Pete Koller's whirling-dervish stage moves, and it wasn't hard to believe Waterloo Park was a tenement basement circa 1990. -Matthew Dewitt Neurosis:Neurosis' massive 80-minute set headlining the punk stage may have tested the endurance of neophytes, but it was a dream come true for the fans who filled out the south side of Waterloo Park Saturday night. The west coast metal legends' song list mostly hewed to recent material, from this year's "Given To The Rising" and 2004's "The Eye Of Every Storm." Although the mix started in the red and stayed there--absolutely the loudest show of the weekend--the compositions themselves shifted from full-on sonic assaults to darkly ambient passages with enough contrast to keep things interesting. The band navigated their ever-shifting compositions with aplomb, and guitarists Steve Von Till and Scott Kelly cut such a menacing presence onstage it was hard to believe the same guys had been roaming the park double-fisting beers like regular Joes.

Neurosis' live sets have always featured a prominent visual element, courtesy of the band's art designer Josh Graham (that's right, Neurosis have a full-time art designer), and the evening's screen-projected images--negative-image shots of birds in flight, wolves hunting deer, and decomposing carcasses--synced up perfectly and provided a nice visual complement to the tunes. The set ended with a full five minutes of towering noise that cut out so abruptly you could hear the trees rustling--for a group of middle-aged family men with day jobs, Neurosis still know how to bring about an audiovisual apocalypse and finish up before the downtown noise ordinance kicks in. Funny how most guys that age just want to play golf. -Matthew Dewitt