The third annual Salad Fest Sweetlife Festival brought its annual serving of healthy dining options, varied beer selection, and rain (always rain!) to Columbia, Md. on Saturday. DCist’s team of Francis Chung, Matt Cohen, Rohan Mahadevan and Valerie Paschall spent 10 hours sloshing through the Merriweather Post Pavilion mud to bring you the festival’s highlights, and its and rainy, muddy dregs.
Matt: Psychedelic garage rockers Shark Week have quietly risen to one of D.C.’s buzziest bands, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to see them take the lone local spot at Sweetlife this year. Donned in their trademark throwback threads, the band kicked off their set a bit stiff, but soon found their groove and loosened up a few songs in. The only songs I recognized were the three on their debut self-titled EP, but the quartet played a handful of new songs that were apparently recorded this past January at a studio in Puerto Rico. Seriously.
Rohan: Lindsey Stirling is talented and no one would deny that but after a solid cover of the theme music to Legend of Zelda and a serviceable version of Avicii’s “Levels”, it quickly turned into a renaissance fair.
Valerie: Well that 1400’s feel was sorely missed once we headed to the Treehouse stage to catch the Knocked Up Kids. Everything about that band was a mistake.
Rohan: No one needed a mash-up of Jimmie’s Chicken Shack and Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Ugh.
Matt: I felt like cleaning my ears out with a q-tip after their set. It turns out that Knocked Up Kids don’t actually have anything recorded. Thankfully, no one has to endure what we did.
Rohan: Solange is a professional and has been on tour promoting True for a couple months now with two stops in the area already. We got a truncated show but the same banter and same amazing music.
Matt: She’s got a great, soulful voice, a kind of ‘70s classic R&B tone, and the range to match though I’m not sure she’s quite tapped into music that will thrust her into the spotlight like her sister. In fact, I found that professionalism played to her disadvantage; she came off kind of robotic for the first few songs. But, after several attempts to get the pit bumpin’ and grindin’, she seemed to come out of her shell and really owned the stage.
Valerie: The pockets of space throughout the pavilion dimmed a bit of the electricity that we’ve seen from her. Also, I don’t think anyone covering “Stillness Is the Move,” is necessarily going for Beyonce’s bright lights. No need; she definitely has her own glow.
Rohan: Haerts have a slick focus group tested sound fit for car commercials. They said it was their first festival ever (it showed), but give them a few months and they could be the next Of Monsters and Men.
Valerie: It was interesting to see Gary Clark Jr. so soon after catching another guitar maestro born of very different influences. Clark is very talented and a nice palate cleanser but his boast of “Nobody else like me around,” is a tad presumptuous for someone whose blues-rock sound is not terribly original.
Matt: I kind of liked what I heard of MS MR, but that’s mostly because I would have enjoyed anything that followed the soggy blandness of Haerts. They sounded like synthpop’s answer to Florence + The Machine, but with way, way more gloom. Still, nothing about them really hooked me and I can already feel their performance fading from my memory.
Rohan: So much Face. MS MR’s Lizzy Plapinger had an intense facial expression for everything. Unfortunately, the once shadowy group played during the day’s brief sunny patch, because their dark synth pop is better suited for U Street Music Hall.
Valerie: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, on the other hand, belonged on that main stage. They could headline Merriweather in their own right. Their shortened set meant cutting out some of the hits but Karen O cut none of the presentation. Wow!
Matt: I hadn’t seen YYY’s since they rocked Virgin Fest in 2007 (before it was free), and I was pretty eager to hear how the new album translated live. Of course, they delivered. The set was a bit too heavy on new stuff but Karen O’s incessant screeching and bouncing around on stage made up for it (despite the fact that Rohan and I were borderline molested by a pair of drunk girls.)
Rohan: It was especially weird because this happened during the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and not Solange. Also, Karen O should fire her make up artist, Sad Clown is not a good look.
Matt: Foxygen wins the artist award for Least Amount of Fucks Given. They played right when a nasty thunderstorm hit Merriweather, but that didn’t stop singer Sam France from jumping into the mud and getting wet and dirty with the rest of us.
Rohan: Kendrick Lamar is overhyped and lacks presence. He has some good tracks, but it was a slog to get through the 15 minutes that I did. He should have switched time slots with Solange.
Valerie: Although the final 15 minutes included a weak freestyle and an unnecessary encore, I disagree. Kendrick showed up with no posse and really worked to get the crowd into its eventual frenzy. He even had the stage crew pass out bottled water to the pit so that they could recover their energy. They certainly did; I had to move with the crowd’s momentum during the beat drop on “m.A.A.d City” which was decidedly upward. Drank.
Matt: Youth Lagoon plays the kind of brooding, synth-heavy indie pop that frontman Trevor Powers describes is about “becoming more fascinated with the human psyche and where the spiritual meets the physical world.” Thus, it was pretty appropriate that the rain cleared and the sun peaked out just as their set began, making it a somewhat transcendental experience. I’m sure it was more transcendental for Powers and band, who looked as if they’d walked right out of a bong and onto the stage.
Valerie: Holy Ghost! started twenty minutes after their scheduled start time due to technical difficulties. Despite coming from the DFA fold and having an amazing drummer in Nick Millhiser, they’re still a second-rate dance-pop act; a less sleazy Chromeo or a less exciting Hot Chip. To their credit, this turned out to be a good lead in to Phoenix.
Rohan: Oh, Passion Pit played? Whatever. The chicken sandwich from Rogue 24 was HEAVEN!
Matt: The only Passion Pit songs I know are “Little Secrets” and “Sleepyhead.” I waited for them to play those songs, and they did! It was cool.
Valerie: At long last, Phoenix took the stage and handily answered the question of whether they deserved to headline this event. Whereas Kendrick Lamar demanded that the crowd raise their hands in the air, Thomas Mars merely had to suggest it. Also, a crowdsurfing frontman improves a show every single time.
Matt: I’ve been pretty lukewarm on Phoenix over the past few years. I’ve always found their music pretty tame but their set was high energy, tight and incredibly dancey. Still, I was more impressed with the (roughly) seven neon-clad teenage couples ferociously making out around me; savoring each moment of a fleeting romance before the arsenal of Dads-in-Minivans rolled up to take them back to their suburban prisons.
Rohan: They don’t make frontmen like Thomas Mars anymore. Phoenix took nine years to blow up and while Bankrupt! is a shaky affair, their live show is rock solid. They reprised their single, “Entertainment,” at the end of the set it was still a highlight. Sweetlife was a Phoenix concert masquerading as a festival and I feel sorry for any of the other acts on the bill.
