Some American

top four: voodoo music experience ‘09

So it’s all said and done: Voodoo ‘09 is recent history.

My familiarity with the Voodoo Music Experience goes back to my second year in the city, one year after Hurricane Katrina (I know, but it happened and it needs to be mentioned). As we all know, the lineup of a festival is by far its most important quality, and that year was jam packed with heavy hitters, including the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Broken Social Scene, The Flaming Lips and the Social Distortion. Especially notable was the reunion of the hugely influential original Meters, members of whom actually sat in with the Peppers on stage during their headlining set. The overall vibe was one of renewal and rededication, given the previous fall’s events and the subsequent trauma that New Orleans had experienced.

This year’s festival was defined in my eyes by a few revelatory performances, torrential downpours, and zombies. So many zombies. Overall, I would say that this Voodoo experience was less dynamic and exciting that it has been in the past, with noticeably lower attendance, which I think comes down to a combination of peculiar headlining acts and the placement of the festival over the Halloween weekend. To the first point: Kiss? Lenny Kravitz? Really? I know that fans of these acts will have more money to spend on festival tickets in a down economy I really can’t say that they would have been my first choices for the top of the bill. The middle of the pack acts were certainly more interesting, with a good amount of local flavor and some really cool bands I haven’t seen anywhere else (more on that later) but the key names could have been found at a handful of the other major festivals that took place this year. As for my second point, New Orleans is a place with a wealth of things to do on anything even approaching a noted occasion, and Halloween is certainly a time where the distractions are as debauched as they are numerous. Ultimately, I think the pull of the bars and costumed revelry in the French Quarter might have proved too great for potential AM crowds to handle.

But I’m done being negative, because while the crowds may not have been as big as they have been in years past, those who did show up were certainly no less enthusiastic, the festival was tightly run, and the performances were full-throated and raucous, especially the four bands I am going to highlight below. Each of these acts churned out sets that really transcended for me. Let’s get to the most important part, shall we?

The Black Keys

You’re probably thinking “Duh. The Black Keys are awesome. Everyone already gets it.”, but I’m not so sure that’s the case. I’ve said before that I don’t understand why the position of the White Stripes and the Black Keys isn’t reversed, because while Mr. White is certainly a tremendous talent, the breadth of his work both in terms of his primary band and his side projects does not compare to the consistent excellence that is achieved by Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney. Their set early Friday evening, in front of a huddled mass of fans in the pouring rain only deepened this belief. This was my first time seeing the Keys, and I am kicking myself for missing them so many times in the past, as they pulled of a performance that has secured them in my mind as the current gods of garage. Best moment? The loose, raucous performance of their best known song, “10 AM Automatic” , spiced up with massive amounts of indulgent, fuzz drenched guitar heroics and delivered with a verve that most bands can’t conjure for songs they have played countless times before.

Justice

DJ sets dont usually work for me in festival settings, because there is simply no way to replicate the intimacy of a densely packed, smokey room in a sprawling outdoor environment. Justice not only had to conquer my aversion to the very concept of their Voodoo set, but they also had to win me over in the pouring rain with a gradually thinning crowd in front of them. Not to mention the fact that I have always thought of the french duo as an artist people name drop because they don’t want to say Daft Punk one more time. As light left the festival grounds, Justice fired up their sequencers, their turntables, their smoke machines, and their cigarettes, and treated those still in attendance to a thumping, jagged, european dance party. The songs all kind of flowed together for me (as they should have, really) but the effect was galvanizing and, perhaps more importantly looking back, they managed to keep me warm in spite of the weather. Awesome stuff.

Brand New

I’ll be frank here: I hate emo (screamo, post-emo, etc) music. I can’t stand the highly specific, personalized pain that it puts on display because I find it really hard to identify with. Brooding emotion, for me, is best expressed through mood and overall tone; I don’t like having it spelled out, no matter how eloquently. Because of this, I have always thought that Brand New were a band of highly qualified, tight musicians who I would always acknowledge but never actually enjoy, but they successfully changed my mind in the early afternoon sunshine of Saturday. There is a really complex melodic interplay at work in Brand New’s song structures, one that can’t really be appreciated until you witness the New York five piece laying it all out in front of you. I’ll definitely be giving these cats a more open minded listen in the immediate future.

The Meat Puppets

We got a chance to interview Cris Kirkwood, the long suffering bass player of the Meat Puppets, before their festival-ending set at the Bingo Tent on Sunday evening, and I think that might be the reason why this band’s performance was such a stunner for me. You’ll hear the audio from that conversation soon, but suffice it to say that the almost 30 years since the Meat Puppets first got signed to SST have been the kind of tumultuous you read about and almost shrug off as too stereotypical to be true. The touring veterans delivered a long set of their raucous cow-punk, with standouts like “Lake of Fire” and “Sewn Together” really gathering the crowd in. Their latest record just dropped (I’m not sure I can say that about a band that is entering its fourth decade…) last year, and from the sound of things from the crowd, it is well worth the investment.