Treasure Island 2011: Day Two Recap

TIMF2011 went swimmingly. (Brian Valdizno/treeswingers)

Whatever happened to relaxing Sundays? Treasure Island served up a hodgepodge of artists which raised San Franciscan heartrates numerous times over the long day. Fittingly, we treeswingers hung out on the most bench-shaped tree imaginable and enjoyed the the more soothing bands in the sun, followed by the most raucous bands in the glow of the city–including a jaw-dropping sunset that burned the San Francisco skyline into the horizon (and into the memory cards of a thousand cameras and phones).

For diehard fans, the highlight of the day was Explosions In The Sky, but there were some stellar shows from less Texan bands as well. The Antlers and Beach House gave the island something to sway about while Friendly Fires and The Hold Steady gave the island something to jump about. St. Vincent had everyone wondering how so much emotion could exist within one person, let alone in one of her songs. Death Cab For Cutie closed out the rollercoaster of a day with their nostalgia-inducing ethos.

Chill out with some recaps of Day Two after the break…

The Antlers make ghostly falsetto cool again. (Brian Valdizno/treeswingers)

Numbers were thin and miens were bedraggled at the start of The Antlers’ early Sunday set. Yet it was a fitting canvas for the music of frontman Peter Silberman, keyboard-synth man Darby Cicci and drummer Michael Lerner. The Brooklyn trio couldn’t have been a greater contrast than the two-stepping acts the day before: drenched in misery and inner struggle, The Antlers’ set was more likely to make you start bawling rather than brawling. The band’s 2009 debut, Hospice, was centered on the relationship between a terminally ill patient and his care worker, a script for a poignant and emotionally exhausting work of tear-jerking proportions. And while the follow-up Burst Apart took a turn for the atmospheric, the resultant live show still was powerful even its most subdued moments. The set never breached mid-tempo, but who needs it when you have Silberman putting his all in lines like “Prove to me/I’m not gonna to die alone” in “Putting the Dog to Sleep.”

The de facto home of psychedelia, San Francisco has seen its fair share of tripped out music and people. The 2011 edition, Warpaint, seemed like it had just rolled out of bed. Basking in the Bay Area sun, the four ladies from Los Angeles didn’t seem to be the most stoked island-hoppers, with guitarist Emily Kokal, sporting a ragged 49ers pajama shirt and looking particularly drained. Far from the flower power and tie-dye that fueled this city 50 years ago, Warpaint in the flesh is the embodiment of mellow-bordering-comatose, whose haunting guitar and droning basslines on “Shadows” brought gray to a bright afternoon. With little room for interaction the foursome meandered through The Fool, matching their voices hypnotically before bringing their songs crashing down in wall of noise. “Undertow” brought the greatest reaction from the crowd, but when watching the L.A.-based band, one could hardly tell if they noticed. They needed coffee.

Annie Clark goes to town. (Brian Valdizno/treeswingers)

Annie Clark wasted no time getting into the meat of St. Vincent‘s set and jumped straight into “Surgeon” before the crowd finished cheering her arrival. “I spent the summer on my back,” she moaned, then laced her breezy voice with sharp growls from her guitar. Fresh off the critical acclaim for her newest album, Strange Mercy, Clark packed more on-stage charisma into her tiny self than most groups do into a five-piece band. (Or in the wise and simple words of the man next to us in a multicolored faux-fur jacket: “She sings hot.”) Her voice traveled between breathy and burly, pulling the audience in with the “ah–ah–ah–ah–” of “Cheerleader” and the lyric simplicity of “Your Lips Are Red.” Even the bros in the audience–and there were many–raised their arms in excitement for “Cruel.” Most of the set sounded harsher, louder and a bit crazier than the haze on her album, and it only made us respect Clark more for being unafraid to let loose.

England’s Wild Beasts show was a pitch-perfect rehash of their recorded work. Considering the intricacies of their songcraft, this feat becomes much more impressive. The quintet fit somewhere between the hazy pop of fellow act Beach House and the darker experimentation of St. Vincent, with a dose of unappeased sexual hunger thrown on top. The band relied on the combined singing talents of Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming–the former working a strident falsetto and the latter alternating between a penetrating baritone and startling yelps–who both delighted in finding the most archaically eloquent way of phrasing the lewdest sentiments. And in case the crowd didn’t pick up the sexual tones in Smother tracks like “Reach a Bit Further” and “Lion’s Share,” Fleming helpfully introduced “All the King’s Men” as a “song about fucking.” It’s ironic then, that Thorpe chose to exude sexuality in a knitwear combination of a turtle neck under a sweater-vest.

Attention, Stuff White People Like. If you only get to pick one band, make it The Head And The Heart. The Seattle-based group’s somewhat-Mumford-somewhat-folksy music fell at the perfect timing of the day: the band, facing east, fell framed in the dusty backlighting of the sun setting over the bay. You really couldn’t have gotten more picturesque if you had tried. And the group wasn’t exactly very humble either, with dreamy concert chatter like “I feel like this was the time of day when we wrote this song.” Puh-lease. But despite our best efforts to be too cool for school, we–and a thousand others–sang along to “Lost In My Mind,” “Winter Song” and “Down in the Valley” with no shame. Cold hearts were warmed, hands were held, smiles appeared. Even though the band closed out with a theatrically stretched-out rendition of “Rivers and Roads,” we still looked forward to the next big festival where we’re sure they’ll be playing. Maybe they’ll bring a banjo next time.

It's pretty breezy at the Beach House, too. (Brian Valdizno/treeswingers)

Dream-pop duo Beach House played in front of a weird audience, but according to Victoria Legrand, “Weird isn’t a bad thing. It’s a compliment. And y’all are weird.” Legrand spent much of the set enjoying the characters from the audience who got their 15 seconds of fame with a cameo on the big screen. Distracted as she was between sets, Legrand and guitarist Alex Scally put on a beautiful show, hitting most of their still-fresh Teen Dream. Oh yeah, and there was a drummer on stage. The percussion in Beach House has always been a bit strange, but for this tour they use the familiar drum machine from their album with a characterless drummer randomly hitting some toms and shaking a maraca. He seemed unnecessary until their finale, “10 Mile Stereo,” when some intense bass drum hits got the show up to an 11. It was a fantastic ending to the perfect transition from daylight to moonlight on the island.

On the walk toward the Bridge Stage for Friendly Fires, something didn’t seem right. It was way too quiet on the approach, even with Ed Macfarlane screaming his larynx out into the mic. After a song-and-a-half spent in audio purgatory, the festival’s “side” stage received a quick fix, as the stage-right soundsystem burst into life to provide the cure. Just in time too. Warmed up and backed by the shining San Francisco skyline, Macfarlane boogied into “Skeleton Boy,” unafraid of whiplash and apparently fashion critique–God, that Hawaiian shirt was terrible. Fashion-sense aside, Friendly Fires were a strange, but welcome divergence from the mellowest of Day Twos. Popping with energy from Edd Gibson, who brandished his guitar like a Kalashnikov, to the funky backing horn players, the trio from St. Albans, England seemed a Sunday scheduling mishap, especially with the synth-heavy “Paris,” which would have been right at home a day before. The band didn’t mind though, burning the soles of their dancing shoes for the saxophone blasts and percussion breakdowns of tracks like “Hurting” and turning the front of the Tunnel Stage into a furnace.

More like explosions in our mind. (Brian Valdizno/treeswingers)

There was only one band on everyone’s mind after Sunday at Treasure Island. Explosions In The Sky are not just superior songwriters, but they are masters of their instruments and  clearly enjoy nothing more than sharing their passion with an audience. All three guitarists had very distinct playing styles and roles within the songs. Despite having no singers, Michael James was clearly the front man, taking the smooth guitar solos and going all out with his strumming. Munaf Rayani was equally entertaining on stage, often playing from the ground and constantly swaying with the music. Rayani also had the privilege of making the loudest noise of the entire weekend but simply slapping all the strings of his guitar to create a sonic boom ten times louder than any bass drum. The wall of sound, though most pronounced during Rayani’s strikes, never ceased for the Austin band. Their five-member set had every aural and emotional range covered. The audience completely fell in love. Never before were their such enthusiastic chants for one more song at a festival. The only disappointment of their show was their inability to comply.

Brooklyn rockers The Hold Steady didn’t quite fit in with Sunday’s lineup– mostly because they’d have fit in better in 1975. Unabashedly classic in style and brash in execution, the band spent Sunday evening crashing through their hits and pulling out clean-as-a-whistle guitar solos that–in tandem with the major-chord power strums–made the audience feel like they lived in a pre-computer world. Frontman Craig Finn was a sight to behold: although a guitar was strapped over his shoulders, his arms spent less time playing and more time gesticulating wildly and grabbing at the microphone as he yelled the lyrics to hits like “Chips Ahoy” and “Sequestered in Memphis.” Finn, in a receding hairline and glasses, often stepped away from the microphone and mouthed the words to the audience, who couldn’t hear him but shouted louder to make up the difference. The man’s unwavering hype was enough to lift spirits in preparation for the highly anticipated mood dampening that Ben Gibbard was set to bring right after.

"Where's my comb." (Brian Valdizno/treeswingers)

Inheriting the main stage at TIMF from his significant other a year later, Ben Gibbard and Death Cab For Cutie marked their return to the Bay Area with the closing set of the year’s festival. Having visited the city to close out Noise Pop last February, Gibbard hadn’t changed much (maybe the hair was a little longer). Death Cab hasn’t either. For a band that put out a new record, Codes And Keys, there seemed to be a certain boredom to it all. Yes, there was new material to be had and even older material to be dusted off, but the band continued to played the expected–”Crooked Teeth” and “Soul Meets Body” were the biggest non-surprises in a particularly unadventurous setlist. Seven full albums into their careers, DCFC have settled into a comfort zone that spans Transatlanticism and whatever their newest release is, leaving little room for experimentation or divergence–Yes we’ve heard “Cath,” but how about Something About Airplanes? An average Death Cab show, however, is nothing to be scoffed at. Gibbard still commands the stage, whipping his hair back and forth as he jumps from guitar to piano for “I Will Possess Your Heart” and “We Looked Like Giants.” Nick Harmer jammed away at his bass, while Jason McGerr, received shout-outs from his own little fan entourage at the front. It was enjoyable, but with Monday looming, some of the crowd had already made its way for the shuttles, leaving an Explosions In The Sky-sized hole at the Main Stage. Stopping to dance with the jellies on their way home, the early departures made one last salute to TIMF2011 before heading off into the night.

Treeswingers’ Top Three

Explosions In The Sky- The Birth And Death Of Day (download)

Friendly Fires- Hurting (download)

Beach House- 10 Mile Stereo (download)

-Ryan, charlie, Ellen, Brian and Marisa