Photo titled "Friends in a Boat" from the collection of Mrs. B. Malpus, c. 1915
On Day 2 of the Sasquatch! Festival, the morning lineup was pretty spotty. My brother and I had hoped to see the Smith Westerns start the day off on the main stage at noon, but there wasn't anything else we really wanted to see until the Archers of Loaf at 6:00. So we decided to skip the Smith Westerns, spend the day hiking, and head over to the Gorge in the early evening. I think it was a good call, too - I heard that the Smith Westerns' set was disappointing. We ended up getting to the festival's middle-sized stage before the Archers' set, so we watched a bit of a band called City and Colour - except for a cover of Low's "Murderer", it was pretty unremarkable. As often happened this weekend, though, the hordes of body-painted teens cleared out of the area after some terrible act finished, leaving one of my favorite bands to play to a way-too-small crowd.
The Archers of Loaf played a great set, though. They played almost all of the Vs. the Greatest of All Time EP, confirming my suspicions that they (like their fans) prefer that release over all the others. Starting the set with the raging "Audiowhore", they also did great versions of "Freezing Point" and "The Lowest Part Is Free". They rounded out the set with a few tracks from each of their albums, at one point introducing their best-known song "Web in Front" as "our only good song." When the Archers were done, we stuck around and watched smooth soft-rockers Gayngs do their thing, which was also pretty good (even the sax solos!)
After that we went over to the main stage to see what the Flaming Lips were doing, although we really should have known what they were doing because (a) their live show has more or less been the same for a decade, and (b) it was widely publicized that they would be playing the Soft Bulletin album in its entirety at the festival. We missed the memo somehow, but it was a pleasant surprise to hear them do The Soft Bulletin, as my brother and I both love that record. Perhaps predictably, Wayne Coyne's rambling monologues and other attempts at "showmanship" ended up taking too much time, and they had to strip two songs out of the set (admittedly, "The Gash" and "Sleeping on the Roof" are ones you can really live without) in order to vacate the stage in time for Modest Mouse. We weren't really feeling like seeing Isaac Brock and company, so we headed out, catching some of the Yeasayer set (they sounded quite good, if a little too much like the record) on the way to the parking lot.
"Suddenly Everything Has Changed" by the Flaming Lips
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