All Points West Festival

It smells like weed out here on a Saturday at the All Points West Festival in Jersey City. Dragonflies and cigarette ashes fill the air, but it’s still a beautiful day with sweltering heat, not a cloud in the sky and one of the first acts is Alberta Cross. I first discovered them on MySpace and dug their hard/Southern blues rock sound. Grungy with long, dirty hair, dressed in plaid shirts and black vests with cowboy boots, and ultimately looking like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Alberta Cross’s slow jam blues is a nice refreshing sound in comparison to other bands. It’s a shame there aren’t more bands like this with high-pitched vocals, in-your-face distortion, feedback and great slide guitar. “The Thief and the Heartbreaker” was a straight-up jam with a warm and catchy chorus for the crowd to bop their heads along to.

Then there was Chromeo, a very high energy group consisting of P-Thugg, the keyboard and synthesizer player, who reminds me of DJ Khaled, dressed as Mr. T. I thought it was pretty nifty when he brought out the talk box. And Dave 1 looked a lot like Jakob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen before he released Born to Run. The crowd was pumping, Dave 1 busted into fast-paced rapping over a techno dance floor beat and girls were dancing everywhere and it turned into a club. The duo was having fun which is always good to see. Loud, screaming guitars, talk boxes, cowbells, oh my! And their keyboards had mannequin legs for stands! For all the visual touches and the popular songs “Two Step” and “Momma’s Boy”, the songs started to sound a lot like each other which bored me so I ventured off to Nicole Atkins.

Never thought Pork Roll, Egg and Cheese would perform on stage? Ha, well Nicole Atkins brought out some backup dancers, courtesy of Lakewood Blue Claws dressed up as Pork Roll, Egg and Cheese respectively. It was pretty hilarious as Nicole Atkins confessed she has three loves: “New Jersey, Pork Roll, Egg and Cheese sandwiches, and punk rock”, as the three costumed volunteers danced onstage. And after that, she plunged straight into a Patti Smith cover and her sultry, deep pipes impressed me.

The Virgins were good and the Black Angels were killer, I thought they were second best to Radiohead that day. Their loud ringing guitars gave the band an ethereal atmosphere and the slow-tempo could have manifested into surefire jams if the band had more time. They took the sound of the Doors into a psychedelic realm, as if the Doors weren’t psychedelic enough. For one, the singer looked like Morrison with his beard and sounded like him too. His Morrison drawls and incoherent vocals put him as a contender for the closest thing to the Doors lead singer in rock today. The drummer for the band, Stephanie Bailey, had a memorizing performance and an air of coolness surrounded her. She didn’t call out for attention like some drummers do and she really kept the band together with her fluid playing. No frills and she kept a consistent beat. It didn’t hurt that she wasn’t bad to look at either.

And now I save the best for last. Radiohead was amazing, clearly the best band of the night and still one of the top rock bands today. Their music is so surreal and each song melts right into each other. Their visual show is something I’ve never seen before: split screens and the members were all bathed in red, green, purple, static, kaleidoscope, infrared and neon colors, giving them an out of this world show(the red color made the bassist Colin Greenwood look as if he came straight out of a cartoon). Giant wind pipes were set up as a projector for the Pink Floydian lasers and choreographed strobe lights that were in sync with the songs. It was something I’ve never seen before, and their music just kicked ass. It was one big show, techno, drum-and-bass, some rapping and spastic dancing from Thom Yorke. I was alien to their live shows, and I was welcomed with open arms. This show made their songs 10x greater than they are on record and their recordings are solid; each song they give 110% on. No filler, they give their heart and soul to each song, like it’s their last. No song sounds dated in concert and the things that they do on stage and in their records are just total experimentation. I’m sure it’s been said before, but they are the closest to being this generation’s Pink Floyd.  I never thought Yorke would sound so pure and rich like he does on the records. They played songs from The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, Hail to the Thief, and most of their latest album In Rainbows, but I have a feeling that Radiohead will only get better with time.