Sunday at Outside Lands brought a slower pace to the afternoon, but plenty of energy onstage with standout sets from newcomers, old favorites and downright legends.
We started the day to the tune of Fishbone's "Party at Ground Zero," which used to get all the kids at our middle school dances skanking to the beat, but now just got all the ladies in the cushy VIP tent wiggling in their chairs and dancing with their hands.
Kurt Vile's shroud of hair and languid vocals hide a certain grungy energy to his songwriting, like a stoned Tom Petty filtered through Neil Young and Pavement. On the Panhandle stage, Deap Vally out of LA was a sleeper hit for us. The two self-described bad ass women ripped through a set of heavy blues, sounding like they used to steal the Black Keys' lunch money.
SFist's Rose Garrett hit the Twin Peaks stage early on where popular UK drum 'n' bass act Rudimental got all the kids feeling the love with their funky, upbeat vibes and righteous messaging (not to mention some epic high-waisted pants on the female crooners). Emile Sandé followed with an earnest and soulful afternoon set at Twin Peaks stage, belting out fan favorite "My kKind of Love" and reminding us all to respect ourselves.
Hall & Oates revisited some seriously smooth and jazzy hits with a sleepy set at Lands End that alternated between well-trodden hits and songs no one knew. They duo might be something of a novelty act at this point, but they're a damned good one and a big win for Outside Lands during a summer of duplicated festival lineups. We doubt many fans knew more than three or four of the hits, but the crowd gave them the benefit of the doubt and pressed in close, yielding not an inch in the transition between the duo's set and Vampire Weekend's uptempo performance.
Speaking of which, that dense crowd became a little too much to handle for some of the (ahem) millennials packed in down in front. We saw more than a few carried away by security, perhaps a little in over their heads substance-wise. But those who stood strong in the front row greeted the schoolboyishly handsome members of Vampire Weekend with a chorus of squeals. One hopes that frontman Ezra Koenig's erudite lyrics inspire the tweenage wasteland down in front to spend the rest of the summer breaking finishing up their required reading.
Willie Nelson, on the other hand, showed a different sort of aged wisdom. His guitar looked as weathered as the man himself, and both gave a time-tested performance of old-school country music at the mellow Sutro Stage where he made the singer thing work for him by opening right up with "Whiskey River." At one point he looked prepared to lift off the stage and ascend straight up to heaven, and we're not entirely sure anyone could protest that he needed more time to live a full life on this earth.
On the big stage the latest rendition of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, sans John Frusciante, kicked off with a couple of energetic hits from Californication and By The Way. By the time they started working through pieces off of their too-long double album Stadium Arcadium things felt a little bit repetitive. Still, Kiedis and Flea and company recovered, bringing the lighters out for "Under the Bridge" and "Soul to Squeeze" before blasting off with "Give It Away." Their set ended a bit early, perhaps because Kiedis (currently sporting a mustache "on lease" from John Oates) was tired from a big day of sailing. Still, the crowds stuck around straight through the end.
Rose Garrett also contributed to this report.
