Pearl Jam (and many more!) Rock Bourbon & Beyond (day 3)

 

Rock festivalgoers got one last taste of summer as Louisville’s Bourbon & Beyond Festival returned September 15^th-18^th with four big days of music on many stages in the heart of the city, just next to The Kentucky Expo Center. Originally launched in 2019, the festival was unable to go on in 2020 or 2021 due to COVID, but it not only returned this year, it also expanded from three to four days. Some areas of grass and others of gravel stones or converted concrete parking lot gave way to rows of food, drink, and craft vendors and a variety of performers playing in different areas of the grounds simultaneously. While nowhere near the size or attendance of Manchester, TN’s annual Bonnaroo festival, Bourbon & Beyond brought a bit of that festival’s flavor to a different audience. With the two mainstages positioned next to each other, allowing for minimal downtime between performances, B&B also featured a nod to the Warped Tour’s standard set-up as well as many European festivals. After the first two days of strong sets and well-reviewed headliners like Jack White, Alanis Morissette, Kings of Leon, and Brandi Carlile, the third day of the festival brought a capacity crowd that ended up being the largest single day attendance in its history of 41,000 people, primarily due to the drawing power of Pearl Jam who delivered an electrifying set after a hot, humid day of many other excellent performances.

Early sets by Robert Randolph, Drive-By Truckers, Cold War Kids, and a rebooted version of Leaders of the New School, started the day off well. A strong and mostly acoustic performance from Neil & Liam Finn on the mainstage entertained middle-aged fans but disinterested some of the younger attendees  who were mainly there to see Greta Van Fleet a few hours later. Originally billed as a set by Crowded House, the father and son duo worked up a set of songs by both Crowded House and Neil Finn’s first band, Split Enz, including “Something So Strong,” “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” and “I Got You,” which also featured surprise appearances from Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Josh Klinghoffer on the last two songs. Art rocker, St. Vincent, moved swiftly and flawlessly through songs from her recent psychedelic soul-funk detour, Daddy’s Home, and updated arrangements of previous songs, impressing with both her vocal delivery and guitar work throughout. Notable highlights included the recent singles, “Pay Your Way in Pain,” “The Melting of the Sun,” and “Down.”

Taking the stage second-to-last were the much-hyped, homage-paying Michigan rockers, Greta Van Fleet, whose reactions to being too often compared to Led Zeppelin saw them leaning much harder in the direction of Queen with sprinkles of Bowie here and there in both sound and performance. Opening with their most-recent single, “Built by Nations,” and closing with their first and most famous, “Highway Tune,” Greta put on an engaging, throwback rock show that even featured costumes, styling, and lighting with a distinctly ‘70s style, especially notable following St. Vincent’s set which had many comparable elements. While doing so worked well for both acts, it is notably interesting to see Gen-X and Millennial artists expressing themselves with references to Boomer music and culture.

Finally, grunge rock legends, Pearl Jam, the evening’s headliners, took the stage to a packed-in and very enthusiastic crowd and delivered a set that included some of their biggest hits, deep cuts, and a few songs from Gigaton, their latest LP from 2020. With all five primary band members present (following much-publicized bouts of COVID for drummer, Matt Cameron, and bassist, Jeff Ament, as well as recent vocal issues for singer/guitarist, Eddie Vedder), the band kept the mood light and friendly and kept breaks between songs to a minimum in order to squeeze in as many as they could in their allotted time. For most of this century, the average Pearl Jam concert runs for at two and a half to three hours, so cutting it down to two hours flat can be a bit of a challenge. Opening with a short collection of acoustic-based songs, such as “Daughter” and “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town,” the band switched over to loud, electric songs for the rest of the night. The main set included fan favorites like “Do the Evolution,” “Corduroy,” and “Given to Fly” along with other song from their enduringly popular debut LP, Ten, such as “Why Go,” “Even Flow,” “Garden,” and “Porch.” In spite of having to delay the Gigaton tour for two full years because of COVID, it was surprising the band only included three songs from that newer record, only one of which, “Quick Escape,” was an official single, though all sounded great and fit in well between the older songs. Amazing guitar work from Mike McCready, Stone Gossard, Vedder, and recently added, former Red Hot Chili Pepper, Josh Klinghoffer, carried the sounds and vibes of each song out across the audience and up into the night sky. The show was briefly stopped on two separate occasions so onsite medical crews could attend to audience members who were seemingly dehydrated, but otherwise, Pearl Jam’s tight sent went off without incident. Concluding with a strong, three-song encore of “Jeremy” and “Alive,” also from their 1991 debut, the band followed those with a spirited cover of Prince’s “Purple Rain,” featuring prominent guitar and vocals from Klinghoffer. While a few long-time fans groaned that they would have preferred traditional closers like “Yellow Ledbetter” or Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World,” the recent addition of Klinghoffer on guitar and of the Prince song at or near the end of the show makes the 2022 Pearl Jam concerts unique compared to those from previous decades, and it was very well performed in addition.

While dehydration, sunburns, and long drives awaited those who stepped away after Pearl Jam’s final notes or those who headed home after the fourth and final day of the festival on Sunday, it was clear Bourbon and Beyond not only had a successful return but ended up having the most successful single day in the fest’s history thanks to bringing in such an elusive band to catch on tour, drawing scores of their fans from many states and time zones away, and providing the band with a boost of support to help see them through their final few following shows that concluded the tour. For first timers and veteran fans alike, Pearl Jam thoroughly rocked every member of the audience in Louisville.

*Select set lists from Bourbon & Beyond 2022 (Day 3):

Neil & Liam Finn (and friends)
Distant Sun (Crowded House)
It’s Only Natural (Crowded House)
Fall at Your Feet (Crowded House)
Better to Be (Liam Finn)
Something So Strong (Crowded House)
To the Island (Crowded House)
Message to My Girl (Split Enz)
Second Chance (Liam Finn)
Don’t Dream It’s Over (Crowded House)
Weather with You (Crowded House)
World Where You Live (Crowded House) (w/Eddie Vedder & Josh Klinghoffer)
I Got You (Split Enz) (w/Eddie Vedder & Josh Klinghoffer)
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St. Vincent
Digital Witness
Down
Birth in Reverse
The Laughing Man
New York
…At the Holiday Party
Los Angeles
Fast Slow Disco
Pay Your Way in Pain
Cheerleader
Year of the Tiger
Fear the Future
Your Lips Are Red
The Melting of the Sun
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Greta Van Fleet
Built by Nations
Safari Song
(drum solo) (jam)
Black Smoke Rising
Caravel
Lover, Leaver
Heat Above
Light My Love
The Weight of Dreams
Highway Tune
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Pearl Jam
Daughter/Chaise Lounge (Wet Leg) (tag)
Low Light
Off He Goes
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
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Why Go
Do the Evolution
Quick Escape
In Hiding
Lukin
Corduroy
Seven O’Clock
Even Flow
Who Ever Said/Satisfaction (The Rolling Stones) (tag)
Garden
Not for You/Modern Girl (Sleater-Kinney) (tag)
Given to Fly
Porch
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Jeremy
Alive
Purple Rain (Prince)
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The Mars Volta’s Shockingly Straightforward Return

 

Reuniting for new music for the first time in 10 years, the progressive-psych-alternative band, The Mars Volta, surprised fans and critics alike with a focused collection of 14 new tracks that play through in just under 45 minutes. Devotees of the band and frequent rock concertgoers of the ‘00s will remember The Mars Volta as an experimental, unpredictable group that often presented their dense songs of mammoth length in arrangements that made them even longer and denser on stage. The volatility within the group led to heavy turnover among supporting musicians and eventually a rift between the primary duo at the center of the project: vocalist, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, and guitarist, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, 30-year veterans of the American punk and underground rock scenes as members of several other bands, most notably, At the Drive-In. While the pair continued to collaborate on other recordings and tours for other projects over the last decade, only now have they decided to resurrect what may be their most beloved and infamous group. However, rather than the spacey, sometimes almost aimless or chaotically unfocused psychedelic fusion jams featured on their 6 previous, excellent albums, The Mars Volta presents a completely different approach, both matured and intentionally reigned in, distancing itself from the band’s back catalog while exploring ways to work their signature styles into shorter songs with more traditional structures and arrangements.

 

While not quite a pop album, as Bixler-Zavala has described the new material, these songs make their points in digestible segments that play well as a full piece or as individual tracks. They lock into one another well in sequence, but none overlap or connect to each other across a track break, and none are longer than 4:13, previously unheard of for a Mars Volta LP. The band’s trademark inclusion of Latin, Mexican, and salsa instruments and arrangements continue to weave in and out of the new songs but now in ways that are more complimentary to the overall tone of the song rather than contrasting with a distorted guitar freak-out or electronic wall of noise and affected vocals. “Blacklight Shine,” the album’s opening track and first single, marries Cuban rhythms and percussion to a prominent bass, an airy electric guitar, and a mix of Spanish and English lyrics where “Cerulea” and other songs mostly abandon the surreal, abstract lyrics of the band’s previous material in place of personal, relatable lyrics more traditionally found in standard rock songs in most respects. Tracks like “Shore Story,” “Vigil,” “Collapsible Shoulders,” and “Palm Full of Crux” find the band dipping a toe into trip hop, working in electronic beats and loops in place of traditional acoustic drums but, again, in a way the complements the tones of the songs, unlike some of the more experimental, electronic sections of tracks from the band’s previous album, 2012’s Noctourniquet, making The Mars Volta probably most closely-related to that LP over any of the band’s others, but only in that regard. Gone (for now?) it seems are the days of extended saxophone and trumpet solos as horns haven’t factored into the band’s material for several album eras now.

 

While parts of The Mars Volta recall meeting up with an old hard-partying friend after a decade to find them (as are we all), older, more mature, and more experienced, there are still tastes and allusions to their signature moments from earlier songs. “Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazon” flies by in just over 100 seconds but has a free-form style that contains its own haunted vibe, partly because it never really establishes itself as a proper song before it ends and moves on to a completely different tone at the top of the next track. “No Case Gain” features hip hop rhythms and verses that are nearly rapped, mixed with a standard rock progression that slips into fuzzy psychedelia but only for a few measures. A few lyric segments change briefly from concrete to abstract during a song’s bridge but change back at the top of the next verse or chorus. The Mars Volta have always featured emotional moments and songs throughout their albums, but doing so with more focused intention allows the band to paint different musical pictures than those they have presented in the past.

 

The supporting musicians behind Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez continue to rotate, and this updated version of the band features new drummer, Willy Rodriguez Quinones, and the return of original bassist, Eva Gardner, who had not performed with The Mars Volta since 2002. Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez, the bandleader/guitarist’s brother, reprises his role on keyboards and synthesizers, and has played with the group since 2003. Quizzically, after building up the release of the new album with comments about how it was meant to be the “opposite” of those records, the earliest concert performances in support of The Mars Volta featured only a few of its songs and instead focused on selections from the band’s first two albums and a sprinkling of tracks from the others. Perhaps the focused execution of the new tracks will lead to live renditions of older songs that are more faithful to the length and arrangements of their original recorded versions rather than stretching many of them well past 10 minutes, sometimes in the 20–50-minute range, leading to a very different live experience and the ability for the band to play several more songs than usual within the same amount of time. While some old school fans might balk at such an idea, all artists deserve the opportunity to evolve, to experiment, and to take their projects in any direction they may wish. It may turn out to be that The Mars Volta era was a creative rebirth that led to more great music from a great band who most assumed was done and gone forever, and that, in itself, makes it exciting and engaging.

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