>> Lollapalooza, Day 3:
Thunderstorm evacuation doesn’t dim the excitement
Reviews of Twenty One Pilots, George Ezra and Florence and the Machine.
Chicago — It seemed too good to be true, and it was.
Friday was a humid but bearable day in Chicago for the first day of Lollapalooza in Grant Park. Saturday was as close to perfect as the notoriously weather-afflicted festival has ever had.
And then on Sunday: mandatory evacuation, due to the threat of a possible severe thunderstorm.
About 100,000 people were forced to leave around 2:35 p.m. Fortunately, only faint showers and only occasional rumble of thunder hit downtown Chicago, and the masses left slowly but peacefully — with dozens even singing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” — for nearby hotels, shelters in underground garages and the streets. An hour later, the fest was back on, with adjusted set times and lengths, but no show cancellations.
Here’s a taste of went down on Lollapalooza’s final day. For photos and more extensive recaps, go to jsonline.com/music.
Twenty One Pilots
Tens of thousands were here, the sort of eyepopping, enormous crowd that fills Grant Park’s Hutchinson Field for past Lolla headliners like Kanye West, Red Hot Chili Peppers or Metallica — except it was a 5:30 p.m. Sunday set for Twenty One Pilots. And Pilots didn’t pack them in with a commercial, trend-chasing sound, or a series of crossover radio hits (although there is certainly some support from alternative formats). This is a rare and refreshing case where a band has created a thoroughly original sound and stage show — and with that, the people came.
Naysayers might dismiss the duo as gimmicky, and they’d have some examples to support their argument. Frontman Tyler Joseph sported psychedelic aviator goggles, and drummer Josh Dun wore a green alien face mask for set opener “Heavy dirty soul,” the first track on this spring’s Billboard-chart-topping album “Blurryface.” During “Ride,” Dun nearly took a ride, playing drums on a platform that was hoisted up by fans in the front. Joseph pulled off his own over-the-crowd act, singing “Car Radio” from atop a 15-foot-tall ladder near the soundboard, then asked the crowd to pair off so one could hoist their partner on their shoulders for “The Run and Go.”
But these stunts gave the show a live-wire energy, and on top of that, Twenty One Pilots expertly flew through a series of genres: piano pop, emo, punk, hip-hop and beyond, changing styles in the blink of an eye. It even transformed reggae-style diddy “Lane Boy” into a dubstep-style rager. And so people many were jumping during “Radio,” the earth literally moved; you could feel the ground bounce from the top of a hill overlooking the field.
With a set like that, and a crowd like this, how long do you think it will take until Twenty One Pilots is headlining Lollapalooza, or for that matter, the Marcus Amphitheater at Summerfest?
The band is headlining a show at the Rave’s Eagles Ballroom Oct. 30. As you may have guessed, it’s sold out.
George Ezra
The stage was all laid out with a sequin-layered backdrop and a big sign that read “Ezra” — but about five minutes after English singersongwriter George Ezra was supposed to start, a Lollapalooza staff member got on the microphone and announced the emergency evacuation. Ezra’s show still went on at 4:15 p.m., except the backdrop was gone, the set was only 30 minutes long, and Ezra was alone on stage with a mic stand, an electric guitar, and a stack of old suitcases by his side for minimal theatrical effect.
And yet the 22-year-old Ezra — who had a breakthrough year with sweetly penned, lushly sung folk rock singles “Budapest” and “Blame It On Me” — didn’t seem fazed in the slightest. Actually, the delay seemed to work to his advantage. The crowd was especially enthused to be back in the park after the evacuation threatened to ruin the day, and Ezra, while physically stationary, exuded an easygo- ing charm on his own, and his soulful, mature pipes were more pronounced, and more beautiful, than they would have been if a band had been playing behind him.
Florence and the Machine
The band name is Florence and the Machine, but Sunday night, frontwoman Florence Welch was the machine. Her vocals, incredibly, were just as melodramatic and stunning as on the band’s albums, and doubly as impressive, considering all the running around she did. (She is human, so she had five female vocalists backing her, but still.) That wasn’t more evident than on an electrifying “Shake It Out,” with Mother Nature providing fitting atmosphere with a quiet lightning storm brewing over downtown Chicago.
“Reach for the stars Lollapalooza,” Welch screamed, her arm outstretched to the heavens like she was intent on clutching the Milky Way. (The lady loves the melodrama, but hey, she owns it.) And it was in that proclamation that it became what machine Welch best resembled: a rocket ship. And thousands of people were strapped in for the ride.