BY THOMAS CONNER Pop Music Critic
“As Lady Gaga said when I saw her last time we played Lollapalooza [in 2010],” quipped the Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser during the band’s Sunday afternoon set at Lollapalooza, “‘It’s hot as f— up here!’”
This sounds like a complaint from Friday or Saturday, when Chicago heat indexes were closer to 100, not on Lollapalooza’s comparatively glorious third day — cooler, drier, clearer.
Then again, Leithauser was on the Sony main stage, facing the direct sun — and, just like the band’s appearance in 2010, wearing a black suit.
After Saturday’s two-and-a-half hour stoppage and evacuation due to severe weather, conditions and moods at Lollapalooza on Sunday were much improved.
Grant Park’s Butler and Hutchinson fields in the north and south, respectively, are definitely showing wear. In both spots, grass is compacted and pocked with muddy patches. The softball fields in Hutchinson are dry and dusty again, but the tundra around it is spongy in most places, swampy in others. The ground around Perry’s stage (southwest of Columbus and Balbo) is something of a dry crust, occasionally punctured to reveal the muddy sludge beneath.
Patches of mud in Grant Park’s Hutchinson Field
at Lollapalooza on Sunday. (Thomas Conner/Sun-Times)The only real drawback, though, is the stench. Each of these fields reeks of either an old gym sock or a neglected kitchen drain.
Myra Woodruff, 22, of Cincinnati sported an old-school safety pin in her earlobe and a wooden clothes pin on her nose. “Smell is not the sense I’m here to concentrate on,” she said.
Despite cooler temperatures, shade is still at a premium, with lots of fans huddled under the trees near Perry’s stage and the Google Play stage, while the sunny patches directly in front of the performers were half full.
The Walkmen, for their part, seemed labored in that afternoon sun. The quintet, with the bloom of a 10-year anniversary just fading, meandered through their set and only seemed to plug into a real power source near the end. Once again in an incongruent setting for Leithauser to be squinting in the glare and wailing, “We’re gonna have a good time tonight,” this band’s traditionally dirty sonics sounded clean and their normally vintage equipment seemed efficiently modern. Their official after-show later tonight at Lincoln Hall should wrap Leithauser’s quivering wails in the darkness it so requires.
Meanwhile, an actual band — not a DJ — took to Perry’s stage. Sweden’s Little Dragon quickly set to justifying why they belonged on the EDM stage, opening with a clanging rhythm and a springy synth beat. The DJ tower gone, the quartet was free to leap about the stage, with singer Yukimi Nagano banging a tear-shaped tambourine. Their deeply soulful sound might have been a bit minimal for the Perry’s ravers, but the songs’ clean lines and electronic hums showcased a well-heeled, well-armed band. They oughta be, they’ve been around for 15 years now. So when Nagano asks the crowd if it’s OK to play a “really, really old song,” she’s not just being coy.
Contributing: Anders Smith Lindall
