Best of Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival
Festival
Katy Perry / Photo by Alex Crick
THE BEST
BEST HOME-SUBURB HEROES: MODEST MOUSE
Formed 16 years ago in Issaquah, a Seattle bedroom community, Modest Mouse regaled fans with a generous set spanning their entire career, from "Dramamine" (found on their debut album, This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About) to "Satellite Skin" (from the new EP, No One's First and You're Next). Singer Isaac Brock may have been hampered by a set of broken ribs ("I did it to myself," he lamented from the stage) but there was nothing restraining new guitarist Jim Fairchild (replacing former Smith Johnny Marr) and the double wallop of drummers Jeremiah Green and Joe Plummer.
BEST GIANT STRAWBERRIES: KATY PERRY
Katy Perry's on-stage inflatables, including strawberries and a giant tube of cherry Chapstick, helped buoy a set that sagged as it went along. She also mentioned that she's headed back to the studio: "I'm going to go in and do y'all right," she promised. Then she turned in a limp reading of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now." Oh, well.
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BEST GIRLS ON TOP MOMENT: IGLU & HARTLY
"Put the girls on top of your shoulders, fellas," singer Jarvis Anderson suggested as he introduced the love song "Out There." It was just one of many retro moves in Iglu & Hartly's absurdly successful set, a mashup of old-school hip-hop and driving rock rhythms, played by appropriately long-haired musicians (guitarist Simon Katz is a dead ringer for Spinal Tap bassist Derek Smalls). Their manly camp reached a peak on "In This City," once memorably described as "Tom Petty meets the Pointer Sisters in a neon karaoke bar."
BEST SLOW DANCE: ALL-AMERICAN REJECTS
Tyson Ritter, bare-chested singer of pop-punk bigwigs All-American Rejects, grinded his hips with a lucky fan brought on-stage for "Mona Lisa." It was a fitting climax for the sextet that clearly put the emphasis on "sex."
BEST INDIE-TUDE: THE LONG WINTERS
John Roderick, the man fronting Seattle mainstays the Long Winters, good-naturedly scolded the "music-industry scumbags" in the band's VIP section. He didn't spare his own band either, noting that drummer Nabil Ayers was decamping to New York to pursue a career in the same infernal business. Happily, the indie cred of both is intact: Ayers co-founded local record chain Sonic Boom, while Roderick pals around with kindred spirits in Death Cab for Cutie and the recently-disbanded Harvey Danger.
BEST DISPLAY OF UNBRIDLED GLEE: MATT AND KIM
Brooklyn's Matt and Kim seemed ecstatic to be playing at Bumbershoot, in the shadow of Seattle's Space Needle. The keyboards/drums duo's childlike enthusiasm (Kim climbed atop her kit at one point) extended to the youthful simplicity of their songs -- to equally charming effect.
