Hi, folks! I decided to create a kind of concert journal for my sojourn to the Format Festival 2022 here in Bentonville, Arkansas. If you’re just tuning in, you can check out what I checked out on Day One HERE. Without further ado, on with the show!
I wake up feeling utterly exhausted… My step counter on my phone says I walked about 7.5 miles yesterday, and I feel it. Today’s gonna be a longer day than yesterday, so I’ve really got to pace myself more.
3:00 p.m. I arrive just in time to see the start of Palace’s set on the North of Oz stage. Palace is a London-based band that reminds me very much of British indie rock from the early ‘00s (a style of music my friends and I once termed “sad bastard music”). Shimmery guitars, plaintive and soaring vocals and melodies that teeter on the edge of being catchy without ever quite getting there. They put on a solid show, but the band feels a little lethargic, perhaps as a result of being put in such an early slot with a less than enthusiastic crowd. Still, it’s solid if not totally memorable.
3:50 p.m. I honestly get a little bored of Palace, so I decide to go check out another art installation before the next band starts. I head over to DomeRx, an audio-visual experience from pop culture fusion artist Darren Romanelli in collaboration with lovers of random ephemera Taschen. DomeRx is, as one would guess from the name, a dome in which people enter and snuggle into handmade chairs, stitched together by Romanelli from found cloth. Patrons are then treated to some hip funk (in my visit, we heard The Meters and Herbie Hancock) while psychedelic visuals made up of plant-based media are projected above onto the ceiling of the panoramic dome. It’s extremely relaxing and helps me prepare for the exhaustion of the day to come.
4:00 p.m. As I exit the dome, The Comet is Coming is just taking the stage at South of Oz, so I head on over and prepare for tasty grooves. The Comet is Coming is a three-piece band composed of synthesizers, drums and tenor sax from London, and their live show is absolute fire! Despite the fairly small audience, everybody is really into it. The synths are propulsive and crunchy, the drums driving and complex, the sax screeching, crooning and punctuating the beats, creating an undeniable sound that works so much better in a live setting than on their studio tracks (which while still solid just don’t have the unbridled energy of their live shows). So far this is one of the best bands I’ve seen at the fest.
5:00 p.m. Up on the North of Oz stage is electric blues legend Kingfish Ingram. I take this as an opportunity to go get some food (a bougie burger and fries today…burger was dried out but still decent) and watch some Kingfish while I eat. To be honest, electric blues is not my favorite genre of music, but Kingfish’s guitar mastery is undeniable. He’s a hefty dude and knows how to create some hefty licks. After I finish eating, I decide it’s time to wander a little.
First I head over to Next Door to check out Alan Power. This dude is an odd duck indeed. He’s an earnest country crooner from the UK decked out in full cowboy getup complete with ten-gallon hat and American flag button-up shirt. Interestly his back music is all pre-recorded save for a guy on keyboards in the corner, so he really is just there to sing. In between songs, he’s legit really funny too, self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing in equal measure making it known that this is his first gig ever in the United States!
After watching Alan Power for a little while, I decide to go check out this disco barn a little closer that I’ve walked by several times. This venue, officially titled Drag Me to the Disco from garish modern art collective Toiletpaper Magazine takes as its concept a barn that has been converted into the tackiest disco dance hall imaginable. With several disco balls hanging from the ceiling and the walls covered in bright, tatty gold strips of paper and weird framed pictures that look like a bizarre cross between Roy Lichtenstein and Tim & Eric, the most eye-catching aspect of the barn is the giant pair of lips above the stage with “SHIT” written on the teeth. It definitely grabs one’s attention. DJing as I walk in is Black Party, spinning Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA”. This isn’t really my scene so I head back to the North of Oz stage to catch the end of Kingfish’s set. I arrive just in time to see a straight-up blistering version of “Hey Joe”. Very cool stuff!
6:00 p.m. Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 are up on South of Oz and much fun is to be had with these guys. For those not in the know, Seun Kuti is one of legendary afrojazz artist Fela Kuti’s sons, and does his dad proud with a set of joyous, imminently danceable afrobeat rhythms that generates a tremendous and palpable energy. Kuti himself seems like a man possessed, gamboling around the stage and alternating between singing, playing keyboards and wailing on alto sax, accompanied by on point percussion and horns and an enthusiastic and rump-shaking pair of back-up singers/dancers. Between these guys and The Comet Is Coming, the crowd is starting to wake up and get excited.
7:00 p.m. Moses Sumney takes the stage at North of Oz. This is one I’ve been really interested in seeing. Sumney’s album work is incredibly lush, full, layered and so large in scale, I just had no idea how Sumney’s music would translate live. Short answer? Extremely well. With Sumney himself taking center stage behind a bouquet of flowers and controlling a looping effects board and mini synth and accompanied with violinist, percussion, drums, keyboard/synth and a horn section, the sound live is spacious and ethereal. The music is near indescribable. Art pop symphonies fused with operatic neo soul vocals and post rock, jazz and prog flourishes, the music feels almost transcendent at times. I thought it was just great. The crowd on the whole seemed somewhat confused as to how to react. Sumney himself seemed a little flippant and exasperated with the lack of energy from some of the crowd. He may never come back to Arkansas, but he still made an impact while he was here.
8:00 p.m. I have zero interest in the modern pop country stylings of Miranda Lambert-esque ‘southern fried attitude with heart’ singer Elle King (daughter of unfunny comedian Rob Schneider of all people), so I decide to head over to Next Door to check out Katie Schechter, a singer-songwriter from Nashville. Her show is light and fun with an enthused crowd as she and her husband play rhythm and lead guitar respectively while she sings earnest, heartfelt songs to smooth and sultry melodies but with a little edge to them. I took the opportunity while I was in here to crash on one of the bean bags in the corner to rest a little before the joybomb of The Flaming Lips took the stage.
After Schechter’s set was over at 7:45 p.m. I headed over to the North of Oz stage to wait for the Lips. On the way, I stop to check out another art installation, the Solana House, complete with random purple columns out front, a DJ playing and an indoor installation projected across the walls. It was weird. They offered free tamales and popsicles but you were required to sign up to some mailing list or something to get a voucher for them… Bleh, no thanks.
I also stop in briefly at The Cube to check out Neil Harbisson. Apparently this guy has had an antenna implanted into his brain to attune him to the frequencies of the universe…or something… Anyway, his show is actually pretty cool with deep ambient textures coordinated with The Cube’s amazing light show. Too bad The Lips are coming up or I would’ve stayed longer. Anyway once arriving at North of Oz, I caught the end of Elle King’s set and while it did nothing to convert me to her style of music, I will say that she put on a great show for the folks who did come to her.
9:00 p.m. The Flaming Lips are awesome. After an odd little anti-climactic intro with Coyne coming out on stage and talking about a toy bird he used to bring to live shows, he hops in a plastic bubble and we’re off to the races launching into “My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion” before bringing out a giant inflatable rainbow and blasting the confetti cannons for “Do You Realize?”. Their set is a mix of some of their more acid-drenched material (“Always There In Our Hearts”) and their more well-known lushly produced masterworks (“Waiting for Superman”) covering their whole career. We get early songs like “She Don’t Use Jelly” as well as newer ones from their latest album American Head (which I like quite a bit) like “Assassins of Youth”. One of the highlights for me is easily “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1”, one of my favorite Lips songs where they are joined on stage by a giant inflatable robot. Late in the set, Nick Cave’s bushy soundsuits make another appearance with Coyne introducing them as alien creatures and hoping they are benevolent. They proceed to rock out with him to the classic Lips joint “Moth in the Incubator”, a quite apropo song given the circumstances with Coyne singing to the soundsuits of them “jittering like a moth”. They finish up with the triumphant “Race for the Prize”, leaving the audience happy and hoarse from screaming (Coyne’s frequent demand of the audience to keep the energy up between his numerous costume and set changes) and the grounds littered with confetti.
10:00 p.m. It’s ten o’ clock. Do you know where your Beach House is? If not, it’s understandable since the shimmery, shoegazy dream pop band was cloaked in shadow for a majority of their set, only appearing fully toward the end when singer Victoria Legrand finally asks for a light on her. Their banter is brief but their tunes are gorgeously textured. The light show accompanying their performance perfectly matches the icy, ethereal tone of their music making for a nice cool down performance after the high energy of The Lips. After two straight days of this, I’m tired and can’t bring myself to care about headliner Rüfüs Du Sol. As such, it’s time to hit the dusty trail and head to the shuttle that will ferry me back to my car. One thing that amused a little is how frequently the bands at this festival have mentioned at some point how this is the first time they’ve ever played in Arkansas. Not surprising really since Little Rock is probably the only possible place many of them could have possibly played before, and I just don’t think the audience is there for these styles of music. As to how Day Two fared overall? I’ll let the balloon that Wayne Coyne brought out at the end of The Flaming Lips set speak for me.
