Sunday started out with one of the more anticipated acts - at least for me - of the weekend, Ra Ra Riot, who played through most of their 2008 album The Rhumb Line. They seem like a little too big of an act to be playing the opening time slot at the Chicago2016 stage, and the performance seemed the slightest bit sleepy. Lead singer, Wes Miles's voice sounded alright, but lacked a little of the smooth elegance that made their album so great. The unexpected highlight of the set for me came on the track "Too Too Fast" a song that was pulled off surprisingly well live.
After making the mistake of the weekend and going with the 5 for $5.95 at Arby's for lunch, my brother and I stopped at Airborne Toxic Event. We walked up about 2/3 through their set to hear them cover "Goodbye Horses" (the song from the Buffalo Bill scene in Silence of the Lambs) which by itself probably should have kept us there to watch the end of the show, but it was way too hot and we still had a lot of standing in the sun to do.
We camped out in the shade by the Citi stage waiting to hear Gang Gang Dance, a band I didn't know much about, but from the snippets I'd head sounded decent enough to see them in an uncompetitive time slot. The Lollapalooza booklet described them as "world music" which is literally the most vague description possible. They ended up opening up with like 10-15 minutes of percussion before the lead singer even opened her mouth, but once they got going and the retro-sounding synths took over, they ended up sounding really good and a lot of the crowd got into it.
At 4:30, Vampire Weekend played a pretty good set. I've given their album like 50 spins from start to finish, so I was interested in how it would translate to a live setting and if they would play anything new. It did sound good, but was mellow enough that it didn't take all the attention away from the sweltering heat. I stuck it out, but the other people who I was with bailed for some shade, and I became 'that guy' listening to them by myself. It was all good though, and their show didn't disappoint. They only played one new song if I'm not mistaken, but it was a forgettable one. Sadly, my hopes of a Discovery song (the side project between VW's keyboardist and Ra Ra Riot's lead singer) didn't happen.
Luckily, VW ended with enough time to for me to check out a good portion of Passion Pit's set back at the Citi stage. The street was absolutely packed for this show and it seemed like almost everybody was dancing. It was almost surreal to see the crowd move like it did for the 35 or so minutes I was there. This made it the show of the day... even if a busted drum pedal delayed the show for 5 minutes, everything sounded great and came at a perfect time to perk the crowd up for the last few hours of the festival.
At 7, Snoop came on at the Chicago 2016 stage and gave the crowd plenty of "fuck the po-lice" and "when I saw say 'snoop' you say 'dog'" shenanigans. Basically it was a lot of chanting with a few hip hop songs mixed in. After the show was over I realized he only played like 6 songs, but I, and the rest of the crowd, was happy to get the Snoop Dogg experience.
The Killers closed out the fest with a flashy show that was definitely better than their performance at the UIC Pavillion over the winter. I jotted down a lot of notes about their show, and I'm going to write about it in my last Lolla post.
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