Concert Review: Coral Skies Music Festival

(NOTE: The Week Ahead will run on Wednesday, Oct. 29 this week)

Inventive brews and nosh, a cloudless sky, and overall positive vibes defined the inaugural Coral Skies Music Festival yesterday at Cruzan Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, a pleasant and musically varied affair from LiveNation. I attended a large mid-day chunk of the festival, sipping on Peanut Butter Apple Ale and enjoying some remarkable food-truck fair from Italian dispenser Il Fiorentino. A had to bail by around 7 to feed our dogs, sadly missing Cage the Elephant, But here are the bands I experienced. (All photos shot by Yafi Yair.)

Wild Cub got the day going with its signature chill-pop, finding the dancey nexus between synths, guitars and percussion, with no less than three drum kits leading the rhythm. Everybody in the band looked like Abercrombie models or grown-up Backstreet Boys, but we won’t hold them against them (though they apparently had an “incident” after Saturday’s show in St. Petersburg, involving some roughnecks who “didn’t like our hair”). Vocalist Keegan DeWitt couldn’t mask the noticeable gravel in his voice, which he seemed to be losing from exhaustion or sickness, but it didn’t dilute this band’s terrific live sound. The set culminated in a rousing version of Wild Cub’s breakthrough single “Thunder Clatter,” an infectious opiate against the oppressive heat.

WILD CUB SET LIST (may be missing one song)

Jonti
Hidden in the Night
Wishing Well
Wild Light
Thunder Clatter

Bleachers took the stage around 4 at the Cruzan main stage—dubbed the “Sunset Stage”—but even this seemed like too small a venue for the group’s outsized, epic sound. Another multi-drum project, the group’s set was as thunderous as it was poppy, effortlessly channeling the spirit of the most enduring ‘80s pop (think Simple Minds, Modern English) with a fast-paced, guitar-driven pulse. A faithful cover of The Cranberries’ “Dreams” was a delectable mid-set surprise, with the rest of the material drawn from the group’s exceptional debut “Strange Desire.”

Singer Jack Antonoff led the crowd with a sense of unfettered joy at being onstage, an emotion that carried over to the increasingly teeming crowd. A saxophone emerged out of nowhere as the cherry on top of “You’re Such a Mystery,” whose 10-minute, stadium-ready version might have been the highlight of the fest. And judging by the overwhelming response to set closer “I Wanna Get Better,” you’d think it was the biggest pop hit since “Royals,” and it probably should be.

BLEACHERS SET LIST

Wild Heart
Shadow
Wake Me
Reckless Love
Dreams (The Cranberries)
Rollercoaster
You’re Such a Mystery
I Wanna Get Better

Next, it was over to the makeshift “Sunrise Stage” for The Hold Steady, a cult band with arguably the deepest discography and longest shelf life of any band at the festival. An infinitesimally small audience watched the group play, which is perhaps to be expected—The Hold Steady’s audience slants older than any of these other bands, and its ironic rock has been too eccentric to really break through commercially.

Which was fine for the die-hards huddling close to the stage and shouting back every word, while frontman Craig Finn customarily sang every lyric like it was a random thought that just popped into his head—an impromptu observation he’s testing out in front of us. Too bad we didn’t get anything from the group’s groundbreaking first LP “Almost Killed Me,” but it was hard to complain about a set list that otherwise spanned the band’s decade-long oeuvre with much humor and love. Highlights like “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” and “Sequestered in Memphis” were performed with the fresh excitement of songs penned yesterday, with the band eager to share them with the like-minded.

THE HOLD STEADY SET LIST

Stuck Between Stations
I Hope This Whole Thing Didn’t Frighten You
Chips Ahoy!
Sequestered in Memphis
Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night
Spinners
The Ambassador
The Weekenders
Your Little Hoodrat Friend

10. Southtown Girls

11. Stay Positive

Back on the main stage, City and Colour closed out our night at Coral Skies as the sun mercifully took its final bow. Coming from someone who has previously been blown away by Dallas Green’s soul-bearing project, I can say with some authority that this was the biggest disappointment of the day, and the dwindling audience during their set confirmed I wasn’t alone. I don’t know if Green was simply in a sour mood, but the show was a real slog-fest, all doom and sorrow, untempered by even a sliver of hope.

The set drew heavily from City and Colour’s most recent album, “The Hurry and the Harm,” though it conspicuously ignored its best (and most up-tempo) songs, such as “Paradise,” “Commentators,” “Golden State” and the title track, settling instead on extended versions of soporific dirges; even “Fragile Bird,” from “Little Hell,” lacked its usual power. Needless to say, for a music festival crowd that craved movement, City and Colour gave us little incentive to pay attention. Appropriately enough, Green and his band members abandoned the stage without a goodbye, leaving us with a blinding strobe light to remember them by.

CITY AND COLOUR SET LIST