Riot Fest 2019
Douglas Park // Chicago, IL // September 13th – 15th
Photos by Kendra Petersen Kamp // Review by Jordan Petersen Kamp
The fifteenth annual Riot Fest took place in Douglas Park in Chicago last weekend.
Known for its punk, metal, and hardcore lineups, Riot Fest is like a World’s Fair for the globe-sized bubble of rock music—it even features a ferris wheel.
Heavy music can be thought of a million different ways. People spend so much time arguing about what’s metal, what’s hardcore, what’s alternative; who’s real, who’s not. It’s part of the fun— there’s a thousand different legends making up the detritus whole of “rock music.” This also means there’s a thousand different subcultures, each one deeply rooted. Riot Fest aims to pack as many of these legends and subcultures as possible into one park, across five stages, for an entire weekend.
Angel Du$t
Caroline Rose
Dashboard Confessional
Flaming Lips
Mat Kerekes
Senses Fail
Yours Truly
Early Saturday saw sets from The Hu and Lando Chill. “Do you feel that bass busting through your sternum? That’s your purpose calling,” announced Lando Chill during his set at the Radicals stage with a grandiosity fitting of this particular festival. Lando Chill makes hip-hop music that incorporates indie-rock and dub influences into a jittery, trance-like blend. The Chicago-born MC has complete control during his performances, shifting from breezy to vindictive in an instant. The Hu is a metal band that uses traditional Mongolian folk instruments and vocal styles to make music that is powerful and marching. The band showed up to their set on the Riot stage in full leather suits on an 80 degree day. It ruled.
Lando Chill
The Hu
Grandson
Cherry Glazerr performed on the Rise stage mid-afternoon on Saturday, playing songs from their 2019 album Stuffed & Ready. The band sat on the more indie rock side of the festival lineup, along with bands like Surfer Blood and Skating Polly, who performed on Sunday. All of these bands played music with fuzzed-out riffs and off-kilter pop appeal rather than the driving power chords of some of the heavier music on the festival bill. Kelli Mayo, bassist and vocalist for Skating Polly, had “Ugly Pop” written on her bass in sharpie; it was beautiful.
Cherry Glazerr
Surfer Blood
Of all the bands on the rise at Riot Fest, Turnstile’s set on the Roots stage felt the most electric. The Baltimore band is the pulse of where hardcore is going. Their music is as heavy and fast as anyone’s, but underneath there’s an unapologetic spirit of fun. Frontman Brendan Yates danced as if he was alone listening to dance music in his bedroom, all of his limbs willowy and free. Make no mistake, Turnstile makes party music; their songs are bops. (If their party music doesn’t suit you, it’s ok; Andrew W.K. played as well). As my friend Kendra Larsen once said: “I feel like Turnstile and Carly Rae Jensen have the same energy.”
Turnstile
Andrew W.K.
Fresh off the release of their new album Death is a Warm Blanket, the Atlanta band Microwave performed Saturday on the Rebel stage. Microwave’s music is heavy in all possible ways, as sludgy guitars propel frontman Nathan Hardy’s lyrics about dissolutions of hope and the resulting degradation in physical and mental health. Hardy can switch between singing and raw-throat yelling as quickly as a guitarist can hit the switch on a gain pedal, and the sets shifts from delicate to overwhelming were swift and effective. The set was heavy, huge, pummeling— every adjective a set from a band like this should be.
Microwave
Manchester Orchestra
Later on Saturday, fellow Atlantans Manchester Orchestra performed on the Rise stage. They began their set with two of their heaviest songs, both from Mean Everything to Nothing, an album they are touring in full later this year for its 10th year anniversary. The band sounded tight and focused despite minor sound issues as they pulled from their latest album A Black Mile to the Surface and older album like 2011’s Simple Math and their 2006 debut I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child.
PVRIS
Turnover
Wu-Tang Clan
The late-afternoon portions of the festival lineup were populated by a niche of hard rock bands that are still factored into modern-rock radio and feel less specific to a subculture than other bands at the festival. Chicago natives Rise Against performed on Saturday while Against Me! performed in a similar slot Sunday. Both bands drew large crowds of people ready to sing and head bang along to anthems that sounded ready-made for a festival like this.
Against Me!
American Football
Amongst so much music, it was also nice to see portions of sets from music that is so specific in its appeal and development, a baseline purpose is instantly understandable— bands where you know exactly what you’re going to get if you weren’t up for peeling back layers for nuance. Anthrax was fast and heavy. Village People were disco. Save Ferris was ska. Gwar was gross.
Village People
Beaches
Many of the legends at Riot Fest have been around long enough to develop into traditions. The festival always features sets from bands who are reuniting, saying farewell or performing a beloved album in full. On Saturday, British indie-rock band Bloc Party played their 2004 debut Silent Alarm in the secondary headlining slot at the same time that Slayer played their final set in Chicago as part of their farewell tour. Other album performances included Blink-182 playing Enema of the State, Taking Back Sunday playing Tell All Your Friends and Louder Now, Ween playing The Mollusk and so on and so on.
Blink-182
Street Light Manifesto
Bloc Party added some (non-moshing) dance-ability to festival lineup that had been mostly absent before that point (more of that would come from Village People the following day). Their inclusion in the setlist hinted at a set of legends and mythology around garage and post-punk inspired rock that was in vogue in the mid-2000s. Lots of attendees of Riot Fest likely find this era of music pretentious, but after a long day it was nice to see a set from a band that is perhaps a little more skeptical of guitar solos.
Bloc Party
The Raconteurs
There’s an outlook on Riot Fest that looks at its lineup and penchant for different types of Big Rock Moments as a way to fit a bunch of different target markets into one place—each set a soundtrack to a different beer commercial. Do you like IPAs or Old Style? Did you watch Bloc Party or Slayer? Perhaps there’s validity to this outlook; the way we know how to engage with art is virtually inseparable from who we are as consumers. But Riot Fest seems more aware of this than most festivals, and does a better job at cutting through it. For one, it crosses the low bar of actually booking women but not patting itself on the back too much for doing so. The Riot stage featured acts entirely fronted by women on Sunday, from Skating Polly to Against Me! to Patti Smith and ending with headliners Bikini Kill.
Skating Polly
Patti Smith
Bikini Kill
I think this awareness is why so many people wore t-shirts with the Hi, How Are You album art to commemorate the recently deceased Lo-Fi artist Daniel Johnston throughout the weekend. There’s an understanding that Riot Fest is a context where people care about styles of music that other people don’t and that they care about them in a way that is special. People knew that wearing that shirt at Riot Fest meant something more than it does outside Douglas Park on September 13-15, 2019.
It took a commercial superstar like Kurt Cobain wearing a Hi, How Are You shirt to get most people who know about Daniel Johnston to care in the first place, but that doesn’t diminish how much people care.
Maybe Riot Fest is not quite capital P Punk, but that doesn’t diminish what people find there.
