Australian Merge Records signees’ Cable Ties were sharply catchy and propulsive. ![]() North Carolina upstarts Doomsday Profit and Abyssal Frost both brought intricately constructed cavalcades. Metal and punk made a welcome return in the smaller rooms. The festival’s biggest room, the Lincoln Theatre, was flexed to showcase rap (Jooselord), comedy (the sharply zany and confrontational Sarah Sherman led the festival’s first-ever stand-up stage), and experimental oddities (the-hard-rock-meets-modern-classical chaos of Judge Schreber’s Avian Chor was one of my favorite surprises).Ĭomedy, in particular, became a fun and fresh through line at the festival, as acts like The Sloppy Boys and Eshu Tune, the hip-hop project from acclaimed stand-up favorite Hannibal Burress, injected laughs in the clubs and main stages, respectively. The balance also showed through in the clubs. That balance showed through on the main stages, where crowds were entertained by the still perfectly Slanted and Enchanted indie rock riffs of Pavement and the unstoppable flow and showmanship of rising rapper Denzel Curry, the old-school rock and country spectacle of Margo Price, and the perfect-for-2023 indie pop of Alvvays. Saturday, this year’s festival kept a firm foundation of established indie rock while pushing into directions that could lead into the future: Japanese Breakfast’s sweetly reverberating indie pop ably filled the festival’s other main stage in City Plaza, Raleigh rapper Jooselord lived up to his nickname “The Moshpit Messiah” as he got down into the crowd and got them jumping with gritty abandon, the party-hardy Sloppy Boys indie rock and pop into a glorious joke, and Setting’s immersive acoustic drone was a perfect end-of-night come down.īalancing what has worked for Hopscotch in the past and what will take it into the future was crucial as the festival reclaimed its full strength, four years after the 2019 festival, a year-10 blowout that brought a lot of big names but shrank the festival’s stylistic frontiers as a result. Hampered to varying degrees the past three years by the pandemic, including an all-out cancellation in 2020, the festival brought back ticketed club shows this year, programming eight indoor rooms a night to compliment its two outdoor main stages.Īnd the result of bringing back those clubs was exactly what I hoped I’d see and feel: a prismatic array of engaging sounds greeted by crowds that were consistently big and consistently excited by familiar favorites and new surprises alike.Īs with the acts I bounced around after checking out Dinosaur Jr. ![]() ![]() The best of INDY Week’s fiercely independent journalism about the Triangle delivered straight to your inbox.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |