Photo: Busacca/Getty
Is there any sight that warms the heart of a rock band more than a sea of upraised middle fingers? That’s the scene that greeted recently reformed British shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine midway through their Saturday night set at All Points West Festival in New Jersey’s Liberty State Park.
(Photos live from All Points West: My Bloody Valentine, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and more.)
Though the gesture was mainly the response of impatient Tool fans reacting viscerally to My Bloody Valentine’s measured, enveloping music, it also handily summed up the mood of the day, one where a lion’s share of the music could be characterized by either ticked-off or tempestuous. If All Points West was a trilogy, Saturday would be its darker second installment.
(Read our report on Tool’s Day Two headlining set here.)
The clear skies and blazing sun were a welcome respite from Friday’s torrents of rain, but large expanses of thick, gooey mud and large pools of collected rainwater still made traipsing the festival grounds a singularly unpleasant experience. By the end of the day one of the larger patches of mud was spotted with several pairs of abandoned flip-flops, helpless victims of the greedy muck.
In theory, Saturday’s roster made a strange kind of sense: Tool are no one’s idea of a conventional metal band, so placing them at the end of a day filled with artists known for their sonic restlessness should have allowed for a welcome dismantling of musical borders. But instead of a warm musical reciprocity, what occurred mostly was separation. Liberty State Park was suspiciously underpopulated for most of the day, most of the acts being g...
Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily