Dan Bejar – Showbams

17 reasons to rage in the bay at Treasure Island Fest 2014

Photos by Marc Fong // Written by Mike Frash, Molly Kish, Kevin Quandt and Marc Fong //

Treasure Island Music Festival //
Treasure Island – San Francisco
October 18th-19th, 2014 //

The Festival in the Bay returns this weekend with its progressive mix of indie rock, electronic/dance, hip-hop and (now) soul. Treasure Island Music Festival is always adept at curating under-card acts that are in the process of emerging into collective consciousness while crowning the bill with well-known musical entities that most independent-minded music fans will enjoy.

View the full schedule. Tickets are still available (for now), and you can buy them here.

Here are 17 reasons why you should rage in the Bay at TIMF this weekend.

BONUS CONTEST: Enter below to rock The Bold Italic’s party boat to & from TIMF for FREE!

17. Not familiar with every act on the bill? Well, that’s half the fun at these contemporary music festivals, as your next favorite band is just waiting to be discovered.

16. Discover why Janelle Monáe is a headliner of the (very near) future. She’ll likely join OutKast as well, more specifically Big Boi, for their collaboration “Tightrope”. This treat was only viewed by a handful of crowds on the reunion tour, including during Coachella Weekend 1 and at OutKast’s hometown spectacular in Atlanta last month.

15. Jean-Philip Grobler and company put on breathtaking performances as St. Lucia. The Brooklyn-based band has a familiar electro sound, but simultaneously has a playfulness that will wonderfully fit with the TIMF crowd.

14. Stumbling across the Silent Disco, tucked away in the eastern corner of the festival ground, can be a surreal experience. Filled with festival crowds of anywhere between 20-200 people, this TIMF staple allows DJs to perform through Wi-Fi-enabled headphones that are passed out to festivalgoers as they enter the designated dance space.

13. Poliça is must-see music at TIMF. Their dark synth will fit ideally with the setting of the music-infused October sun. Channy Leaneagh’s haunting vocals are fantastic live and are not to be missed. Get close for this one.

12. Carl Newman’s outfit The New Pornographers can easily be classified as a supergroup — Destroyer’s Dan Bejar and the lovely Neko Case heavily contributed to their wonderful 2014 album Brill Bruisers — and you can watch them all perform in the flesh at TIMF.

11. TIMF is one of the most unique festival locations around, and it gives way to even more creative ways to get on and off the island. TIMF offers an extremely convenient and free shuttle service between the island and a main point of transit at the City’s Civic Center. Or you could book a party bus or ride The Bold Italic’s party boat! (Enter below to win free tickets to Rock The Boat)

10. One of our favorites, White Denim, will take to the Bridge Stage early on Sunday for their mind-melting prog rock. Along with Cathedrals, Bleached and Ásgeir, there are lots of musical reasons to get to the island early on Day 2.

9. We finally get the return of the UK-based, modern funk collective that goes by the wild name of Jungle. Bursting from the seams a few months ago, these guys have taken the festival circuit by storm, igniting stages and crowds with an incendiary stage presence coupled with devastatingly catchy tracks off their debut LP. Dancing shoes? CHECK!

8. Ana Tijoux isn’t super popular yet in Northern California, and her lyrics are in Spanish, but none of that matters. Her MC skills are impacting, and her production straddles multiple genres, including hip-hop and soul. Expect this to be a standout performance on Saturday.

7. Convenience is key when it comes to keeping festival crowds satisfied, and TIMF spares no expense in that matter. Easy navigation between stages, ample access to bathrooms, food/beverage vendors and helpful on-site staff members work together to elevate the flow of the festival experience.

6. It’s been a while since the Bay Area has seen TV On The Radio, and hopefully these gritty indie rock geniuses will play some tracks off their upcoming album Seeds. TVOTR has no better place than TIMF to give us a taste of things to come.

5. This will be alt-J‘s first performance in the area in support of their second album, and we’re sure to hear all the exciting new songs off of This Is All Yours (Read our community review here). Ready to sing some Miley samples?

4. Landing Massive Attack to headline Sunday is a mondo feat for Noise Pop and APE Entertainment — 3D and Daddy G will playing their only 2014 U.S. festival at TIMF (and only two other shows in the U.S. this year). The electronic duo might normally be a Saturday headliner, but we get to finalize an action-packed Sunday with these influential trip-hop legends.

3. No set conflicts means no stress, no making tough festival decisions and no missing out on an act you love. You get to see everything.

2. The “Summer of OutKast” is coming to a close as Bay Area fans will bear witness to what is expected to be their third-to-last performance ever. Did ya hear us on that one? Big Boi and Dre have pretty clearly stated that this is it, so there’s little reason for any fan to miss this banner, headlining performance.

1. It’s on an island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. ‘Nuff said.

ROCK THE BOAT TICKET CONTEST

For the 2014 installment of Rock the Boat, our friends at The Bold Italic have teamed up with Hornblower Cruises & Events to rent out the San Francisco Spirit luxury yacht, equipped with a full bar and live entertainment provided by premiere Bay Area DJs to get you to and from TIMF like a boss. For a full lineup and more details on the trip, click here and enter below for your chance to win a weekend pass aboard the party boat courtesy of Showbams.

Fill out your full name and email address below.
Contest ends Thursday at 4 p.m. The winner will be picked at random and notified by email on Thursday. Your email will be kept private –- we will share your email with no one.

Like Showbams on Facebook and follow Showbams on Twitter to be eligible to win.

Photos by James Nagel // Written by Mike Frash

Destroyer frontman and founder Dan Bejar brought his sparse, solo acoustic interpretation of the Canadian indie act’s music to the Independent Monday (November 4) presented by Noise Pop, and the show did not disappoint. Volume-wise, it was a hushed show, to the point where the success of it relied on rapturous immersion over talking or walking to the bar for more drinks.

Bejar mapped out a simple routine. He would play a song, bow, move to his drink stool to quench his thirst, reposition his moppy hair then repeat. The crowd mimicked Bejar in his restraint when he performed, giving the quietest moments their low-fidelity due. In fact, the audience was so mesmerized and respectful that it inspired beer-drop silence — late in the show, a mesmerized fan slowly spilled his drink onto the floor of the venue for about three seconds by accident, humorously gaining quick glances from those around him.

The stripped down performance spanned Destroyer’s discography, but many of the songs in the setlist were from Destroyer’s most successful album, 2011’s Kaputt. Take away the drums and saxophone, and unsurprisingly the tone of songs like “Chinatown” and “Savage Night at the Opera” transform into something more cerebral and grim. Destroyer’s vocals and lyrics became the focal point of the performance and the pace of the music slowed down, mutating the cuts into subdued tunes that made them feel more reflective and sad than the full band versions.

Stage banter was almost non-existent, except for a “two-song-left” end of show warning and the introduction to “The Chosen Few”, a song from Destroyer’s 2002 LP, This Night. Bejar said, “This is from when I was bit younger and a bit angrier. Still I wasn’t that angry.” The slowed down focus on the lyrics hit home one of Destroyer’s central themes that our best days are behind us.

Destroyer’s bitter, post-ironic lyrics become more obvious with only simple guitar chords coalescing with Bejar’s voice. “My Favorite Year” and “European Oils” exemplified how poetic yet fractured Destroyer’s music is — these songs can be taken either literally or figuratively in nature, or perhaps even a combination of the two is apt.

It’s a bit odd Bejar chose a solo acoustic tour to support Destroyer’s upcoming Five Spanish Songs EP — the record covers Spanish language songs from Antonio Luque of the band Sr. Chinarro. To explain why the new material is en Español, Bejar has written:

It was 2013. The English language seemed spent, despicable, not easily singable. It felt over for English; good for business transactions, but that’s about it.

So Bejar shows disdain for his native language, yet he has chosen a method of musical exhibition that puts all attention on his English vocals. There may be a disconnect here, but it’s one that makes for a magnificent show.