Day Four
Musicfest NW 2011
by Justin Patterson and Joshua Cooke
Early Saturday evening, Pioneer Courthouse Square played host to Portland’s currently fastest rising band, Typhoon. Beyond the obvious “damn, there are a lot of members,” Typhoon is amazing songwriting, magically melodic, and simply well worth your time to listen to. Playing their biggest show since returning from their first-ever East Coast tour (which included Lollapalooza and the Late Show with David Letterman), they sounded even better than when they left. The band alternated between songs from The Hunger and Thirst LP and the new EP, A New Kind of Home. “Summer Home” was a set stand out and, adding something different, they performed “Kitchen Tiles” as all members lined the front of the stage to end the show.
Late Saturday night, another huge crowd gathered at Dante’s. DJ Beyonda was winding down with some deep electro, and the crowd began to change faces as Big Freedia‘s entrance neared. Suddenly, there was music. A slender brunette in a tight, shiny gold dress was undulating atop a backlit moving dance floor in the front doorway. The contraption, which appeared to be a modified ice cream cart with a glass top and large speakers on the side, was slowly being pushed through the mass of people while pushing out one of Freedia’s songs. Just as it stopped close to the stage and was in the final stages of dispensing its glorious ruckus to the crowd, the big speakers overhead began pumping out the deep bass kick of the very same song. Big Freedia busted onto the stage, and then there were happily shaking booties (“bounce,” the New Orleans dance style) and huge hip hop beats everywhere. It was a crazy mess of bounce that nobody cleaned up all night. And why would you? With her aggressively charismatic style and huge crowd involvement, Big Freedia, “The Queen Diva,” absolutely owned the night. And in her house, big soul and big fun rule.
