Rock The Garden 2009

Rock the Garden, held on the grounds of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in late June, is a unique kind of music festival.  A one-day event hosted by local public radio station The Current in collaboration with the Walker, it’s a short but sweet lineup of four bands representing a small cross section of the station’s eclectic playlists.  Last year’s inaugural run featured the stellar lineup of Bon Iver, Cloud Cult, New Pornographers, and Andrew Bird, but was slightly marred by a dubious stage setup, which left the audience crammed up against concessions.

This past Saturday, around 8,000 people showed up on a hot and sunny afternoon for this year’s sold out event, featuring local “it” band Solid Gold, Yeasayer, Calexico, and The Decemberists.  This year the show runners wisely turned the stage 90 degrees, making full use of the grassy amphitheatre-like hill behind the Walker and a much more comfortable viewing experience.  The weather was fantastic, the crowd was game, and the talent, for the most part, did not disappoint.

Quickly:

Solid Gold

*MP3: Solid Gold - “Armored Cars”

Solid Gold do a dance rock hybrid, and they do it pretty well.  Looking like models from an Urban Outfitters ad,  the band played their usual tight set and got the crowd moving.  They then boarded a 24-karat-gold jet to Ibiza.  Solid gone.

Yeasayer

*MP3: Yeasayer - “Sunrise”

Looking like more models from an Urban Outfitters ad, Yeasayer picked up the Solid Gold vibe and dirtied it up a bit with their peculiar brand folk-tronic phsychedelia.  The band played cuts from All Hour Cymbals as well as some new tunes which promised more complication for the band’s sophomore LP. Their drummer is amazing.

Calexico

*MP3: Calexico - “Cruel”

Calexico is a band that shows up to play and plays well, but their Southwestern sound isn’t always the most immediate.  Replete with dual trumpets, steel guitar, and accordion, the band eased the passing of the day’s sun with darkly evocative tunes from their latest, Carried to Dust, as well as some deeper cuts from the their long career.  Still, the appreciative audience was mostly subdued, and though frontman Joey Burns tried to get everyone going with some call and response, and the band got feet and hands moving with some Latin rhythms and a cover of The Minutemen’s “Jesus and Tequila”, the crowd was mostly content to let the band’s sound be a smoldering lead-up to the night’s top guest.

The Decemberists

*MP3: The Decemberists - “The Queen’s Rebuke”

Calexico turned out to be a perfect lead-in to The Decemberists, the dual full-band, folk-tinged sound of each complimenting each other well (Burns dedicated a song featuring accordion to The Decemberists).  As cool night fell and the city lights went up, The Decemberists took to the stage and performed their new album, The Hazards of Love, straight through in its entirety.  I have always found the band’s Vaudevillian folk act to be slightly too precious, Colin Meloy’s voice slightly too grating, but on a beautiful Twin Cities night, the band showed muscle, heart, and class, finishing their set with an encore of old hits and a cover of Heart’s “Crazy on You,” featuring the stellar vocals of My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden.  The band’s stage show felt more like drama club than folk rock at times (the white-veiled female vocalist with the hippie gyrations and choral voice was a creepy addition), but the band played well.  Meloy cavorted with the audience in the encore, at one point dividing the audience into “quadrants” for a choral singalong.  “Quadrants—that’s not a very rock and roll thing to say,” he said, “but it will suffice.”  To a crowd of hipsters, geeks, chads, and middle-agers alike, it did.

There was talk of this year’s bill being inferior to last year’s, but the show delivered and seemed satisfying for most people, and The Current and the Walker did a fine job of setting up a festival configuration that will hopefully last and keep bringing in unique acts to the hill just above the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden for years to come.   

And we apologize for the lack of up-close band photos.  Our photographer got on Solid Gold’s jet and we haven’t heard from her since.

(Erik Martz/Alyssa Kleven)