Bunbury - Saturday, Day Two

Day two of Bunbury was beautiful.

Civil Twilight opened for themselves Saturday morning because X Ambassadors had the infamous band van breakdown that all artists dread, and which all fans dread more. Having a double set from CT, though, and hearing new songs started off our morning hella well.

Then we lawn-hopped over to Robert DeLong, who's great live. He loops everything and makes electronic music off of game controllers like he's playing the crowd. And he goes just a little insane on a drum set. His crowds bring in some of the craziest dance moves we've ever seen, and it was a good time even with all the sun sweat on us as we danced.

Then we sat on a hill and watched Chairlift. This girl has the vocals of an opera queen but twists and turns them. It was one of the most unexpected sets of the fest. Not knowing a lot of their music made it especially fun to watch them perform and they had a lot of band chemistry.

Twenty One Pilots played on the main stage and they're kind of just nuts. The lead singer climbs rafters and does back flips off of his piano but somehow isn't out of breath for his singing or rapping. It's like it's effortless for them, but you can tell they have a hell of a good time at every show they play. Their crowd participation is great, too - they always have everyone singing and jumping, and when they tell you to jump there isn't a person out there who doesn't because they're that gripping.

Then we ran (literally, we were the dorks that ran) to see Oberhofer. They took their set out into the lawn at one point, playing guitar in the grass as people rushed over to get pictures. We've seen them a couple times before in our hometown but never at a festival, so we weren't sure how their live set would be, but it was just as good. A lot of people who had never seen them before said that was their favorite set of the weekend. They ust have a way of pulling you into their musical madness.

Then we were hungry after all of our dancing so we went and saw Cake as we ate our pretzel dinner, because it was kind of fitting. They sound exactly like their studio recordings, and it's cool to be able to hear a mix of modern music and bands you've listened to for decades at the same festival.

Divine Fits was up right after Cake. They're very guitar-focused live, so their set sounds a lot different than listening to them on CD, but they have a really good presence. Because they're members of other bands(Spoon and Wolf Parade) they know the ins and out of how to sound good and it really shows.

MGMT headlined on night two and their visual set was fantastic. It was candyland on acid, basically, and since it was nighttime all you could really see was this giant moving block of color behind the band and it was really transfixing, especially with their music in front of it. Bunbury's headlining bands are always good and make you excited for the next morning.