Saturday
A late start led to day one’s bill being cut from 11 bands to only six, eliminating many sets from the earlier half of the afternoon’s lineup. This included Steele Pulse, as well as Julai and the Serotones, who performed a free show at Park City Music Hall at 12 p.m. for fans anticipating the chance to see them.
The announcement of this news led passholders to fear a repeat of last year, Sound on Sound first festival weekend, that had its fair number of typical first-time hiccups.
Energy didn’t waiver, however, when the delayed gates opened at 2:45 and music began later that afternoon.
Lord Huron brough originality to the stage with lead singer Ben Schneider, who rolled out in a brown suede cowboy hat placed atop a full-face skeleton mask. This getup, paired with a suit jacket and solid white button up, left no competition in the running for day one’s top outfit.
The evening ended with a rowdy performance from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who used every moment of their set to amp up the crowd and bring their trademark energy to the max. You would never be able to tell that the people that spanned the mud beyond the stage had been standing there all afternoon.
Each section was packed to its absolute limit, but fans still found ways to keep their motion up to match the Chili Peppers until their final song. The crowd was rowdy, the stage was loud and it was a wonder that anyone standing out there had the energy to be back at the gates by 11 a.m. the next morning.
Sunday
The sun finally cleared in time for Snacktime to flood the stage with modern jazz and reggae sounds. The Philadelphia-based group came with full energy, waking up the crowd that had just barely walked through the doors.
Charm was the theme of the morning as Calder Allen from Austin, TX took to the stage to heat it up with some country before leading way to the Gin Blossoms. This group took the crowd back to the mid-‘90s through the early 2000s with their classic soft rock hits. Lead singer Robin Wilson commanded the space while the rest of the group shredded it from opening note to stage exit.
Cautious Clay kicked off their set with some unfortunate heart-stopping bass that drowned those within the first few rows from the barricade. Once that died down, their fluid vocals were granted the opportunity to shine through. The band’s sound was very dynamic, pulling from backgrounds of different genres from African style to lose indie to complete their set.
Margot Price has a voice that reached the very outskirts of Seaside, managing for her vocals to be just as crisp by the exit gates as they were from the front of VIP. Once she hit the stage, the crowd really started packing in.
Her connection to the stage was deepened further by her decision to perform her set barefoot. Price was incredibly dynamic, not only dancing freely across the entire setup, but taking her turns at instruments ranging from her acoustic guitar to time in her drummer’s seat. The set ended with Price tossing roses into the crowd, her band flooding the stage with a chaotic whirlwind of sound until she ran offstage.
Mt. Joy took psychedelic indie to its greatest heights with smooth instrumentals and hard-hitting vocals. Their background graphics transformed their entire set, taking the coast of the Long Island Sound and converting it to their personal hypnotic pocket of the beach. Deep, heavy swirls of purple and orange served as a backdrop to the evidently deep connection that the band held to their music. This was replaced with some impressive retro scenes that included pulsing nebulas, trippy cars and an assembly of explosions and planets in an ebb-and-flow around them.
They played some of their bigger hits, including “Astrovan,” as well as some of their more niche songs for true fans who showed out to Bridgeport for their set.
After some uneventful sets from Dispatch and Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, it was time for the final three acts of the weekend.
Hozier had the barricade lined with fans decked out in his personal merchandise. He opened his set with a duality of his old and new sound that drew emotion out of those that had watched him grow from subway performances to MSG over the last ten years. He entered to “De Selby (Part 2)” from his newest album, “Unreal Unearth,” which just dropped mid-August.
Hozier immediately followed this up with “Jackie and Wilson” from his self-titled album, which came out in 2014.
The rest of his time onstage fared similarly, the crowd hearing everything from “Francesca” off of his latest to “Cherry Wine” from his very first days as a musician.
The weekend saw a near-full moon overlooking the festival stage, but somehow this wasn’t the only one illuminating Seaside Park. During “Cherry Wine,” Hozier had a dramatic bloodmoon transition from a mere crescent to a full moon, and by the end of the song melted back from a full moon to its original waning form.
Those in the front row were teary-eyed and gripping the metal barricade, swayed by the movement of Hozier’s lyrics and angelic vocals.
Even after his set ended, his energy lingered and drew in an even bigger crowd until Alanis Morissette’s set began.
Before the singer stepped foot before the crowd, the stage rolled through a dynamic highlight reel of Morissete’s career. It laid the foundation for her actual set, which has the entire crowd dancing as if they were the only pockets of people in the venue.
She swayed around stage playing classics that everyone knew (even without realizing it, such as “Ironic.”
Her set, despite being over an hour, was one that seemingly came and went in the blink of an eye.
The weekend closed out with John Mayer, an American household name for actual fans and Taylor Swift stans alike.
The weekend’s lineup truly appealed to a wide range of generations in attendance, making the event fit to feel personally-catered to every face in the 35,000-person daily crowd.
Beyond the music
Even past the viewing areas of Sound on Sound, the Park was flooded with energy and a powerful sense of community. Surrounding the ferris wheel whose line didn’t waiver once, local charities and a wide range of food trucks drew crowds throughout the weekend.
Be the Match, a blood cancer donation charity, was joined by Make-a-Wish, Life Bridge CT (with 168 years of social services) and a collection of other charities.
Food trucks served everything from vegan wraps and smoothies, to hamburgers and hot dogs, to tacos and breakfast sandwiches. As long as you had half an hour to spare in line, festival goers were guaranteed to be fueled from the peak heat of the afternoon, well beyond sundown nearing midnight.
Sound on Sound saw couples weaving between people camped out on crowded collections of blankets in the mud. It saw people ruining white sneakers to sink into mud waiting for their favorite artists to come out. It saw kids in noise-canceling headphones too big for their head, resting on their parents’ shoulders. Sound on Sound saw the potential of major music events rooting themselves in Connecticut, and we should all be here for it.
