By Jon Stone | @jwstone

Day two here in Manchester was absolutely fantastic. I think on Friday, everyone starts finding a groove, figures out how to navigate the farm, makes a couple of friends, and – if the typical Bonnarooian is anything like me, hears some favorites on stage. Today three of my favorite bands – played. Almost back to back. I have a feeling I’ll be talking about much of what happened today for a long time—meeting both Bob Boilen (of NPR Music’s All Songs Considered) and Matt Berninger (of the National), for example. Incredible. What a day.

One thing I stressed a lot about before getting here was coping with missing bands because of conflicts. While this is an inevitability, Bonnarro is set up much better than other festivals I’ve been to (Lollapollooza, Newport Folk) to bounce between stages. It’s a little like a live mixtape, or deli tray or whatever– you can hear a few She & Him songs, for example, and be on your way to hear the National. No big loss. And it’s only a five minute walk from one place to the next. Catching one or two songs of a band is sometimes a perfect introduction.

Here’s a quick rundown, of who I heard and what I thought on Friday:

11:30 – Dr. Dog: acoustic set in the press tent. I kind of stumbled into this, as Dr. Dog played for the press assembled for an orientation. They played three or four songs on acoustic guitar, banjo, and steel resonator. Suitcases were banged on with floor pedals and, I think, they made fans of everyone there as soon as they opened their mouths to sing the first three-part harmony chorus. It was my first time seeing them, and that was surely the case for me.

12:00 – Trombone Shorty: As I mention above, sometimes Bonnaroo is best approached as a sampler – I caught the opening song as I walked from the press area to what would be the bluegrass tent for much of the day. Funky! Great horns (that’s the whole point, right?), really groovy wah-wah guitar, and I was dancing as I made my way past.

12:15 – Punch Brothers: Chris Thile’s band is my favorite bluegrass act playing right now, and probably in my top five favorite bands period. Thile has great stage presence –quipping easy one-liners between songs and what a crowd! I loved that there was so many fans there – we nearly filled the tent. They played songs off of all three records and drew heavily from their new record Antifogmatic (which comes out Tuesday and is great, by the way). The best thing about Punch Brothers is that they make technical and masterful playing look spontaneous. The set also included several covers, including “Reptilia” from the Strokes and Radiohead’s “Morning Bell.”

1:20 – Jill Andrews: I missed Jill Andrews when she came through Champaign and immediately regretted it. She played a small stage under a tent, café style with tables and chairs and presented the perfect moment to sit, chill out a bit and eat my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Jill offers a lovely combination of country infused folk, and I can’t wait until her first record. I couldn’t wait so much that I picked up her EP on my way out the tent.

3:00 – Punch Brothers pt. II: Sorry—I can’t get enough of these guys and jumped at a chance to see them  playing again at the smaller “Sonic” stage. It ended up being an ironic name because the set was marred with audio difficulties, forcing the band to gather old-time like around a single microphone in the middle. They didn’t play any repeats, and I was lucky enough to hear them play their version of Radiohead’s “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” – and while the sound problems kept it from sounding as good as it could have, I am still amazed at the way they imitate all those Thom Yorke percussive taps and pops with various parts of their acoustic instruments. Brilliant.

4:00 – Hot Rize from the Chase Lounge: My brother has access to this little non-descript tent they’re calling the Chase Freedom Lounge. It’s for Chase card-holders only and they pipe in video feed from two stages, have lemonade, computers, clean bathrooms – it’s a freaking oasis. We sat and watched Sugar Hill’s incredible veterans of bluegrass joke and jibe their way through a country/bluegrass set . . . in the air conditioning. It almost felt like a sin. Almost.

4:30 – Dr. Dog, regular set: I was so impressed by the earlier set from Dr. Dog that I was anxious to see them again. Their main-stage set ended up being completely different than the morning stuff and showed the versatility of this really great band. I really enjoyed the dirty rock sound countered with sweet Hammond organ and great vocal sound, from both lead singers. I came to Bonnaroo having listened casually to Dr. Dog and will leave excited to see them again and explore their records more intently. This is what festivals should do.

5:00 – She and Him: I really just wanted to catch a glimpse of Zooey and Matt before moving across the farm to get a good spot for the National. They had the biggest crowd assembled that I had yet seen, and I think that this is due to both Zooey’s star power/name recognition, but also to the relative universal appeal of her sunshiny pop. When she (and him) came out she danced through their first song and I was glad that brings a decent presence to her stage, rather than just standing and singing. (It would be great if M. Ward shows up somewhere else today or tomorrow playing, but I doubt it’s gonna happen)

5:45 – The National: Wow, what a set. The crowd wondered out loud if Matt would take the stage as per usual in a suit. When he came out wearing a dress vest, we grinned. It came off after the second song. We grinned again. The National is tough to sum up in a little log blurb like this, so here are a few highlights:

• Matt found his way into the crowd on three separate occasions.
• He tossed his wine glass to the audience early in the set, only to ask for it back, fill it again and then supervise its return to the person who caught it.
• They played a long set, covering songs from their entire catalog with a healthy chunk coming off of High Violet.

It was a great show. Love that band.

7:30 – Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers: I tweeted about how crazy it was to go from the National to Steve Martin. Only at Bonnaroo could such emotional sonic opposites be encountered within minutes of each other. It was fun to see Steve Martin, to play along with his shtick, and enjoy his amazing back-up band. Martin can really play that banjo (it’s not just a gimmick! The Grammy was [probably] justified!]. At one point he talked about how he’s shooting a moive with Jack Black right now and then Jack Black himself, fresh off his Tenacious D set, stuck his head out from back-stage. The crowd went nuts.

8:30 – Dawes: And the awesome music just kept coming. Dawes blew me away once again. Instead of playing to a crowd of Edward Sharpe fans like they were last week when I saw them, this time they were playing to a small but intensely devoted group of their fans. It made such a difference. Everybody was singing along, dancing, and having an amazing time. They closed the set with a really sweet song with the repeated refrain, “I’ve got a feeling it’s gonna be alright” and brought out members of the Magnetic Zeros for support. Notably, Jade and Taylor sang the chorus arm in arm. It was awesome. Dawes is very quickly becoming my favorite band of the moment and I make no apologies for going to see them again today in about an hour on that same small Sonic stage I mentioned before.

After Dawes I made my way back to the camping area to get some dinner, get cleaned up, and sit down for a while. Kings of Leon played a set to what was surely most of Bonnaroo and I was, frankly, happy to miss it.

We went back at midnight to see the Black Keys, and watched about half of their set. It was alright. I love that huge guitar sound, but – and this comes after spending several weeks listening to the records almost exclusively – the set got a bit repetitive and after being wowed by Dawes and the National, it was tough to stick around. We wandered a bit more, saw the massive (and I mean massive) crowd assembled to watch the Flaming Lips spectacle and made our way back to crash. What a day.

Today is going to great too. Hoping to catch Mumford & Sons, a bit of the Avett Brothers, Dave Rawlings Machine(!), and of course the mighty Stevie Wonder. Here we go!

By Jon Stone | @jwstone

(An alternate title here might be: “She & Him: The Only Essay You’ll Read that Makes Zooey Deschanel into a Pioneer for Sexual Politics in Music.”)

Before I knew who she was, I heard Zooey Deschanel sing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” in what I think is the best scene in Will Ferrell’s Elf. It kind of comes out of nowhere. She plays this grumpy, brooding, alterna-blonde who is, all of a sudden, in the shower singing her heart out. It’s a sweet and then hilarious moment and reveals, I think, Deschanel underneath the character that she plays and in doing so creates an expectations paradox for those of us who were, immediately, fans.

Let me try and explain what I mean…

That paradox is deep-seated in what I see as our typical expectations of what the modern female pop artist looks and sounds like. Post-WWII America and the sexual revolution that followed created an environment where, for the first time, female pop stars began to find a more welcome place as independent artists in the music industry. As such, these artists had to figure out ways to prove themselves — to establish their artistic credibility — and what then was a necessary attitude for survival has now become a fairly evident tradition.  That “proof” as it existed then and now takes various shapes, from up-front sexuality, to brash politicization,  and from a laid back devil-may-care posturing to the ever-popular, pissed-off, angsty cynic. And while surely all female artists don’t fit into these categories, these, I think, have become the norms. (I’m choosing not to site specific examples here — but I’m sure you can easily think of artists who fit one or several of the categories. You’ll also likely think of exceptions. Drop a comment below with a response to my argument here — I’d love to get some responses to these ideas).

With this in mind, I’ve thought a lot about people’s reactions to She & Him. Almost universally people like it, but not without some kind of asterisk. “It’s good but not great” or “It took me some time, but eventually, I really started to like it.” My reaction was no different. In fact, as you’ll read below, I’m still in that place with this newest record. But as I listened to both records several times over the last few days, a possible reason for the asterisk occurred to me. I think when Volume One came out, we were all expecting a Jenny Lewis and M. Ward record. We knew and were comfortable with that scene — with the Jenny Lewis musical trope of chip-on-my-shoulder cynicism. Lewis’s Rabbit Fur Coat (w/ the phenomenal Watson Twins) remains one of my favorites, and had come out a few years earlier and like Deschanel’s Elf character, Lewis broods and smolders like a cigarette. I like that stuff; I’m used to that stuff. She & Him are not that stuff. Thus the paradox.

Volume One entered this modern musical discourse in opposition and even negation to these norms. It wasn’t just different musically, it was different ideologically. Trying to put my finger this difference, it dawned on me that She & Him records are completely devoid of cynicism. I mean, their sunniness is indisputable, but if you listen to the songs it’s more than sunniness — there is a refusal on these records to fulfill the norms I talk about above. Sure, a She & Him record is a bit like tuning into a golden (really golden) oldies station and not changing the channel for an hour (something I never do), but I think there is actually something semi-revolutionary going on here. Zooey (with Matt) delivers her unabashedly sunny records without self-consciousness, without the now-standard “indie” guile, indeed, with (gasp) earnestness.

If you think about it, especially recently, it is this earnestness that we find so appealing and endearing in our male artist counterparts. Bon Iver is the easiest example to point to here, but think even of the difference between M. Ward and his often-partner Connor Oberst. Ward comes at his work in an almost quiet and humble way, seeking in his now-trademark way, to both make great music and preserve parts of a historical tradition that he identifies with. Oberst tries to do a similar thing, but is less successful in the end, I think, because of his inability to not make the records about him and his cynicism. She & Him operate in an nearly-analogous, history-preserving, earnest arena. We’ve had female artists such as Amy Winehouse do this in the past, but She & Him do it with unrelenting class.

All that said, this is supposed to be a review of the new record, Volume Two, and honestly, I don’t think it is quite as successful as its predecessor.  The song writing isn’t as strong and consistent, and though it maintains this earnestness that I am so interested in, it doesn’t really do it in new or interesting ways. Don’t get me wrong, it is  a good record — very enjoyable (sound a bit like what I was talking about above?) but it is less a volume 2 and more a part 2 — the second half of the first record, or even, occasionally, the unreleased b-sides that didn’t quite make the record (see “Over It Over Again”). There are exceptions to this critique — the single “In the Sun” (see above) is interesting and fun, but maybe not much beyond Volume One‘s “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here.” Also, I quite like the duet “Ridin’ in My Car (NRBQ).” The only real departure that I hear on the new record is the last song “If You Can’t Sleep” a reverby, a cappella tune that kind of rides the ethereal space beyond the “sun.” But then again, it is very similar to the last song on Part One, the inventive cover of the traditional “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” Both give us hints toward what we can look forward to (I hope) in the future of this collaboration.

Buy: She & Him — Volume One & Volume Two

I’m quite excited for the forthcoming She & Him Volume 2 album. I’ll be honest that it took me awhile to come around on this duo, but I’m a full-fledged believer now. The band has been confirmed for a Milwaukee show on Friday, June 4th at the recently announced Verge festival.

Today, NPR is offering a “First Listen” to the entire Volume 2 (March 23, Merge)

Buy: She & Him – Volume Two

Last night’s She & Him performance was a little different than our other recent encounters with M. Ward. Of course, this show was all about showcasing the gorgeous pop melodies/vocals of Zooey Deschanel. MoB photographer Ed Oliver captured some shots below. What did you think of the show? What covers did they play?

Myspace: She & Him
MP3: She & Him – “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”

Find more MP3′s at The Hype Machine or buy stuff from Strictly Discs | eMusic

She & Him make their first Wisconsin appearance at the Barrymore Theatre in Madison on Friday, August 8th. What do you think of their record, Volume 1?

Related: 5 Questions with M. Ward

Myspace: She & Him
MP3: She & Him – “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”

Find more MP3′s at The Hype Machine or buy stuff from Strictly Discs | eMusic

She & Him blend the beauty and vocals of actress Zooey Deschanel with the masterful guitar and production work of M. Ward. The band’s first album Volume One was released on Merge Records and got the Tuesday’s Gold stamp of approval from MoB.

Coming on the heels of their highly touted performances at this year’s SXSW Music Festival in Austin, the group will make their first Wisconsin appearance at the Barrymore Theatre in Madison on Friday, August 8th.

Tickets: $20 Advance / $22 Day of Show
On Sale: Friday, May 30th @ 10am

Photo: Lorne Thomson
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Myspace: She & Him
MP3: She & Him – “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”

Find more MP3′s at The Hype Machine or buy stuff from Strictly Discs | eMusic

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