This was it - the last and final day of MFNW. No KEXP daytime performances at the Doug Fir, no free-beer-and-food parties to attend during the day. The events were pretty much limited to the Pioneer Courthouse Square performances, starting off with the Washington state band The Moondoggies.
The Moondoggies had a pleasant enough country rock sound and were generally inoffensive to the ears, but one had to wonder with all of the terrific bands that participated in MFNW this year, what this band was doing on the showcase stage of the final night of the festival.
The next act was more appropriate, IMHO - Seattle's Pickwick, the best band you've never heard of, continuing to bring their soulful sound to wider audiences.
The headlining act was Neko Case, who kicked off her set with This Tornado Loves You and played songs from her new album as well as favorites from the past. It was also her birthday, and the audience broke into a spontaneous singing of Happy Birthday To You without any prompting from the stage. She later admitted that she turned 43 today.
In previous years, the end of the headlining act concluded MFNW. This year, however, the organizers added an after-party at the Crystal Ballroom, which featured EDM producer, singer, and DJ Ill-Esha.
The main attraction for the after-party, though, was EDM band Big Gigantic. Unlike most other EDM bands, they didn't rely solely on laptops and synths, but consisted of two members - interestingly, a live drummer and a saxophonist, both of who also added the prerequisite samples and recorded beats.
Big Gigantic's set consisted of nothing but climaxes from the very start, without any build-up or relief. True to their name, everything was big and everything was gigantic, and even though every song sounded pretty much the same to me - a tenor sax riff repeated over and over while the drums crashed in a continuous crescendo - I can't deny the excitement they created or the enthusiasm of the young audience, who danced non-stop to the music. Every note was accompanied by lasers and light projections, and I was curious to see how they'd end their set, when each bar of music already sounded like a grand finale. They seemed unsure themselves on how to end, and the set went well past the one-hour mark. After repeating a riff a number of times, the sax player would pick up the mic to shout "We got one more for you," and them play what sounded to me just like what he had just been playing before. Each "song" was a little shorter toward the end of their set, as they simultaneously whipped the audience into even more of a frenzy while also getting them used to the idea that this was soon going to end. They finally threw a sample of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' Can't Hold Us into the mix and after a few more calls of "thank you and goodnight," interspersed with that same sax riff again, they finally ended their set with an even faster set of beats and a final crashing crescendo. The crowd went wild, and I left even as they were being called back for an encore.
And that's it for MFNW 2013. I fly back home tomorrow. I'm in no state right now to identify best (or worst) moments, and will probably be revisiting the sets of the past 6 days - as well as the 3 days of Bumbershoot before that - in the coming days. A little distance might help give me a little perspective.
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