Friday night’s flash flood that occurred at Red Rocks was one that came swiftly and lingered for most of the night. It started a little after Janelle Monáe’s set and continued on for most of the night. It’s safe to say that the temperature dipped into the 40’s/low 50’s and very brisk. These weather conditions did nothing to dissuade the kids from wearing the short skirts and flip flops. The more the rain intensified, the more energy the crowd produced.
In a night where it seemed like a congregation of P4K’s Best of Alumni, Tame Impala played what you would have expected from the psych-prog jamsters. Tame Impala has received rave reviews for their album, “Innerspeaker”. The group did go off on some crazy tangents and much to the their surprise, the half-baked crowd loved every minute of their performance. Random sidenote, does the bassist from Tame Impala kind of resemble Michael Cera’s character from “Year One”? The surprise of the evening came at the feet of a young and talented, Janelle Monáe. She stole the show. The crowd had NO CLUE of who she was going into Morrison Friday night. I guarantee she won over more than half the crowd with her melodic voice and tap-dancing skills. Her album, “the ArchAndroid”, is a hybrid of all things going right in R&B and she will be opening up for Erykah Badu this Wednesday at the Fillmore. I feel bad for MGMT. They tightened up their performance from the last time I saw them at the Hi-Dive and to their credit, the new material did a great job of battling with the lightening storm going on, but in the end, they were treated like “one-trick ponies”. Everybody waited in anticipation to listen to “Kids” and kindly neglected the material from “Congratulations”. As they say, I hope MGMT “keeps on, keepin’ on”!
MGMT- Flash Delirium (live on SNL) [mp3]
Janelle Monáe (ft. Big Boi)-Tightrope [mp3]
Tame Imapala-Runaway Houses City Clouds [mp3]
MGMT
Janelle Monáe
Tame Impala
