5 must-see acts at Life is Beautiful 2017
Mura Masa
Tasteful, refined, often understated — these adjectives are generally less applicable to contemporary, EDM-influenced pop than they are your average snuff film.
And yet these descriptors fit the burgeoning songbook of 21-year-old British DJ-producer Mura Masa (Alex Crossnan). Crossnan’s self-titled debut, released in July, floats by on percolating drops of percussion, chiming xylophone, radiant synth lines and various guest vocal spots, ranging from popster Charli XCX to rapper ASAP Rocky.
Crossnan’s catalog is less about getting the party started than setting the mood, creating and sustaining a lively yet casually inviting vibe that somehow feels upbeat and laid-back at once. Performing outdoors at a festival like Life is Beautiful should suit Crossnan well: These are songs meant to ride the breeze.
The xx
Big stages don’t always necessitate equally outsize sounds.
These electronically enhanced indie popsters underscore as much.
Listening to the band’s self-titled 2009 debut back in the day, it would have been difficult to imagine the group comfortably graduating to the top of festival bills.
This wasn’t because The xx was unworthy of said status; it’s just that the band’s lean arrangements, thrifty guitar lines and conversational vocal interplay between singer-guitarist Romy Madley Croft and singer-bassist Oliver Sim seemed best-suited for spaces as intimate as the sound in question.
But with band member and producer Jamie Smith gradually nudging The xx closer and closer to the dance floor via darting beats, surging synth lines and more full-throated songs on their latest record, “I See You,” the band’s sound has expanded as their audience has grown.
“Is the music too loud?” Sim asks on “A Violent Noise.”
Not yet, but give this bunch time.
MGMT
Look, we’re not saying that experiencing MGMT live will reduce you to an amorphous ball of energy as you become transformed into consciousness incarnate — you know, like William Hurt in “Altered States.”
But we can’t guarantee that it won’t happen, either.
These psych-rock square pegs are all about wringing brains like wet sponges.
After notching a pair of left-field, electro-poppy hits from their 2007 debut, “Oracular Spectacular,” MGMT veered into chiming, ’60s-inspired psychedelia on 2010’s “Congratulations” and then went from daydreams to nightmares on their dense, dark 2013 self-titled third album.
Who knows where they’ll head on their next record, the forthcoming “Little Dark Ages.”
In the meantime, important questions need to be answered prior to their debut at Life is Beautiful this weekend: Do you prefer your gray matter scrambled? Or fried over easy?
You have until Sunday to figure it out.
Chance the Rapper
His voice could be bottled and sold as a muscle relaxer.
“Don’t forget the happy thoughts,” Chance the Rapper (aka Chancellor Bennett) instructs in soft and sunny tones, his words as warm and reassuring as a favorite old sweater. “All you need is happy thoughts.”
Bennett’s addressing someone from his youth that he’s grown apart from on “Same Drugs,” a gospel-informed highlight of his most recent mixtape, 2016’s highly acclaimed “Coloring Book,” which earned Bennett a Grammy for best rap album earlier this year.
“When did you start to forget how to fly?” he asks a few moments later.
Helping the individual he’s addressing remember just how to do so is a large part of what “Coloring Book” is all about — and by extension, Bennett himself.
A vocal chameleon who can sing sweetly and rhyme nimbly, Bennett is among hip-hop’s most uplifting presences.
Last summer, Bennett’s friend and running buddy J. Cole graduated to headliner status on the U.S. festival circuit, which included a stop at Life is Beautiful.
This year, it’s Bennett’s turn, his profile rising alongside all the spirits he aims to boost.
Gorillaz
The cartoons have come to life.
Though the Guinness Book of World Records’ Most Successful Virtual Band once performed behind giant screens depicting their animated counterparts, they now play onstage with said screens behind them.
This adds a more visceral dimension to the Gorillaz’s free-range alt-tronica, which is as colorful as the characters in question, spanning hip-hop, Britpop, reggae and more, their records like portable jukeboxes of different sounds.
Arguably Life is Beautiful’s biggest score this year, Gorillaz have toured only sporadically in the past and are coming off a six-year hiatus that ended with the release of their latest record, “Humanz,” in April.
Born as a collaboration between Blur frontman Damon Albarn and comic book artist Jamie Hewlett nearly two decades ago, Gorillaz have long favored a rotating cast of collaborators on their five albums.
When they perform Sunday, the stage is set for plenty of guest spots, with numerous acts on the lineup also having contributed to the group’s records. Rapper Vince Staples, who’s currently opening for Gorillaz on tour, has been known to join the band to perform Del the Funky Homosapien’s lines on their breakout hit “Clint Eastwood.”
At San Francisco’s Outside Lands Festival in August, Gorillaz brought out hip-hoppers De La Soul and Pusha T, who are also playing Life is Beautiful on Sunday. Moreover, Albarn sang on the debut album from Mura Masa, who’s performing on the fest’s final day.
C’mon, you really think any of them are going to miss the chance to go ape with the Gorillaz?
