{"id":4174,"date":"2012-09-18T16:32:08","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T23:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=4174"},"modified":"2012-09-19T06:27:59","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T13:27:59","slug":"review-rifflandia%e2%80%99s-mixed-bag-more-good-than-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2012\/09\/18\/review-rifflandia%e2%80%99s-mixed-bag-more-good-than-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Rifflandia\u2019s mixed bag more good than bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first night of Rifflandia started pretty slow: sure, Bone Hoof\u2019s noisy roots sound was a nice way to ease into the night, but I knew that it wouldn\u2019t compare to the insanity of the weekend that followed.<\/p>\n

The hype surrounding DJ Shadow brought me to Market Square with high expectations, but I arrived to see a bunch of people standing around twiddling their thumbs to some pretty decent electronic\u00a0dance music. The tiny crowd at Hundy Thou an hour earlier seemed more engaged. Killer Mike, however, did a lot more than just put on a show. He entered the audience and engaged us in a way that left us all giddy and warm inside; it was the good omen we needed to end the first night with.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Flaming Lips did not disappoint (photo: Jason Schreurs).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Friday at Royal Athletic Park started with some of the best festival food I\u2019ve ever had; unfortunately, it was paired with the boring reggae sounds of The Aggrolites. The day really started when Band of Skulls began to shred. It was a radical precursor to what everyone was really waiting for: The Flaming Lips.<\/p>\n

The Flaming Lips were an insane circus of light that was kaleidoscoping through the psychedelic Rifflandia glasses that were handed out. Their set mostly consisted of extended trippy jams punctuated by guitarist Steven Drozd\u2019s childish \u201cyippies\u201d and \u201cwoo-hoos.\u201d They were constantly asking for more from the audience, but the sleepy crowd couldn\u2019t keep up with the powerful vibrations The Flaming Lips functioned on. Their trip was too much to handle.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s headliner was not quite as fantastic. It\u2019s hard to tell if Cake is serious at all. If their whole persona is a big joke, then they\u2019re sort of funny; if not, they\u2019re pretty annoying and treat their audience like idiots. After all, their music is hardly strong enough to tell the crowd they won\u2019t play until everybody stops recording them. Rifflandia could have got someone much better as a headliner for Saturday night; it was the antithesis of Friday\u2019s headliners.<\/p>\n

I moved down to Alix Goolden Hall, where I was pleasantly surprised by the dreamy sounds of The Antlers. All the festival-goers tired from three nights of alcohol-soaked dancing and two days of hot sun stood and watched in a trance.<\/p>\n

The final day seemed like a sweaty dream. People were handing out bananas as I sat in a daze and watched The Archers and Jinja Safari. Little stood out to me that day except Reggie Watts, who brought the crowd back to life and had people grooving and giggling as he improvised soulful songs about how wonderful Canada is. He was the most talented individual of the weekend; and the festival ended on a high note.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first night of Rifflandia started pretty slow: sure, Bone Hoof\u2019s noisy roots sound was a nice way to ease into the night, but I knew that it wouldn\u2019t compare to the insanity of the weekend that followed. The hype surrounding DJ Shadow brought me to Market Square with high expectations, but I arrived to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4174"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4181,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4174\/revisions\/4181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}