#stage four

My darling, my darling I'll drink a glass of your tears to taste the salt within Remember the first time that I told you I loved you I mean it now like I meant it then

I know you don't want me not anymore my lies finally caught up to greet me I'll drown in the drink and swim through a forest smiling face, but the inside has become so empty

My precious, my lovely let me fix what you need just give me a moment of your time I never stopped working at becoming what you wanted all I'm asking for is some kind of sign

Oh sweetheart how could you do this to me? I act surprised even though I know the answer I loved you so much but not enough to change I came on and grew like like a cancer

My darling, my darling please just dry your eyes I know that you'll get what you deserve and even though it's cutting I know what must be down To help you escape from my curse

Sparks

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Delayed, but certainly not abridged! I saw so many sets and took so many photos at Riot Fest this year (combined with some personal life hold-ups), that I decided to break up my coverage day-by-day. Here were the best sets I saw on Friday.

Big Ass Truck I.E.

Big Ass Truck I.E.

Not to be confused with Big Ass Truck, the 90's funk rockers from Memphis (who would also be the type of band to play Riot Fest), the Inland Empire's Big Ass Truck I.E. brought a simultaneous sense of humor and dead seriousness to the beginning of Riot Fest. They barked their titular song, along with "BIG ASS BEER", "BEEF", "CORN-FED", and debut Nuclear Blast single "BACK-WHEEL STOMP", atop chugging blast beats and crunchy riffs, the crowd chanting the band's name back at them. Yet, they emphasized an absolute sense of inclusiveness. "How many of you have never heard of us," asked lead vocalist Abel Abarca, responding to those who raised their hands, "You should be in front," wanting everybody to experience the glee of the band's beatdown. He gave everything he had throughout the set, by the end unable to muster any banter except for the most important piece to set the tone: "Fuck ICE, fuck Donald Trump."

Big Ass Truck I.E.

Big Ass Truck I.E.

Crowd

Touché Amoré

Touché Amoré

It's easy to forget that the L.A. post-hardcore band is so consistent, given that their three most recent albums were released four years apart. Touché Amoré's early Friday afternoon set served as the perfect reminder that their songs truly never leave your subconscious. When lead singer Jeremy Bolm's mic cut out during "New Halloween", the audience seamlessly filled in. As he screamed a capella on back catalog highlight "Honest Sleep", he held hands with a crowd member, exemplifying the emotionally symbiotic relationship between Touché Amoré and their fans. The band itself was tight, whether providing sublimely beautiful guitars, disco beats, or slow burns and vocal harmonies, as on "Limelight". Best, Bolm pointed out that next year marks 10 years of Stage Four, so they might be back in Chicago sooner than later. It's hard to believe it's almost been that long since its release, which they celebrated 9 years ago at this very festival.

Touché Amoré

Touché Amoré

Crowd

Touché Amoré

Touché Amoré

Camper Van Beethoven

Camper Van Beethoven

Of all the bands to play "Weird Al" Yankovic's Weird World stage on Friday, Camper Van Beethoven was the one you'd least associate with the comedy musician. They don't dress up in wacky outfits or make parody songs; in fact, they were maybe the most boringly dressed of any bands at the entire festival, let alone Yankovic's honoring of mockery. However, their whimsical, nonsensical songwriting fit with Yankovic's ethos. Famously, the band's biggest original hit, "Take the Skinheads Bowling", was written to be devoid of meaning, even if it ended up being an unintentionally prescient depiction of the normalization of fascism. I suppose the ability for jaunty songs like that, the "Skinhead Stomp" instrumental, and Status Quo cover "Pictures of Matchstick Men" to endure over time and find their place when we really need them is the best evidence of fit that there is. Over a mere 30 minutes, Camper Van Beethoven nestled right in.

Camper Van Beethoven

Camper Van Beethoven

Camper Van Beethoven

Camper Van Beethoven

Camper Van Beethoven

Camper Van Beethoven

The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady

There are some days I think Separation Sunday is my favorite record from Brooklyn-via-Minneapolis "world's most literate bar band" The Hold Steady. It still wears the scrappy gruffness of the band's debut while introducing frontman Craig Finn as the preeminent lyrical world-builder of his generation. And despite the title of its acclaimed follow-up, Boys and Girls in America, Separation Sunday is the closest to the heartland, with its power-riff-and-organ-imbued tales of prostitutes and pimps reckoning with their Christianity and partying along the way. Nine years after performing Boys and Girls in full at Riot Fest, The Hold Steady presented the two-decade-old Separation Sunday (not backwards like they did earlier this year) in all its glory, from the keyboard funk of "Charlemagne in Sweatpants" and garage soul of "Don't Let Me Explode" to the all-out brawl of "Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night". "Chicago has not seemed tired since we wrote this song," Finn said of the live staple, though judging by the concert recordings the band has put on Bandcamp, he could say the same about any city when The Hold Steady bring their ruckus to town.

The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady

Crowd

The Hold Steady

Sparks

Sparks

MAD! (Transgressive), the 26th studio album from legendary L.A. pop duo Sparks, is all about reclamation. In their idiosyncratic universe, JanSport backpacks are worthy of a glam rock anthem, small talk between long-married couples is sexy, and a flooded I-405 rivals the spectacle of the Nile. During their early evening set at Riot Fest, their statement of purpose, as a band who subverts expectations of not just normalcy but your preconceived notions of Sparks themselves, was on full display. I mean, what's more punk than leading off with a song from the soundtrack of a divisive musical? Appropriately, they then launched into what might as well be their signature song 7 decades in, "Do Things My Own Way", replete with thumping drums, sharp riffs, and a wiry bass line. Elsewhere from MAD!, Sparks performed "Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab", a possible Anna Delvey reference that posits that if overconfident braggadocio is the sign of a liar, the truth must be as inscrutable as ever, a sentiment that's pervaded Sparks' career. Of course, they threw a bone to the zeitgeist, ending with A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip closer "Please Don't Fuck Up My World", itself finalizing in a plea for unselfishness and collectivism: "Please don't fuck up our world."

Sparks

Crowd

Knocked Loose

Knocked Loose

I've never seen a crowd as amped for a hardcore band as the massive collection of slam dancers thrashing at the Knocked Loose set. The could-have-been-a-headliner Kentucky band played the part of stars--at the last minute, they didn't allow any press in the photo pit, perhaps for our own safety, or potentially so lead singer Bryan Garris could stare without distraction into the faces of the front rows when asking them questions like, "Are you feeling crazy?!?" The band members walked out to smoke and the white cross from the You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To (Pure Noise) album art shining bright. From there, they barely stopped for an hour. Journalists thought Turnstile might have been the band to make hardcore more mainstream, but increasingly, the Baltimore quintet's coated by a glossy sheen. It's instead Knocked Loose who have managed to surface the euphoria of hearing and watching a loud, angry band churn out mammoth, distorted riffs and clacking drums. When Garris implored the audience to jump on "God Knows", you knew nobody would get more air than him. The only real break they took was in mood, for "Sit & Mourn", a song about loss and grief, the types of emotions Garris suggested we momentarily put on the backburner when we go to a Knocked Loose show. Thankfully, with the penultimate "Deep in the Willow", he supplied the crowd with a mantra to repeat back to him and for the foreseeable future when they're feeling down: "Knocked Loose, motherfucker!"

Knocked Loose

Blink-182

“Just a simple conversation about nothing much at all

Couldn't keep me in the room, I just kept walking down the hall

But now I understand just what a fool I'd been

No matter what the context, I won't have that time again (And I live with that)

I took inventory of what I took for granted

And I ended up with more than I imagined

I've kept it bottled up and to myself in the cellar