Outside Lands Day One: Cold War Kids Usher in the New; Beck Barrels Through

Photo: Chris Tuite

Seeing as their new album, Loyalty to Loyalty, is set to come out next month, it would make sense that Cold War Kids would road test some of their material on the crowd at San Francisco’s Outside Lands Festival. But singer Nathan Willett was not content to simply lay it down: first, he asked permission. The vocal response from an energized mid-afternoon crowd suggested that he need not have been so polite, but hey, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

From there Willett and his band played a set evenly weighed between the new stuff and the best tracks of 2006’s Robbers & Cowards, namely the drinker’s lament “We Used to Vacation,” (here given a down tempo, maraca-laced treatment), the laconic “Hospital Beds,” “Hang Me Out to Dry,” and jangly set closer “Saint John,” which Willett sold as having “a good storyline.”

The Kids sounded more assured on these tracks, but more excited and loose on new material, which included the shouty single “Something’s Not Right With Me,” the unhinged melody of “Mexican Dogs,” and the “Saint John” of this album (as far as good storylines go), “Every Man I Fall For.” For his part, Willett, bounding between the piano at stage left and a center-stage mic, threw himself around, looking like the love child of Chris Martin and Michael Stipe as he gestured and hurled his body at bandmates and instruments alike. “I closed my eyes and imagined I was at Café Du Nord,” he said at one point, referring to the band’s legendary secret gig at the San Francisco café two years before. “I bet some of you were there,” he added, getting a whoop from the crowd that confirmed his suspicions. At that show, Cold War Kids were warming up audiences to the idea of their first album. At this one, they were doing something infinitely harder: selling a second chance.

Beck, who followed Cold War Kids on Outside Lands' secondary Sutro stage, took an entirely different tack than his predecessors. There was no selling happening here, just simple, speedy presentation of the highlights of his catalog (which is pretty dense; Beck is becoming the Woody Allen of pop music) under a stark, white-lighting scheme that complimented the straightforward nature of the set. Entering with an “Afternoon,” to the crowd, he led his band -- well dressed and well rehearsed folks, all -- through a tight, double-time first half with few breaths of air. In this way, he was able to traverse the poppier side of his recent archive quickly (“Nausea,” “Que Onda Guero,” the new “Gamma Ray,”) before shaking things up a bit with a blues guitar solo lead in to “Loser.” After that, Beck took a visible breath, removing his newly-signature broad-rimmed hat and shaking out his blonde locks before “Devil’s Haircut,” the screaming final chorus of which has been outsourced to his triple-duty bandmates. They then all came center-stage with electronics in hand for “Hell Yes.” “Get your damn hands up,” the song demanded, and the crowd obliged.

From there it was a smooth slide into home, with a bluesy Dylan cover (“Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat”) and the new and charming “Modern Guilt” leading into a trio of sway-worthy numbers—“Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime,” Sea Change’s “Lost Cause,” and Modern Guilt’s psychedelic “Chemtrails.” Knowing full well the value of set organization, however, Beck revived his followers --now trickling towards Radiohead on the mainstage -- by dropping a grinning, beat-heavy “Where It’s At” on their backs. –KAITLIN FONTANA