What's Hot

Standing atop a steep incline of grass at The Gorge Amphitheater on Day One of Sasquatch, it’s nearly impossible to feel as if the scenery in the distance is anything less than, well, surreal. But sometimes it takes another’s perspective to gain insight into your own. It also seems to help when that perspective comes from the dude headlining the festival.

“The energy is just so huge and powerful here,” My Morning Jacket’s Jim James said yesterday, hours before his band were slotted to close out the main stage. “This place— there’s real energy in the rocks and ground and the landscape that makes things happen in your brain that are undeniable.” James, despite his band’s global success, still says he finds it unreal to be  headlining this festival—especially since his band was cast off to a side stage back in 2003. “We saw The Flaming Lips [that year] and we never thought that was a possibility [for us]. It’s something else.”

While there were a handful of bands on Day One of Sasquatch who had achieved success rather quickly—Vampire Weekend, for example, who played to a packed main stage after having seemingly coasted to the top of the Billboard Albums charts on an express F train—the one thing that tied together many of the acts on hand was that their success has been a slow-burning match whose flame was finally getting hot.

Canadian indie-rockers Broken Social Scene put on a stunning afternoon set, unleashing several tunes from their new album Forgiveness Rock Record. “Texico Bitches”— which was upbeat, jumpy and interspersed with mass forearm pumps from the audience— seemed to signal the start of a night filled with radiative riffs and risqué decision-making by those inhabiting The Gorge for the day.

Sitting on a rock ledge, overlooking the canyons, The National’s Matt Berninger anxiously fidgeted about while trying to grasp the fact that his band’s fifth album, High Violet, has not only drawn widespread critical praise, but has allowed his band to play the main stage at Sasquatch. “It’s validating,” Berninger admited, of his band’s recent climb. “We’ve had this very sort of slow incline or trajectory, and it was hard for the first several years, but we always still had faith in what we were doing.”

Tightly tucked into a traditional blazer, slacks and tie a few short hours later, Berninger and his crew executed a no-frills hour long set of moody alt-rock. The songs off High Violet, such as the twisted “Bloodbuzz Ohio” and “Anyone’s Ghost,” rippled through the canyon, as Berninger—eyes beady, body stiff—floated his brash baritone over screeching, shrill guitars.

Not far over the hillside, The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn shuffled onstage and burst into one of his band’s classically raucous bar-ballads. Like Berninger, Finn—whose band recently released their latest Heaven Is Whenever—feels like The Hold Steady’s current commercial strides have been hard fought for. Exercising some adolescent demons was a part of the process. “We just weren’t behaving in a way that was sustainable, with drinking,” Finn admitted earlier. “We can’t drink like we used to ’cause someone will end up in the hospital.”

With a large contingent of the crowd camped out for Vampire Weekend, ‘90’s alt-rock survivors  Nada Surf took the opportunity to remind fans why they landed in the “Buzz Bin” some 15 years ago—only there was a slight twist. Lead singer Matthew Caws lead the trio in a fairly short- yet-intriguing set that was largely made up of covers by acts like Kate Bush and Depeche Mode.

Not long after, Jim James and My Morning Jacket peered out at the massive crowd gathered—with a Donnie Darko-esque bunny in tow. Spinning in circles and hopping around, James and his bandmates stuck with the hits on Saturday, from the harmonic simplicity of “Gideon” to the plaintive reserve of “Golden.” And when James leaned into the low-set microphone and sung two simple words, it seemed quite fitting. “I’m amazed!” James yelped.

How could you not agree with him?

(All photos by Laura June Kirsch)

Broken Social Scene

The National

The Hold Steady

Nada Surf

My Morning Jacket