Loufest Preview

The third annual Loufest starts this weekend (August 25 and 26th) in Forest Park and this year’s lineup is a doozy! Here is a brief lineup of all the shows to see.

The Saturday lineup kicks it off with Sleepy Kitty (1 p.m.); this formerly-Chicago-but-now-locally based two-piece group sprinkles a bit of lo-fi noise onto the cupcake of Phil Spector 60’s style pop, not altogether unlike their fellow Loufest performers Cults. Following Sleepy Kitty is up-and-coming rocker King Tuff (2 p.m.), whose recent debut album found some sort of chaotic middle ground between Ty Segall and like…Cheap Trick. 90’s rock outfit Cotton Mather plays at 3 PM for their second St. Louis show in two days, as they’ll also playing the Official Loufest Pre-Party, which is this Friday, August 24, over at Off Broadway. British jam band Little Barrie (4 p.m.) will set the stage for the first big name of the festival, St. Louis’s own Son Volt (5 p.m.). Son Volt is one of the two groups that rose from the ashes of alt-country pioneers Uncle Tupelo (the other being a little band called Wilco, whose frontman Jeff Tweedy headlined the very first Loufest 2 years ago), so look forward to a lot of the bar-house rockers and acoustic folksy ballads that defined both Son Volt and Uncle Tupelo before them. Next up is Phantogram (6 p.m.), another indie pop duo who should be well-versed in playing festivals, as they already have Coachella and Lollapalooza under their belt. Phantogram’s debut (and so far sole) album “Eyeled Movies” came out three years ago, so expect to hear some material from the band’s upcoming sophomore effort. The penultimate performers of the evening are the hugely influential Dinosaur Jr., who takes the stage at 7 p.m. Dinosaur Jr. released a string of successful albums in the late 80’s/early 90 to secure their place in the noisy alternative rock pantheon (alongside bands like the Pixies and Sonic Youth), before breaking up in the mid-90s. They returned nearly a decade later to their former glory (kind of) and their 10th studio album drops in less than a month, so look out for some new stuff among their classic tunes like “Little Fury Things” and “The Wagon.” In a complete 180 from the indie pop/rock that pretty much dominates the rest of Loufest, mashup mastermind Girl Talk (8:30 p.m.) will be headlining the festival Saturday night. Girl Talk’s penchant for sampling well-known songs from just about every genre makes him the definition of crowd pleaser, but it’ll be interesting to how see the (from my experience) overly chill Loufest crowd takes to Girl Talk’s typically frantic live performances.

The awkwardly named Pernikoff Brothers (only two members of this St. Louis trio are brothers) will start things off on Sunday at 1 p.m. with some energetic folk-rock, before handing over the reins to THEESatisfaction (2 p.m.). THEESatisfaction is an all girl jazz rap duo out of Seattle; kind of like a female counterpart to Shabazz Palaces. Indie pop-rockers Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (3 p.m.) return to St. Louis after stopping by The Firebird last year to open for Tokyo Police Club, where I thought their energetic and heavily melodic performance actually stole the show. Wild Nothing (4 p.m.) is releasing their second album, “Nocturne”, just two days after Loufest, meaning this dream pop/shoegaze group will probably be previewing a lot of their new material as well as revisiting their excellent 2010 debut “Gemini”. , Cults (5 p.m.), yet another boy + girl indie pop duo, just released their self titled debut last year, so I’d anticipate little/no new material and more of a simple run through of their sickeningly cute summer-friendly songs like “Go Outside” and “Never Saw the Point”. We’ll get just a little more folk-rock from Dawes (6 p.m.), a Southern California band that owe more than a little to old acoustic crooners like Jackson Browne and Robbie Robertson. Pennsylvania rockers Dr. Dog have been to St. Louis several times over the last few years, and we’ll get to see them again at 7 p.m. as the second to last band to play Loufest. Dr. Dog are like 60’s rock with a hint of 90’s lo-fi (think Guided by Voices), and as a result sound a lot like My Morning Jacket. Flaming Lips (8:30 p.m.) close out Loufest for what will be inarguably the show of the festival. As renowned as the Flaming Lips are for their defining neo-psychedlic and lush records like “The Soft Bulletin”, it’s Wayne Coyne and Co.’s live performances that are the groups true claim to fame. Consisting of costumes, movie projectors, puppet shows, and a human-sized plastic bubble, The Flaming Lips put on a live show that is literally unlike anything else. For a small section of their 2010 tour, the Flips began their show by entering the arena out of (no sh*t) a giant space vagina. As far as their setlist goes, the Flaming Lips are all but totally unpredictable. They have a new album coming out this year, so we could hear some new material, or they might just run through Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” in its entirety.