The North Coast Music Festival calls itself “Summer’s Last Stand,” but it might have gone with “Lollapalooza’s Hangover.” Those who couldn’t afford tickets to last month’s Grant Park extravaganza can shift west, to Union Park, for a more affordable and chilled-out bill that includes killer R&B band D’Angelo and the Vanguard, lauded hip-hop band the Roots, veteran jam band Widespread Panic and laid-back rocker Twin Shadow. The dozens of bands here aren’t as popular or buzzing as those at Lollapalooza or Pitchfork, but they’re more local (check out rockers Ne-Hi) and diverse (“I Try” singer Macy Gray fronts New Orleans’ spacey Galactic). Seven highlights:
D’Angelo: For a long time, the great R&B singer D’Angelo was in danger of becoming a last-millennium footnote: That guy with the muscles who sang nearly nude in 2000’s MTV smash “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” Instead, he re-emerged from 14 years of near silence with a 2014 funk masterpiece, “Black Messiah,” full of layered, murmuring soundscapes that suggest a sequel to Sly and the Family Stone’s “There’s a Riot Goin’ On.” D’Angelo’s touring band, the Vanguard, including ringers like The Time’s original guitarist, Jesse Johnson, Who bassist Pino Palladino and “Messiah” co-architect and Parliament-Funkadelic veteran Kendra Foster, could be a festival headliner unto itself.
More Top Picks Best Leather Boots For Women For Knee Pain
Knife Party: Fortunately for this Perth, Australia, duo, its 2013 prediction did not come true: “In the future, nobody will drop the bass, nobody will do the ‘Harlem Shake …'” That song, “EDM Death Machine,” is full of self-aware humor about the overserious electronic dance music scene, but more important, Knife Party knows how to build and release tension and raise the roof when necessary. Formerly a veteran group called Pendulum specializing in skittering drum and bass, the band renamed, regrouped and reverted to house music in 2011, making boisterous anthems such as “Boss Mode,” “Bonfire” and, with Swedish House Mafia, “Antidote.”
The Roots: With due respect to Doc Severinsen and Paul Shaffer, rarely has a house band ever been as valuable to late-night television as the Roots is to “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.” The veteran Philadelphia hip-hop group, known for hits from “Clones” to the swinging “How I Got Over,” plays many roles on the show: superarrangers on viral video sketches like Fallon’s rap-history lessons with Justin Timberlake; comedic foils, particularly deadpan drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and his giant hair; versatile backup band for delighted performers, from Bruce Springsteen to members of Odd Future; and, most subversively, tricksters who bestowed upon right-wing presidential candidate Michele Bachman an apt walk-out instrumental from Fishbone that questioned her truthfulness.
Chemical Brothers: Anybody remember the last wave of electronic dance music in the U.S., back in the ’90s, when people called it “electronica”? That was when Chemical Brothers’ beefed-up house music singles “Block Rockin’ Beats” and “Setting Sun” positioned them to succeed grunge and Hootie-style pop as the Next Big Thing. British colleagues Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons briefly became international superstars, but electronica barely materialized over here; Britney Spears, ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys saw to that. But this 26-year-old duo never stopped recording, and its latest album, “Born in the Echoes,” with guests from Beck to Q-Tip, is, as always, block-rockin’.
Dirty Dozen Brass Band: The 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans is upon us, so it’s time to revisit DDBB’s 2006 re-creation of Marvin Gaye’s classic album “What’s Going On.” The NOLA trad-jazz fixture applied Gaye’s anger and frustration to the federal government’s nonresponse and hit the perfect note, particularly with guests such as Public Enemy’s Chuck D. on the title track and the great soul singer Bettye LaVette on “What’s Happening Brother.” New Orleanians have known forever that sousaphones and snare drums are as potent as rocks and matches.
Steve Aoki: The Los Angeles DJ used to be a hardcore punk rocker, but he switched to electronic dance music and took his live shows to a new level of showmanship with the Coachella festival in 2009. “It was all these $5 gags; buying a raft and throwing it in the crowd and jumping in it, buying some Super Soakers,” he told the Tribune this year. “All this (stuff) was like, ‘Let’s do a really fun, creative show, like we’re an art project gone wrong.’ And it worked, man.” Aoki’s tradition of smashing giant cakes into front-row fans’ faces apparently fits the definition of “art project.” They never seem to mind.
Wale: The “Seinfeld”-obsessed Washington, D.C., veteran rapper’s recent “The Album About Nothing” is destined to be remembered as a novelty. The strange collaboration with comedian Jerry Seinfeld (as the narrator) never quite reaches the poignancy level of, say, Wale’s 2011 hit “Ambition.” Still, the project provided for one historic moment — Seinfeld’s meeting with another Wale guest star, Kanye West. “We were in the garage and we were all freezing. He invited Mrs. Seinfeld and I onto a bus that he was in,” Seinfeld told The New York Times. “He seemed like a nice young man.”
Steve Knopper is a freelancer.
Twitter @chitribent
When: 3-10 p.m. Friday-Sunday
Where: Union Park, 1501 W. Randolph St.
Tickets: $70 single day, $160 for three days; www.northcoastfestival.com