6

Thursday, June 28, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS

“That’s tight. It’s A$AP Rocky, 
yeah?”
Pressed up against us, shoulder 
to shoulder, for the entirety 
of two performances, Danny’s 
thin white shirt was almost 
translucent with sweat by the 
time he finally decided to speak. 
It was, indeed, A$AP Rocky 
that had been blaring through 
our iPhone speakers, as the sun 
began to set over the woodlands 
of Dover, Delaware, and we 
desperately tried to stave off 
the ache of our blistered feet. 
Instantly charmed by Danny’s 
British accent, we threw Testing 
to the wayside in order to focus 
on the “Skins” archetype that had 
manifested beside us. 
“I told myself that I would be 
at the very next Arctic Monkeys 
show. No matter where or when 
it was, I would be there. So when 
it was announced that they 
would be headlining Firefly…,” 
Danny smiled slightly and turned 
toward the empty stage, as if he 
could already see the phantom 
image of Alex Turner crooning 
into the mic. 
Firefly Music Festival, like 
most 
other 
music 
festivals, 
has the particular quality of 
attracting people from various 
pockets of the world and forcing 
them to coexist semi-peacefully 
in one enclosed area. Unlike 
most 
other 
music 
festivals, 
however, Firefly stretches over 
the course of almost five days, 
which, surrounded by miles of 
empty cornfields and barricaded 
by rows upon rows of nylon tents, 
can seem to bleed into infinity. 
Time unravels to become as 
distant as the outside world itself. 
In this bubble of perfectly 

contained chaos, there is more 
than just music. A community 
begins to form amid the dust and 
the turmoil. A strange, off-kilter 
community 
— 
where 
bottles 
of Gatorade 95% filled with 
Everclear are treated with the 
same amount of reverence as holy 
water and the neighbors won’t 
stop playing the same shitty 
EDM remix at 4 a.m. — but a 
community, nonetheless. 
— Shima Sadaghiyani, Daily 
Music Editor

Foster the People
“Pumped Up Kicks” was the 
“Ring Around the Rosie” of early 
High School. Hear me out: just how 
there was always one preschooler 
loudly announcing “Ring Around 
the Rosie”’s connection to the 
Bubonic 
Plague, 
there 
was 
always one adolescent upstart 
loudly announcing “Pumped Up 
Kicks”’s connection to a school 
shooting. I know this because 
I was that adolescent upstart, 
desperately clutching at any way 
I could put both middle fingers 
up at authority without actually 
having to put any middle fingers 
up. Foster the People arrived at 
an integral moment; their music 
a perfect blend of indie rock with 
a little bit of edge, hard enough 
to feel appropriately rebellious 
when blasted out of rolled down 
windows on the drive to school 
but still pop enough to fit with 
the quiet lanes of suburbia. 
Their Firefly set was much of 
the same balance, interpersing 
mellow 
crowd 
favorites 
like 
“Houdini” 
and 
“Don’t 
Stop 
(Color On the Walls)” with more 
experimental 
performances 
based 
off 
of 
the 
moody 

psychedelia 
of 
their 
newest 
album Sacred Hearts Club, a 
phrase which was emblazoned 
in larger-than-life neon script on 
the back wall of the Firefly stage. 
As lead singer Mark Foster stood 
in front of the words, ripped 
sleeves 
and 
scrappy 
tattoos 
backlit by reds, blues and yellows, 
before launching into a cover of 
the Ramones’s “Blitzkrieg Pop,” 
I felt a familiar sense of preteen 
angst rise up from the pit of my 
stomach. 
Someone next to us said that 
the set gave them “major Tame 
Impala vibes.” While the synth-
heavy, spiraling light show of 
songs “Pseudologia Fantastica” 
and “Loyal Like Sid & Nancy” 
were reminiscent of tracks out of 
Lonerism, the Foster the People 
that caused me to rip my jeans 
at the knee and black out my 
white converse with permanent 
markers in the 10th grade was 
still alive and well. They closed 
their set with the familiar beat of 
“Pumped Up Kicks.” 
— Shima Sadaghiyani

Eminem
Uh.
— Matt Gallatin, Daily Sharts 
Writer

Mom’s spaghetti. 
— Shima Sadaghiyani

Arctic Monkeys
The first line of Apple Music’s 
description 
of 
the 
Arctic 
Monkeys’s newest album after 
five years, Tranquility Base Hotel 
& Casino, reads “In 2016, Alex 
Turner received a piano for his 
30th birthday.” It’s about the 
only description you need to 

understand the album’s brooding, 
introspective corridors. And as 
you wander throughout quiet 
jazz undertones and lounge-
pop bursts, it’s easy to imagine a 
mustachioed Alex Turner in the 
casino basement, plunking away 
at a grand piano with a glass of 
scotch in one hand, ready to tell 
you about his past exploits as a 
smooth-talking, aviator-wearing 
rock star. The album is muted, 
bittersweet and filled with a 
melancholic sort of appeal. Yet, 
these are songs for late hours 
spent alone — solitude mixing 
with the slow crawl of a dying 
cigarette — not for the sweaty, 
beer-drenched animal farm of 
Firefly. The crowd that had been 
waiting hours in order to see the 
Arctic Monkeys did not come 
to watch Alex Turner cry over a 
piano. We came for the Whatever 
People Say I Am, That’s What 
I’m Not, for the Favourite Worst 
Nightmare, for the Who The Fuck 
Are The Arctic Monkeys? 
Thank God Alex Turner seemed 
to understand that, bursting out 
on stage with a rousing rendition 
of “Brianstorm,” and instantly 
turning the first 20 rows of 
the crowd into a pit of flailing 
fists. Dressed to impress in a 
monochromatic suit, hair slicked 
back, every inch of him was the 
same man who used to break the 
hearts of Tumblr fanatics left and 
right. And damn, did he put on a 
great show. 
Playing only a few songs from 
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, 
which became welcome breaks 
from the moshing, most of the 
set was a trip down memory lane. 
There was something for every 
Arctic Monkeys fan here, from 
more popular songs like “Why’d 
You Only Call Me When You’re 
High” and “505” to tracks pulled 
from the shadows of old EPs, 
like “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve 
Moved Your Chair” and “Pretty 
Visitors.” No matter how far back 
the Arctic Monkeys reached, Alex 
Turner was on top of every note, 
every minute. Over-exaggerating 
his gestures and postures to play 
along with the lyrics of the songs, 
he brought them, as well as all the 
memories of crowdgoers to life. 
The set closed out with “R U 
Mine?” and as “All I wanna hear 
her say is are you mine,” echoed 
around me, bumping along the 
hoarse edges of a throng of 
gleeful voices, I looked over to 
where Danny, my boy from across 
the pond, was being thrown from 
side to side. We locked eyes, and 
I could tell he was feeling what 
I was feeling in that moment: 

perfect, harmonious catharsis. 
— Shima Sadaghiyani

Lil Wayne
There was so much Lil Wayne 
slander at this festival that I 
almost 
developed 
a 
twitch. 
Pusha-T warned us on DAYTONA: 
“He see what I see when you see 
Wayne on tour / Flash without 
the fire / Another multi-platinum 
rapper trapped and can’t retire.” 
I disregarded these bars before 
the show because Lil Wayne 
is without question a legend, a 
rapper so important to the game 
that any conversation about rap 
in the 2000s isn’t only incomplete 
without mentioning him, but 
nonexistent. 
It 
was 
simply 
incredible to think that he had 
somehow lost the fire. 
Yet 
Firefly 
festival 
goers 
seemed completely unaware of 
the greatness they stood below; 
called his set “disappointing” 
when he performed “A Milli” in 
pink getup, could hardly shout the 
chorus of “Mrs. Officer.” Concerts 
are symbiotic, requiring energy 
from both the performer and the 
spectators, and while Wayne still 
had the flash (how could someone 
who wrote “Georgia Bush” come 
without it?) there was a creeping 
sense that the fire was slowly 
extinguished by this disrespect. 
I felt a sadness as people merely 
laughed at his height and said his 
voice sounded “strange” during 
“Lollipop.” At the age of 21, I 
already felt old, upset at these 
teenagers who didn’t understand 
the importance of what they were 
seeing, couldn’t possibly know 
the absolute joy of screaming “she 
licked me like a lollipop” at age 
12 in the minivan, right before 
mom and dad switched the radio 
channel. It seemed like Wayne 
could sense the loss too.
— Matt Gallatin

The Killers
They brought up a kid named 
“Brian” from the crowd to play 
drums. The frontman looked 
like a glam rocker from the ‘80s. 
Never before have I seen so many 
people turn into suburban dads 
right before my eyes. I guess they 
played “Mr. Brightside”? 
— Matt Gallatin

His name was actually “Ryan.” 
He was from West Chester, 
Pennsylvania and he was doing 
his best. 
— Shima Sadaghiyani

Somewhere in the middle 
of the Delware woods...

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