NORTH ADAMS, Mass.
The second incarnation of Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival opened Friday night at Mass MoCA, and so did the skies, thoroughly drenching Joe’s Field where the main stage was set up.
The downpour began about 20 minutes before Wilco’s scheduled 9:15 set time, and the rain came down hard enough to delay the band for 20 minutes or so before the musicians took the stage to a cheeky chorus of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” playing over the PA system.
The Chicago rock band started with a new song, “I Might,” from an album due in September. It was one of three new tunes the group performed during a 90-minute set that also included songs from each of Wilco’s seven previous studio releases.
“It’s actually kind of beautiful,” singer Jeff Tweedy said at one point, peering out from the stage as lights from the old mill building that houses Mass MoCA lent a misty cast to the field.
Easy for him to say: he was plenty dry. All the same, there was something special about braving the adverse conditions, whether it was hearing Tweedy’s voice echoing off the brick walls of the adjacent mill as he sang the quieter parts of “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” or the crowd helping to sing the propulsive pop song “Handshake Drugs.”
The rain had mostly tapered off by the end of the set, which Wilco wound down with a cover of Split Enz’s “I Got You” with an assist from Neil Finn of Crowded House.
Earlier in the evening, Finn’s other band, the Pajama Club, featuring his wife Sharon and son Liam (who performs his own set Saturday at Solid Sound) played an hour’s worth of tight, hooky pop songs with solid beats and synthesizer blorps.
Philadelphia rockers Purling Hiss were the first to play, with 45 minutes of noisy songs full of squalling guitar and rumbling bass.
Day One also featured a series of short films, including the comic “Fight For Your Right Revisited,” featuring Will Ferrell, Jack Black, John C. Reilly and the Beastie Boys imagining what might have happened after the Beasties filmed the video for their 1987 hit “Fight For Your Right to Party.” Another short, “The Barber of Birmingham,” was a moving look at a veteran of the civil rights movement at 86 as he watched Barack Obama’s campaign for president.
Solid Sound continues Saturday and Sunday at Mass MoCA.
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Tags: Festival, Solid Sound, Solid Sound Festival, Sound Festival