Near the end of her raucous Saturday afternoon set at Lollapalooza, Danish vocalist Ida Maria launched into one of her better-known numbers, the brash, battering “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked.” On record it plays like a coy come on, but on Saturday, it sounded like good advice. The temperatures were sweltering, an alarming contrast to Friday’s sheets of rain. By 1 p.m., most people in Grant Park were covered with a filmy sweat. A little nudity would have been apropos.
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There were two chief consequences of the temperature. The first was that there seemed to be twice as many people in the park as there were the day before, which made navigating the festival’s eight stages a small nightmare. A particularly nasty bottleneck between the end of the Arctic Monkeys set and the start of Santigold’s brought hordes of angry, sweaty concertgoers to a standstill. (Click above to watch Animal Collective, TV on the Radio and Arctic Monkeys onstage during Day Two.)
The other upshot was that the artists had to figure out how to cope. For Ida Maria, it meant barreling through her songs with a jubilant recklessness. Decked out in a gold dress and black headband, Maria stretched her voice to the breaking point, at times letting it give out entirely, as it did midway through “Whiskey Please.”
Other acts decided to simply defy the heat. St. Louis rock band Living Things took the stage in black jeans and leather jackets, belting out bluesy rock under the sweltering sun. Rhode Island’s Low Anthem opted for passivity: they...
Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily