By Christopher David<\/p>\n
Day 2 of Riot Fest 2022 brought cooler temps, an even more stacked lineup than Day 1, and a lot less chaos in terms of lines and crowds, making for a perfect festival day from top to bottom.<\/p>\n
Mothica brought a smooth set of her synth-y bedroom pop to the Rise Stage to start things off, and while her sound on record is a bit more electronic, the songs were given new life in a live setting, giving \u201cfunhouse\u201d from 2021\u2019s forever fifteen<\/em> a little more crunch to go along with the eponymous singer\u2019s cool, silver-toned aesthetic.<\/p>\n Welsh trio The Joy Formidable delivered perhaps the most effortlessly compelling set of the afternoon, a short and sweet blast of shoegazer bliss led by the monstrous \u201cThe Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade\u201d from 2011\u2019s The Big Roar<\/em>.\u00a0 Frontwoman\/guitarist Ritzy Bryan has an ethereal voice with just enough grit to stand out over the band\u2019s soaring arrangements; it was hard to believe that such a gigantic sound came from just three people.<\/p>\n How has it been 25 years since The Get-Up Kids released Four Minute Mile<\/em>?\u00a0 One of the brightest and best bands to emerge from the emo era\u2014and one of the defining groups of that entire sub genre\u2014seeing the band\u2019s debut album in its entirety was surely this year\u2019s \u2018moment of clarity\u2019 for many; time passes quickly in the music world, and celebrating an anniversary like this one can usher in some serious perspective.\u00a0 The band sounded fantastic, and vocalist\/guitarists Matt Pryor and Jim Suptic sound as youthful now as they did then, and judging from the audience\u2019s reaction, tunes like \u201cBetter Half\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t Hate Me\u201d resonate with their audience just as much now as they did two and a half decades ago.<\/p>\n Baltimore punkers War On Women were the sleeper hit of the day, and vocalist Shawna Potter was perhaps the most electrifying on-stage presence of the weekend thus far.\u00a0 The band\u2019s activist sensibilities were on full display for tunes like \u201cWonderful Hell\u201d and \u201cDivisive Shit,\u201d an awesome display of \u2018if it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it\u2019 – the classic riot-grrl model fit this quartet to a T.<\/p>\n Riot leaned heavily into emo and punk this year, so having Sunny Day Real Estate hit the stage at dusk and open with \u201cSeven\u201d was stellar on so many levels, and vocalist Jeremy Enigk\u2019s voice doesn\u2019t sound a day older than he did during their Diary heyday.\u00a0 Sunny Day always had a somewhat darker sound than many of their contemporaries, as exemplified during \u201cIn Circles\u201d and set closer \u201cThe Rising Tide.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy mother is here, so pardon my language,\u201d grinned vocalist\/guitarist Ryan Key of Yellowcard as he surveyed one of largest crowds of the weekend.\u00a0 \u201cBut what in the actual fuck<\/em>?\u201d Key then said a few words about Yellowcard\u2019s return to the stage after their 2016 breakup before introducing Ocean Avenue<\/em>\u2019s title track as the \u2018reason we\u2019re all here in the first place.\u201d\u00a0 The full-album play-through of Ocean must have felt like the ultimate catharsis for the diehards, given the band\u2019s breakup six years ago followed by the temporary death of live music during Covid, and tunes like opener \u201cWay Away\u201d and \u201cWith You Around\u201d were a perfect compliment to a beautiful night from a band whose fanbase has assured their legacy as another stellar Saturday in Douglass Park came to a close.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Christopher David Day 2 of Riot Fest 2022 brought cooler temps, an even more stacked lineup than Day 1, and a lot less chaos in terms of lines and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,41,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-news","category-features","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}