I went to that fest for the first time this year, and I had a blast. Kilby is an indie-centric affair, but it's a big-tent version of indie with room for all kinds of subgenres and definitions. It's not too big and not too small, and the festival grounds are pretty comfortable and easy to navigate even when it gets gross and rainy outside.
It was the closest thing I've experienced to the late, lamented Pitchfork Music Festival, and I mean that as the highest praise. Today, Kilby Block Party's organizers unveil the lineup for next year's festival, and it looks really, really good. Next year's Kilby headliners are Deftones, the Strokes, and Jungle.
I don't quite understand how Jungle are festival headliners now, but maybe I'll just need to catch their show and find out for myself. But Deftones and the Strokes, despite sharing very little in common musically, are both past-generation stars who have really broken through to zoomer audiences; my daughter, for instance, loves both of them. The top of the bill also includes younger acts like Fontaines D.C., Slayyyter, and Lil Yachty, all strong picks.
For my money, though, Kilby really comes into focus when you look at the fully stacked undercard. Right now, Kilby has a few question-mark mysteries on its poster, so we don't quite have the full picture yet. (Are those reunions? Artists who just haven't announced tours yet?
We'll find out!) There are a couple of classic-album playthrough sets — Two Door Cinema Club doing Tourist History and Whitney doing Light Upon The Lake. Deerhunter's Bradford Cox recently revived his solo project Atlas Sound, and that's on the bill. So is the Radio Dept., the Swedish weird-pop project that has gone fully inactive in recent years.
We've got a pretty healthy number of underground legends on that lineup, and you could probably spend the whole weekend, if you wanted, focusing on the classics, including Spoon, Hot Chip, Kim Gordon, Wolf Parade, and Mercury Rev. Do Joyce Manor count as legends by now? What about Silversun Pickups?
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