Boston Calling’s last hurrah at City Hall Plaza has faded into recent memory. The last brick has been kicked up, the last echo of the red stage has bounced off City Hall’s walls, and the last Sam Adams cans have been littered onto the pavement.
It was hard for me not to feel a little nostalgic as I walked around the plaza the first night of the festival, the day the move to Allston was announced, even as I had previously critiqued the festival for having outgrown itself. Imminent absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Was the Memorial Day weekend festival a perfect send-off to a growing festival? In a word, yes. In slightly more words, here are five things we learned at Boston Calling 2016:
1. Headliners’ sets impressed. The weekend kicked off with Sia, who followed a zany Sufjan Stevens set. Sia gave an impressive stage show, with dancers performing routines that matched a pre-recorded version playing on jumbotrons on the side of each stage. The work that went into producing a stage show like this boggles the mind – the lighting and the dancers’ positioning fooled some into believing for a few seconds that Kristen Wiig was making a cameo on stage. The routines for “Cheap Thrills” and “Unstoppable” were among the most fun to watch; the full set was a sight to behold.
Saturday night’s Robyn set came with a foreboding press release earlier that morning. It said that Robyn’s show, along with other festival sets, would be remix performances. It was only foreboding to me in a sense that many people were going to be pissed. Robyn’s set was a 75-minute continuous mix of songs, performed live. She brought on dancers and grooved her way through new versions of old songs. It was an impressive stage setup, with lighting and mirrors. The remixes were fun, but the crowd left feeling robbed of her precious hits. But as MTV News’ Hazel Cills wrote of Robyn’s Governor’s Ball set, “Robyn wants you to come to her dance floor looking to lose yourself, not to find her.”
Disclosure closing out the festival was pretty good, too.
2. Early-in-the-day performances should be the reason to attend music festivals. Why? Because you miss the star-making moments, like Christine and the Queens’ incredible Sunday afternoon set. You get the sense that singer Héloïse Letissier and her band will soon be skipping smaller clubs and going straight to selling out a few nights at House of Blues. Same goes for rapper Vince Staples, whose set was very energetic. Boston-based artists Palehound and Michael Christmas kicked off the Saturday and Sunday bills, which showed off the city’s immense talents.
That’s not to say anything of the artists in the late afternoon and early evening who wowed. Janelle Monáe was one of the standout performances of the weekend. She and her band had a stage show that was incredibly well-choreographed and performed. In fact, Sunday’s string of sets were easily among the best in recent memory. Every performance seemed to land well with fans; from Charles Bradley to HAIM, there was bliss and joy. Saturday’s sets were a little more inconsistent, but Courtney Barnett’s shredding performance was the highlight of the sweltering day.
3. Water refill station lines can quadruple that of beer lines. Mid-90 degree temperatures on Saturday put a strain on everyone. With the sun beating down on concrete, it was very hard to find relief. Lizzo’s 1:30 p.m., high energy set got many to come out of the shade and dance, and they were rewarded for their efforts with a hail of water from Lizzo’s dancers’ squirt guns.
4. Boston Calling at City Hall Plaza peaked. Many things that organizers could have improved on from last year’s festivals were better: the addition of a third stage for local bands and comedians, a spectacular lineup, and expanded food and drink options. Still, the inherent issues were there: claustrophobia at highly attended stages, less than ideal acoustics and lack of green space.
5. Boston Calling’s future in Allston is very, very bright. A lot of those inherent problems are about to be fixed. The Harvard Athletic Complex will give Boston Calling and its attendees the space and sound the festival sorely needed.
While nothing is concrete as of yet, it looks like there will be multiple stages with simultaneous music; a lineup of 50 would put Boston Calling on a larger scale nearing New York’s Governor’s Ball. That’s big for Boston.
Just over three years ago, a large pop music festival wasn’t conceivable in Boston. It seemed out of the realm of possibility that The National, Lorde, Sia, Beck, Pixies and Neutral Milk Hotel would play in a festival setting. Now, Boston Calling is a fixture. It has built up a solid reputation over seven iterations. People attending Boston Calling 2017 will have enormous expectations, not just in terms of lineup, but also in the execution.
So while the backdrop of Financial District buildings will be sorely missed, a new era is about to begin.
View photos from Boston Calling 2016 below, by Corwin Wickersham.
