In Bloom Fest 2018 Rundown, Pt. 3: Young Bombs + London On Da Track + Craig Finn & The Uptown Controllers + LOUDPVCK + Dhani Harrison + Neil Frances + Highly Suspect + Mija

Argh. Sorry for the delay, folks — yesterday my computer decided this was a good time to implode, and I’ve been scrambling to get it back up and running since. We’re finally once again functional, so now we can get going on Part 3 of Space City Rock‘s randomly-selected rundowns of everybody (well, as many as we can) playing this weekend, Sat., March 24th, & Sun., March 25th, at the first-ever In Bloom Music Festival.

If you feel like checking out Parts 1 & 2, by the by, you can see those over here and here.

Of course, you might want to read stuff about In Bloom from other, non-SCR people, and hey, we’re not proud; the more the merrier is the general rule we live by, even when it means pointing folks to what might be seen as The Competition. So we took a quick look around the Interwebs to see what all’s been said recently about the fast-approaching festival.

I’m not actually sure what I was expecting. I mean, last December’s Day for Night festival got a freaking metric ton of coverage, both from local media outlets and big-name blogs and magazines and whatnot elsewhere. I’d wondered if the FPSF-to-In Bloom rebranding might garner the same level of coverage.

However, it seems that Day for Night is a whole other beast entirely (and yes, this is true in fact as well as in hype). Unlike previous DFN coverage, In Bloom’s first-year coverage looks a lot like, well, FPSF’s last-year coverage did, which is to say that it’s been relatively minimal, even locally. Some of that’s due to the consolidation and closing-down of a lot of local H-town music blogs over the past few years, but I’m still kind of surprised.

CoogRadio.com, for one, which did a ton of DFN coverage in the run-up to that festival, seems to be covering SXSW and New Orleans’ BUKU festivals, and that’s about it.

The same goes for Free Press Houston, whose name was pretty inextricably tied to In Bloom’s progenitor festival, even after the FPH had little to do with it in recent years. Hell, even the Houston Chronicle‘s been giving the festival pretty short shrift, posting a whopping four articles so far, even while ads for In Bloom run on every page of their Website (and yes, I know that’s likely not something they control, but still). At least there’s the good ol’ Houston Press and the indefatigable David Garrick, God bless him…

My bet is that people are taking a wait-and-see approach to In Bloom, reserving judgement until they actually experience it for the first time; will it just be FPSF Mk. II, with all the issues that involved (hopefully the weather won’t be one, at least)? Or will it be something new and cool and fun, something to rival Day for Night? This weekend will be the real proof, of course.

But hey, maybe that’s okay. I can still remember the skepticism surrounding FPSF when it debuted; a whole lot of people right here in our fair city scoffed at the idea of a summertime music festival (that didn’t involve a bunch of teenage punks hanging out on asphalt, anyway) surviving, much less succeeding. And say what you will about FPSF, it did succeed — it brought much-needed attention to this city’s music scene and made people from elsewhere sit up and say, “hey, do they have bands other than ZZ Top and Destiny’s Child down in Houston?” (Yes, those people were very behind.)

Anyway, here’s the coverage we were able to find, for your reading enjoyment:

• “Five Things to Know About Houston’s In Bloom Music Festival,” David Sackllah, Consequence of Sound
• “The 10 hottest acts to see at Houston’s new In Bloom music festival,” Johnston Farrow, CultureMap Houston
• “In Bloom is sprouting, but do we need another music festival?,” Andrew Dansby, Houston Chronicle
• “In Bloom Festival aligns with March for Our Lives,” Cary Darling, Houston Chronicle
• “Broken Social Scene Aims to Help a Houston Festival Rebrand,” Clint Hale, Houston Press
• “Vodi Will Bring Their Soft Rock To In Bloom,” David Garrick, Houston Press
• “Pearl Crush Gears Up For In Bloom,” David Garrick, Houston Press
• “Birthday Club Is Ready To Bring Joy To In Bloom,” David Garrick, Houston Press
• “Get A Life Gets Ready For In Bloom,” David Garrick, Houston Press
• “Velveteen Echo Reveals Their Plans For In Bloom Festival,” David Garrick, Houston Press
• “Astragal Hopes To Keep It Short and Sweet at In Bloom,” David Garrick, Houston Press
• “Dear Life: The Best Music of The Week in Houston,” David Garrick, Houston Press
• “5 Reasons We’re Excited For In Bloom Festival,” Cory Garcia, Houstonia
• “Want/Love/Need: In Bloom Edition,” Abby Ledoux, Houstonia
• “Win passes to In Bloom Music Festival,” KRBE

With that out of the way, here we go with the previews:

Young Bombs
Okay, so we’re starting off with Young Bombs, and I’m having a real hard time figuring out what the heck to say about their music. See, the Vancouver EDM duo are remix artists, which means they primarily take other people’s tracks and put their own spin on ’em, a lot of the time in an official, paid-to-do-it capacity; they’ve worked on songs by Christina Aguilera, Nick Jonas, Kelly Clarkson, Alessia Cara, Khalid, Post Malone, Lady Gaga, Bastille, and probably a dozen more.

And for what it’s worth, I actually like their reimaginings of the music — they’re able to take pop and hip-hop, including some truly middle-of-the-road, forgettable crap, throw some EDM pixie dust on it, and make it work, often better than it did originally. I’m told Iggy Azalea liked their remix of one of her songs so much she now performs that, instead of the original (which, it must be said, was probably a low bar to begin with, but y’know).

So, that’s what these guys do…for now, at least. If you read the pair’s promo materials, it sure sounds like they’re planning to step out from behind the “remix artist” label and go for it on their own as a full-fledged, doing-their-own-shit EDM act. If that’s the plan, hey, more power to ’em; if the remixes are any proof, they should be able to pull it off. (Jeremy Hart)
[Young Bombs plays at 1:50PM on Sun., March 25th, at the Ostara Stage.]

London On Da Track
So, this is starting to feel like a trend. First we’ve got two remix-makers hoping to (maybe) break out into wider fame, and then we get a straight-up rapper-turned-producer who’s trying to get back to rapping under his own name. At least, that’s the basic story behind London On Da Track as far as I know it: London Holmes started out rapping and ended up making beats because he happened to know how to play piano and was able to figure out how to turn those sounds into beats using some cheap software.

From there he’s worked his way steadily upwards to the point where he’s been a seriously in-demand producer for close to a decade, a guy who’s worked with everybody from Waka Flocka Flame to 50 Cent to Young Thug to Future to H-town’s own Trae tha Truth. As of last fall, though, London decided to change lanes, going back to where he started and signing to RCA Records. So far I’ve only heard a couple of tracks from late last year: “No Flag,” a collab with Nicki Minaj, fellow In Bloom performer 21 Savage, and Offset; and “Whatever You On,” which features Jeremih, Ty Dolla $ign, Young Thug, and YG.

And so far, well, they’re not bad. Naturally, the production is slick as hell, with lots of tropical-sounding percussion and keys bouncing back and forth across your ears, but London’s rapping is pretty damn good, too, particularly on “No Flag”. I’m a sucker, too, for the guy’s story, I have to admit — it’s insane to think of going from where he started to where he is now, and hell, if he can do that, why not do whatever you want, right? (Jeremy Hart)
[London On Da Track plays at 5:20PM on Sun., March 25th, at the Ostara Stage.]

No Flag (Audio Only) by London On Da Track & Nicki Minaj & 21 Savage & Offset on VEVO.

Craig Finn & The Uptown Controllers
Ahhhhh, yeah. No offense to the other folks being previewed in these little writeups, but this right here is what I’ve been waiting for. Craig Finn can do no goddamn wrong by me, not with “main” band The Hold Steady or with his solo stuff — he’s honestly one of my all-time favorite songwriters, up there with people like Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits. He’s the kind of songwriter that’s a storyteller, who can use just a handful of lines to paint a picture of a person, quirks and humanity and all, or create a scene so damn real you listen and feel like you can see the whole thing, with all the characters as real as you or me.

Beyond that, the stories he tells are ineffably human, street-level. He sings about young lovers finding themselves in the chillout tent at a music festival, about homeless junkies finding salvation, about nights of epic partying and the inevitable comedown that follows. They’re songs/stories that could be about you or me, at different points in our lives, all sung in that unassuming, half-smiling rough voice, the kind that always sounds like it’s sharing the best dang joke with only you, even when a bunch of other people are in the room. There’s a small handful of people in the musical world that I’d absolutely love to sit down and hang out with; Craig Finn is one of those people.

Music-wise, his solo stuff isn’t quite like the stuff he does with The Hold Steady, at least not all the time — The Hold Steady are more “rock” in general, while solo albums like last year’s We All Want The Same Things or 2012’s Clear Heart Full Eyes are more subtle, softer somehow. There’re more little electronic bits, or weird little hints of soft-rock icons of yore like flutes or horns, chunks of a country/roots sound that might not’ve worked on, say, Boys and Girls in America, and above all of that, there’s a more “immediate” vibe to it all.

With THS, it feels like Finn’s telling stories about his youth, about people long gone and scenes long dead; the stories have the haziness of things remembered. Solo, however, Finn’s singing as his adult self, as a 46-year-old man who’s left (most of) the stupid shit of The Old Days behind him. He knows full well who he is, these days, and he knows exactly how to talk about that grown-up world. (Jeremy Hart)
[Craig Finn & The Uptown Controllers play at 2:20PM on Sun., March 25th, at the Fauna Stage.]

LOUDPVCK
Stepping sideways for some trap with LOUDPVCK, stripped down from a two-man outfit to a one-man show featuring just Kenny Beats since Ryan Marks left to “pursue other things creatively” back in November. It doesn’t sound like the split has slowed LOUDPVCK down one bit, however, even with just one guy now shouldering the load — the music I’ve heard is as aggro as ever, loud and abrasive and crushing you with gigantic fists of bass even as it stretches the boundaries of what I tend to think of as “trap,” at least, to include some distinctly different sounds.

There’s definitely some dubstep/brostep going on in there, for sure, but I’m also hearing bits and pieces that sound like Leftfield-ish breakbeat, and other chunks that make me think of Atari Teenage Riot or the handful of other Digital Hardcore artists that were floating around back around the late ’90s/early ’00s. And yeah, I’m liking it quite a bit; I dunno how it’ll translate live, really, but it’s some heavy, hard shit. (Jeremy Hart)
[LOUDPVCK plays at 3:40PM on Sat., March 24th, at the Ostara Stage.]

Dhani Harrison
I was a fan of thenewno2, but never saw them live. Now playing under his own name, Dhani Harrison — the offspring of a certain famous guy with the last name “Harrison” — has released a new album, IN///PARALLEL, with its single, “All About Waiting”. This song has great melodies that conjure ELO, along with some Queens of the Stone Age punch. This, added to the chance to finally see my favorite Beatle’s son play, has me excited to see Dhani’s set. (Jason Smith)
[Dhani Harrison plays at 3:30PM on Sat., March 24th, at the Fauna Stage.]

Neil Frances
There’s a truly throwback feel to the music Neil Frances — not a single person, mind you, but a band from Los Angeles — at least the handful of tracks I’ve been able to find so far. They’re a pop band, no doubt, but a pop band much more informed by influences from the ’70s, with a heavy dose of shiny-bright disco alongside fuzzy synths and guitars and chilled-out, high-pitched male vocals. Listening I can’t help but think of the Bee Gees or less-disco-ified band The Raspberries, or occasionally Prince, or more contemporary folks like Tame Impala or Air.

Like I said, the band appears to only have a handful of singles out so far, including covers of Stardust’s “Music Sounds Better With You” and Womack & Womack’s “Teardrops,” but just that small smattering of music so far is pretty damn promising. I tend to regard anything disco-tinged as being one step removed from a venereal disease, but damn, Neil Frances are hard to not like, and I want to hear more. (Jeremy Hart)
[Neil Frances plays at 12:30PM on Sat., March 24th, at the Bud Light Stage.]

Highly Suspect
I’ll admit that the first time I ever heard of these guys, I rolled my eyes; no, really, I mean my eyes literally did the whole floor-to-ceiling roll. I mean, c’mon. Neck tats, slicked-back pretty-boy hair, tough-guy poses — they could’ve been a freaking advertisement for Hot Topic or the Warped Tour (or both). And to make matters weirder, the reason I was hearing about them was because they’d been nominated for a Grammy (and now they’ve apparently been nominated for a total of three over the past couple of years). The fuck? Who the hell was this band that looked like a walking Gen Y stereotype and that I’d never heard of before?

Listening now to their 2016 album, The Boy Who Died Wolf, okay, I think I’m kind of getting it. Despite my misgivings, these guys actually are a pretty damn solid rock band, with no prefixes or suffixes necessary; they’re a bit like the Foo Fighters both in that way and in the massive, Dave Grohl-esque roar frontman Johnny Stevens can produce. There’s also a resemblance to Everclear at their best, and a decent-sized chunk of old-school classic rock on tracks like “Serotonia,” which is totally Led Zeppelin to my ears. Oh, and “My Name Is Human” makes me think of another straight-up rock band I utterly love, Royal Blood, and that’s never a bad thing. Alright, y’all, you’ve got me; the hype is worth it. (Jeremy Hart)
[Highly Suspect plays at 4:50PM on Sun., March 25th, at the Flora Stage.]

Mija
As I’m pretty sure I’ve babbled about at length elsewhere in these things, these days a lot of the EDM I hear I get through my kid. And so, I get pretty heavily exposed to the people she likes the most, like Arizona-bred DJ Mija (real name Amber Giles), who not only inspired The Kid to start making her own music but also to demand to be allowed to dye her hair that dead-mermaid blue-green color (we’ve put her off ’til next year, thankfully, and anyway, Mija herself seems to’ve gone a bit darker lately).

Now, sometimes when The Kid forces some EDM artist or another on me, I listen, shrug, and go “eh,” but with Mija, yeah, I get it. The tracks she makes are all over the damn map, bouncing from fast-moving house to clicky, retro, almost “Axel F”-sounding songs to beeping, bouncing, cheerfully-grinning chiptune (or a close cousin, anyway); she’s damn near impossible to categorize. And hey, why bother? As long as it’s good — and this is — what the hell good does it do to pigeonhole somebody?

On her brand-new EP, How to Measure the Distance Between Lovers, she takes things even a step further than before, putting her own stellar, fragile-yet-powerful vocals out there for the first time, over tracks that are deliberate-sounding, densely-layered pseudo-electro-pop that rides the line between crystalline gorgeousness and otherworldly haze. It reminds me of M83 at points, or maybe Sigur Ros, or hell, maybe Cocteau Twins — not things you’d expect to think of, I should note, when listening to music ostensibly created by an EDM artist. Hrm. Maybe that label needs to go away, too, come to think of it. (Jeremy Hart)
[Mija plays at 5:20PM on Sat., March 24th, at the Ostara Stage.]

Alright, people — I’m aiming for a few more of these in one final batch tomorrow, and then we’re off to the races. Check back soon for that.

(Photos: London On Da Track photo by Shane McCauley; Craig Finn photo by Shervin Lainez.)