Father John Misty

First City Festival
Monterey County Fairgrounds
Monterey, Calif.
August 24-25

Since the iconic 1967 Monterey Pop Festival took over the Monterey Fairgrounds and changed rock music forever, the longtime venue has had a difficult time establishing a successful annual rock event. There’s the still wildly popular Monterey Jazz Festival held on the grounds every year, but rock outings like 2007’s Monterey Music Summit failed to generate the kind of crowds needed to sustain a recurring festival. It took Goldenvoice (the force behind Coachella) to craft the inaugural First City Festival, two days of over 30 acts performing on three stages, that could be a Monterey rock event with staying power.

Portland’s Blitzen Trapper christened the festival’s main Redwood Stage on Saturday afternoon with lots of twin guitar pyrotechnics on songs like new track “Heart Attack” from their upcoming release VII. One set highlight was the folky “Black River Killer,” which bandleader Eric Earley described as “an old fashioned murder ballad.”

A few hours later, Father John Misty’s set was fully committed and humorous. Josh Tillman, who performs as Father John Misty, made quips about his extensive moisturizing regimen and about paying money for a plane to fly overhead during his set. Musically, “I’m Writing a Novel” featured sparks of electric guitar from Benjamin Lysaght, while closing number “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings” found Lysaght twiddling knobs for distortion while Tillman writhed onstage and got himself caught up in the microphone cord. It’s safe to say that the set won the performer a batch of new fans.

Closing out the first evening, MGMT and Passion Pit played sets of Technicolor synth pop to near full capacity crowds in the fairground’s main arena. Meanwhile, on the Cypress Stage, Washed Out made warm, enveloping electro-pop songs that felt ideal for the fading end of a busy first day of the festival.

On Sunday, Capital Cities, whose “Safe and Sound” is a hit on iTunes, surprised by opening their set on the Cypress Stage with a breezy cover of Pink Floyd’s “Breathe.” With matching jackets and semi-choreographed dance moves, they came on like a boy band version of an indie pop act.

Dr. Dog’s afternoon main stage performance featured “That Old Black Hole” and “Shadow People” before closing song “Lonesome” found bassist Toby Leaman jumping from the stage into the photo pit. Later, Devendra Banhart goosed up his set of mostly easy-going numbers from his latest Mala by inserting a revved-up “Seahorse” from 2007’s Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon into the proceedings.

Though Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox is known for his onstage antics (see the clip of Deerhunter’s appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon for one riveting example), the striking frontman played it pretty straight for most of his band’s revelatory set. (He did talk about aliens though and told an audience member celebrating their birthday that the song “THM” is “for my dead brother so happy birthday.” ) With three guitars on some songs and belching fog machines, Deerhunter unspooled gorgeous art rock on long players “Desire Lines” and “Nothing Ever Happened.” It was a captivating set that needed no theatrics.

While Deerhunter were focused, Modest Mouse closed the last set of the festival with a more ramshackle performance. Opening song “Dark Center of the Universe” was potent, and later, “Satin in a Coffin” had the band’s frontman Isaac Brock strumming a banjo on the track from the band’s 2004 breakthrough Good News For People Who Love Bad News. Throughout, Brock punctuated the show with non-sequiturs like “I enjoy mumbling more than making sense.” At another point, he asked the crowd for four seconds of silence. When he was greeted with shouts instead, Brock switched courses and asked everyone to “boo as loud as you can and spit on the back of your neighbor’s head.” It’s probably good that the audience didn’t honor that request either.

First City Festival’s organizers are deeming the initial outing a success that drew around 20,000 people to the fairgrounds over a two-day period. They say that First City has great potential to become an annual institution on California’s Central Coast. It looks like the Monterey Fairgrounds’ rock music festival curse might be finally lifted.