Treasure Island Festival, Day 1 - Photos, Review

Last weekend HAD stopped in at what is fast becoming one of our favorite San Francisco music traditions: the Treasure Island Music Festival. The festival is a compact outpost of musical goodness in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, and somehow it manages to have the feel of a huge festival and a small club at the same time. Needless to say, this is quite the accomplishment, and we were more than a little excited to get on with the 2009 lineup.



As is typical to the festival, the lineups had been split into a more "dance" day on Saturday, and a more "rock" day on Sunday. As such, we went first to catch a killer set from Passion Pit. After the energy and awesomeness of their set in September, we weren't exactly surprised to see them deliver in top form once again. That being said, it was nice to see the band solidify their live sound in our minds, and moreover get the crowd dancing with enthusiasm.



We quickly followed up with a visit to Dan Deacon's set. Deacon has fast built up a reputation for a high energy, crowd participatory set, and Saturday was no exception. Between a few well timed "dance contests", Deacon had the entire crowd dancing in short order.

From Deacon's set we moved on to catch The Streets. We've been huge fans of the band since their first record, and it always shocks us that they manage to be even better live. It's not that we don't think they have talent, it's just that the records are already great, so surpassing them is actually quite an achievement. On Saturday, they definitely had the crowd on their side, with the only notable exception being unable to convince the ladies to remove their tops. Nice try, boys.


From there we hit up the set that was probably the most crowd-anticipated of the day: Girl Talk. The band's infectious, mash-up jams are simply too much to pass up, and the crowd more than demonstrated their enthusiasm. In line with the band's sound, the stage setup consisted mainly of a DJ desk. Still, the simplicity was enough to inspire an on (and off) stage dance party that was completely over the top.

We closed out the night by hitting up MGMT's set - complete with fireworks, the band hammered through a set that covered the breadth of their debut record. While the set was definitely far more energetic and inspired than when we saw them opening for Macca, we have to say that the band still played it pretty close to vest. It's not that anything was missing from the set, more that it was just a very direct interpretation of the band's sound. That being said, we totally love that record to the max, so we were grinning like fools.

Closing out the night, Treasure Island continued to win our respect and admiration. Put simply, it's a totally killer festival that does everything right.

Stay tuned for day 2!

All photos by Brian Fong
Many more pictures at the HAD Archive