One of the things that makes Boston Calling exciting and frustrating is that it’s possible to see 14 acts — whether an entire set or just a few songs — over the course of a single day and still regret the three that you missed. With two of four stages active at any given moment, there’s always something going on. The flip side is that there’s always something going on. Choices must be made.
One of only two acts with the Harvard Athletic Complex all to themselves on Sunday, Brockton native STEFAN THEV kicked things off with buoyant and grinding Steve Lacy-style pop: jittery, a little bit emo, always ingratiating. The Thing brought strutting loucheness and garage-rock energy that held up even when the songs themselves flagged. No such problems with the Heavy Heavy’s soul psychedelia, where Georgie Fuller’s voice served as the midway point between Janis Joplin’s ache and Grace Slick’s stentorian command while her organ slithered through the songs. And Royel Otis sounded like a couple of Australian kids mumbling through Nicky Youre songs.
Lowell’s Tysk Tysk Task inaugurated the local-centric Orange Stage for the day, combining the Smashing Pumpkins’ liquid airiness and Hole’s aesthetic. The mad energetic Billy Dean Thomas followed with staccato rapping against sprung, metallic backing that traded Rage Against The Machine’s anticapitalism and anticolonialism for an LGBTQ+ focus. And Zola Simone similarly plied her slippery alto to queer-centric sophistipop fueled by the urgency of feelings bursting out of her.
All three seemed to converge in Chappell Roan. Her face covered in full white greasepaint, she played theatrical but openhearted indie-pop with a punchy New Wave bounce. The entire area within earshot of the Green Stage was packed, and the crowd knew all the words. At the same time, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram offered straight-ahead electric blues on the Blue Stage, with a piercing, creamy guitar tone and a touch of funk that spilled over into the Revivalists’ set of proletarian rock on the Red Stage.
For a festival with a historic female-headliner problem and a more recent hip-hop-headliner one, landing Megan Thee Stallion was a coup that should’ve killed two birds with one stone. Instead, she was shunted to daytime hours, a massively popular current pop star with multiple No. 1 hits this decade taking the stage ahead of a legacy act headlining Boston Calling for the second time. In a bikini-style one-piece with blue sequins and fringe, she was arguably the only performer dressed for the heat, and her lyrics, topics, and a great many of her moves were unprintable. But for all of her pugilistic rapping and confidence wielded as aggression, she remained good-natured and generous, closing out the explicit “Plan B” with heart hands and an unironic grin and later declaring “We’re having a mother[expletive] self-love summer, [other expletive]!” She should have headlined.
The crush of bodies there for her was in contrast to the sparse crowd watching Alvvays close out the Blue Stage with thrumming, energetic dream pop. Elsewhere, Hozier worked hard to fill the Van Morrison slot of soulful Irish singers conflating religion and romance but was stymied by a sound system that sounded worse the closer you got to the Red Stage, turning a long, impassioned speech about civil and voting rights indecipherable. Even so, the funereal clomp of “Take Me to Church” rang out loud and clear.
Unlike at Saturday’s surprise last-minute Paradise show, the Killers front-loaded their closing set with hits for the festival crowd, with opener “All These Things That I’ve Done” turned into a statement of intent rather than a summation. Singer Brandon Flowers couldn’t keep still, taking advantage not only of the stage but of the massive crowd, throwing his focus hundreds of yards into the distance to the benefit of the anthemic “A Dustland Fairytale.” That worked to the disadvantage of “On Top,” which the band stopped cold so that an unspecified problem in the crowd could be addressed. But the shower of sparks that served as backdrop to “When You Were Young”? You can’t do that at the Paradise.
Marc Hirsh can be reached at officialmarc@gmail.com or on Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social.
BOSTON CALLING
At: Harvard Athletic Complex, Allston, Sunday