To understand just how anticipated SZA’s closing Saturday night set was, imagine the broken hearted fans at the artist merchandise tent today when they found out her merchandise had already sold out (except a handful of smalls) the day before her performance. It’s a testament to her artistic range, style and personality which has created a fiercely loyal fan base.
The crowd sang loud enough to drown her out on songs like “Kill Bill,” and cried through others. Her performance featured a massive setup with detailed visuals and tasteful dancers. SZA showed her sweet and genuine side by apologizing for her vocals due to some sinus issues, while anyone in the crowd would have thought that they were listening to a Grammy award winning vocal performance. Coming off of the meteoric release of her album SOS, she teased the upcoming tour and brought those songs to life for the first time for many fans.
While we were excited for SZA, day two started with the most anticipated act for the BLANK crew, Flipturn. After having had their set cut short due to weather last year, the band was not going to let the moment slip by them. Opening the Surf Stage, their set was jam packed with high energy bops that kept the crowd moving for the full hour. In the year since their last Hangout appearance, Flipturn has logged some impressive touring history. They’ve also successfully released a fantastic indie-rock album, Shadowglow. While last year felt as though the band was taking a big step up to play the main stage of a 40,000 person festival, this year they felt at home.
Daniel Nunnelee opened the Mermaid Stage early in the afternoon. The area around this particular stage is typically filled with various activities such as a foam bubble pit, a pull up bar challenge, and a fake tattoo booth, this year being no exception. As Nunnelee began, people slowly started to take notice and gravitate towards the stage. Powerful vocals overtop of a dynamic band produce a kind of emotional back and forth that drew listeners in. The Nashville native came across authentically and warmly through his various jokes and crowd interactions, including taking a sample audio clip of the audience singing to use as a keyboard sound on the next song, that way, ‘even if we didn’t know the lyrics, we were all still singing along.’
In an attempt to avoid the mid-afternoon sun, the BLANK crew found shade under a palm tree in the Monster Energy Beach Club. The area, which is sectioned off with stacked shipping containers, was highlighted by an absurdly long line of people hoping to cool off in the water at Monster’s beach access point. The club featured a DJ booth and custom airbrush headband making station, along with Monster Energy drink fusions at the bar. From our spot by the hammocks under the tree, we were able to catch a bit of Ranger Trucco’s set while making friends with some strangers who, just like us, were trying to catch a moment of shade. The vibes were immaculate, and if there wasn’t so much good music still to see, we might have stayed there all day.
The rest of the day was a main stage day for me personally. AJR took the Hangout Stage around 5:30 with a bang. The crowd had become surprisingly deep for only being the middle of the day, but that sense of surprise turned into understanding the longer I watched. AJR is capable of taking audience interaction and crowd control to a whole new scale. With tens of thousands of people in front of them, they chatted with the crowd as if this was just another bar gig. The group walked the audience through the making of songs and talked openly about their family and various inspirations for music. They literally talked with individual audience members, calling them out for things they were doing during a song, even getting the cameras to put them on the big screens so we could all watch the interaction. At one point frontman Jack Met put up a picture of himself crowd surfing at his last Hangout appearance in 2018, and actually found the man holding him in the aforementioned photo in the crowd again. Usually this amount of downtime between songs at a show of this scale would hurt the set, but AJR nailed the balance perfectly and kept viewers engaged with their summer hits the whole time.
The next act on the Hangout Stage was Flume. At this point I had managed to make my way up pretty close to the front of the stage. Electronic acts are famous for their builds and bass drops and Flume was no exception. The power from the huge sound system shook my whole body from this distance and reminded me why so many people love EDM festivals. The Australian artist brought out two guest singers in a set weaving between radio friendly electric pop to heavy and experimental electronic tracks. While I didn’t know much of the music going into it, I could appreciate the artistic choices, political statements and focused intention exemplified in each varying song.
Calvin Harris closes out the final night of Hangout tonight (Sunday) on the Hangout Stage.
