James Blake! Jenny Lewis! Little Brother! AHHHHHHH!
Now that we’ve gotten that out of our system: Today, the Hopscotch Music Festival announced the first wave of its 2019 lineup. The festival returns to Raleigh City Plaza, Red Hat Amphitheater, and other downtown venues September 5–7, with a slate of exciting headliners as well as some great stuff nestled in the small type.
Thursday night at Raleigh City Plaza features the influential feminist punk band Sleater-Kinney and Philly rock mainstay Kurt Vile, along with the indie-rock prodigy Snail Mail and the Boone, North Carolina buzz band The Nude Party.
Friday’s headliners include electro-soul enigma James Blake (regardless of how you feel about his latest album, Assume Form, we saw him perform it in Philly a few months ago, and we promise it will slay), beloved indie-pop musician Jenny Lewis (formerly of Rilo Kiley), Purple Mountains (the new band of weird-folk auteur David Berman, which just dropped a terrific song), and Dirty Projectors, whom I legit forgot existed but who apparently put out a record last year that people like.
Saturday is split between a big pop bill at Red Hat—with Scottish synth-pop powerhouse Chvrches, the trip-hop-kissed stadium pop of Phantogram, and the much-less-famous but much-more-awesome dance-punk vets !!! (say it “chk chk chk”)—and a rap/R&B bill at City Plaza, featuring Raphael Saadiq (of Tony! Toni! Toné! fame, holding it down for old-school, grown-ass R&B since his 2000s renaissance), Charlotte rapper Lute, and, in the biggest local news of the festival, the headline-stage return of North Carolina rap legends Little Brother.
There’s also plenty of heat near the bottom of the flyer, including the Very Online hip-hop experimenter JPEGMAFIA, the Japanese metal warhorse Boris, boygenius member Lucy Dacus, the harsh-noise heavy Pharmakon, the seemingly immortal Deerhunter, the avant-garde percussion icon Milford Graves, and good ol’ Al Riggs. VIP tickets ($299) and regular three-day passes ($199) go on sale at 10:00 a.m. on May 23, with single-day and single-show passes to go on sale this summer.
music@indyweek.com
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