The best part about choosing your own adventure amid the myriad options presented by Raleigh’s Hopscotch Music Festival each year is the thematic connections and stylistic through lines binding the lineup. And such is the case, once more, with the attentive curation behind this year’s nearly 130 acts coming to two outdoor main stages and eight club spaces September 5–7.
The connections between the acts provide new ways to consider music you already love and context to appreciate the new sounds you discover along the way. Here are a few themes you can look out for as you journey through this year’s Hopscotch.
Top-line trio dissects indie rock’s last decade
This is obvious advice, but don’t skip the top-line acts at this year’s Hopscotch.
St. Vincent (9:30 p.m., Saturday, City Plaza), Waxahatchee (9:30 p.m., Thursday, City Plaza), and Faye Webster (9:30 p.m., Friday, City Plaza) offer glimpses of how the dominant trends among indie rock singer-songwriters have shifted across the last decade.
St. Vincent arrives having shown herself to still be in firm command of her signature powers on this year’s alternately slinking and thundering All Born Screaming, an album that conjures wide-screen Bond theme theatrics, twilit radio pop, and defiantly angular art rock with equal assurance. St. Vincent emerged in the late aughts when insistent stylization dominated much of indie rock—years later, she still does it better than pretty much anybody.
Waxahatchee puts a bow on a more recent era with this year’s triumphant Tiger’s Blood, her bend-don’t-break emotionalism spirited forth by windswept rock with deep ’70s roots as she delivers tunes that were readymade for shout-alongs at a music festival as 30-somethings “roll around in the disarray / In the final act of the good old days.”
And Webster shines as a low-key beacon of what’s taking hold. On this year’s Undressed at the Symphony, her confessionals meander through hazy contours, not quite laconic but never hectic. “I want to see you in my dreams but then forget / We’re meant to be but not yet,” she moans on the ornately evocative “But Not Kiss.” Her music feels like the sound of an emerging present.
Past hallmarks, both obvious and less so
At Hopscotch, the selection of legacy acts continues to feel especially thoughtful.
This year, you get expected indie rock luminaries in Guided by Voices (7:30 p.m., Saturday, City Plaza) and The Jesus Lizard (8:30 p.m., Saturday, Moore Square). Coming two days into a festival filled with acts that have felt the influence of these big names should, as ever, serve as a fascinating lens through which to consider them once more.
And it’s thrilling to have them here. GBV return to the festival as they continue their unstoppable onslaught of fuzzy, classic-minded garage rock with this year’s aptly titled Strut of Kings, the Ohio group’s 24th album since returning from an eight-year hiatus in 2012. The Jesus Lizard hit Hopscotch amid their second reunion since initially disbanding in 1999, this time rekindling their distinctly twisting and ranting post-hardcore fire with Rack, their first album since 1998.
But Hopscotch also emphasizes legacies that aren’t so widely remembered. Getting to see the swaggering, swaying, and sparkling Zamrock of ’70s-born Zambian band WITCH (Saturday, 12:30 a.m., Lincoln Theatre) in the festival’s largest club space is one of this year’s most appealing opportunities, while bringing North Carolina power pop forerunners The dB’s (Saturday, 3:15 p.m., Moore Square) to a main stage is Hopscotch’s latest earnest embrace of local music history.
A truly exciting slate of hip-hop, R&B, and reggae
Hopscotch’s forays into hip-hop, R&B, and reggae have been inconsistent at best, but this year’s lineup brings exciting acts at pretty much every level.
On one of the main stages, there’s rapper JPEGMAFIA’s slyly murmured and hollered Rorschach tests of confrontational verses and colliding musical styles (8:30 p.m., Thursday, Moore Square), as well as the scuzzy but erudite Previous Industries (a trio comprised of rappers Open Mike Eagle, Video Dave) (5 p.m., Thursday, Moore Square).
And in the clubs there are highlights such as prolific, long-standing, and eternally restless reggae experimentalist Scientist (a.k.a. producer Hopeton Brown) (10:30 p.m., Saturday, Lincoln Theatre); blearily experimental and devastatingly expressive R&B singer Niecy Blues (midnight, Friday, Nash Hall); and keenly charismatic and conversational rapper and producer Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon (10:30 p.m., Friday, Transfer Co. Ballroom).
Hopscotch has been criticized in the past for lacking commitment to these genres, and while the festival remains anchored by indie rock, it’s clear organizers are making an effort.
Comedy as a stepping-off point
For the second year in a row, Hopscotch will pack Lincoln Theatre for Thursday night with comedy, keying on a lineup that will push the stylistic boundaries of comedy with the patient, gravelly deadpan of headliner Joe Pera (12:20 a.m.) and the self-deprecating whimsy of Katie Hughes (11 p.m.) and eight more.
Multitalented comedian and actor Tim Heidecker (5:45 p.m., Thursday, City Plaza) plays a main stage the same night, playing warm indie rock that turns a wry eye to existential insecurities. “Words don’t come / Like they did when I was young / And I don’t know why / This well’s running dry,” he sings on the lead single to his forthcoming new album Slipping Away. It’s hard to be funny all the time.
Bounce between City Plaza and Lincoln Theatre Thursday to contemplate the role of humor in comedy and beyond.
Comment on this story at [email protected].