The Weather Challenged Re:SET in City Park

boygenius’ Phoebe Bridgers at Re:SET New Orleans on Saturday, by Victoria Conway

Heat and the threat of lightning took the edge off last weekend’s efforts to reimagine the summer music festival as a concert series.

Re:SET in City Park this weekend served as a reminder why New Orleans’ summer music festival used to take place on the Halloween weekend. On Saturday, half of the boygenius night in concert series had to be cancelled due to the chance of lightning. Only boygenius and Clairo played that day, and on Sunday, the incompatibility between rock ’n’ roll style and New Orleans became obvious. James Blake brought the emotional temperature down 10 degrees with his British reserve, but in long sleeves buttoned at the wrists, long pants, he looked like he was feeling the heat.

Headliner Steve Lacy shed his calf-length coat after a couple of songs because of the heat, but his backing vocalists weren’t so lucky. Dressed from scalp to toe in black spandex as if they were going to pull off an acrobatic jewel heist in movie, they couldn’t do anything but feel the heat. Nola.com’s Keith Spera reported that Big Freedia was dehydrated after Friday’s set and needed an IV after the set.

Steve Lacy on Sunday, by Victoria Conway

In ways, Re:SET delivered exactly what it promised—good music in a chill atmosphere, “chill” here meaning low drama and low stress, not low temperatures. Each day’s lineup focused on the headliner’s aesthetic, so the shows made sense together and the audiences were largely in sync. Low energy sync, but sync. All the headliners delivered to audiences that were fairly enthusiastic, but it’s easy to forget that New Orleans is a university town. With many students home for the summer, there was probably a low ceiling of young people who would want to see these shows, and it was lowered by the heat.

The set-up felt like a drastically scaled down Voodoo as fans entered through the same covered picnic space Voodoo used as its entrance in its most recent incarnation, and the stage sat where one of Voodoo’s smaller stages was located. It had picnic tables and hanging swings to signal the vibe of the weekend, and the most crowded spot was one grove of shade trees inside the grounds.

Each headliner worked in their way. boygenius—the combination of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus— probably delivered the biggest crowd as the most buzzworthy band on the lineup, and Lacy suffered from being slightly old news next to boygenius but not as established as LCD Soundsystem. It’s hard to imagine that of the acts drew the size of audience that promoters hoped for, but the same lineup in the spring or fall would likely have been an event.

Bottom Line: Re:SET re-imagined the festival as a concert series, but the weather made it hard to get a good read on how well it will work.

The Re:SET audience, by Victoria Conway

Photographer Victoria Conway covered Re:SET for My Spilt Milk, and here’s her account of boygenius’ Saturday night show:

boygenius took to the Re:SET stage with three backing musicians, and the 6-person all-female ensemble remains a rare sight. Composed of Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers, the headlining indie supergroup attracted a meaningful turnout of young queers in love, so much so that the set felt like an informal pride celebration to take the place of the New Orleans Pride Parade that attendees were missing out on.

The group opened the show not on stage but on the big screen, streamed from backstage where the three singers harmonized. From the jump, it was clear that the next hour or so was going to be more than just another festival set; rather, it was a celebration of community and authenticity. Once on stage, Bridgers admitted that she was missing a friend’s wedding that evening. At her request, the audience celebrated the singer-songwriter’s friends with a cheer of congratulations, recorded on Bridgers’ phone. Without further ado, the trio went on to play a mixture of songs from their most recent record, the record, and their 2018 eponymous album. With only 18 tracks in their full discography, the audience seemed to know each song by heart, passionately singing along, tears streaming down the faces of more than a few.

The group’s lyrical admissions reverberated throughout the crowd, bringing to life the hidden sentiments that seemingly haunt every young femme. In this bubble of emotion, however, what once felt like an ugly truth becomes a badge of vulnerability. “I’m 27 and I don’t know who I am,” Bridgers crooned, backed by her bandmates and hundreds of voices that rise from the crowd. Baker tapped an existential soft spot when she sang, “Holding my breath / Making peace with my inevitable death,” while Dacus asked, “Will you still love me if it turns out I’m insane?”

Still, the key to boygenius’ draw is that they appear to be more friends than bandmates. The three singers each contribute something unique to the group’s dynamic in terms of musicality and lived experience. Each song is a conversation, each line a new confession of emotion that would make just as much sense at a sleepover. They are an anthem for tenderness, for female friendship, and for the messiness of being whole.

boygenius’ Julien Baker, by Victoria Conway

Lucy Dacus of boygenius onstage Saturday night, by Victoria Conway