Outside Lands 2021

It’s been 26 months since the last Outside Lands music festival took place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Normally held on the second weekend of August, this year organizers opted for Halloween weekend in an effort to see Covid rates decline before assembling large crowds. The bet paid off! The 7-day rolling average of new cases per day dropped dramatically, close to the spring ‘21 lows before the nationwide reopenings. If they had decided to hold the festival on its usual August weekend, it would have been during a peak that nearly matched the city’s highest back in January ‘21. Great foresight and music to the ears of those who waited 19 months since they bought tickets at their release date.

Here is a rundown of the best sets and costumes of the weekend:

Best Sets:

The Strokes - 8:25pm Friday - Lands End (main stage)

The Strokes released their sixth studio album on April 10th 2020, seven years after Comedown Machine dropped in 2013. Aptly titled The New Abnormal, it dropped one month after the United States had gone into lockdown. 19 months later, fans were finally able to hear what many consider some of their best material to date. “Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus,” “Bad Decisions” and “The Adults Are Talking” were predictable choices given they are singles. “Ode to the Mets,” the album closing ballad and seemingly new fan favorite, had the crowd swaying arm in arm in what may have been the top drunken pub sing-a-long moment of the weekend. Some fans griped about frontman Julian Casablancas’ mercurial attitude and off-kilter stage commentary. The band did come on a bit late and ended a bit early. But no one could argue with the sea of bouncing bodies observed when timeless riffs and hooks from tracks like “Reptilia” and “Hard to Explain” rang out across the iconic Polo Field grounds. “Gone now are the old times,” starts the outro on the sweetly mournful “Ode to the Mets.” But just like those “I Can’t Win” Mets of Major League Baseball, these sometimes beleaguered but always beloved rock vets look fit to give us another 20 years of unforgettable memories.

Remi Wolf - 2:40pm Friday - Sutro Stage

It felt like something of a coronation for this local singer made good. She hails from Palo Alto, just south of San Francisco, and the Bay Area crowd showed her a lot of love for such an early set. In 2019, Remi Wolf self-released her debut EP, You’re a Dog!. Within months, she began to experience viral success. Her star shot up so quickly that she was able to release a remix album of that EP, entitled We Love Dogs!, in 2021 with some of the biggest and hottest names in music featured. Hot Chip, Polo & Pan, Beck, Little Dragon, Nile Rodgers and Panda Bear all made contributions. Oftentimes a solo indie artist with a pop leaning sound may appear solo with just a backing track. Remi Wolf went the opposite route. She had a full live band, horns, and back up singers. Early singles “Rufus” and “Liquor Store” led off the set. A medley of “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley and MGMT’s “Electric Feel” stood out in the middle. She closed things off with her biggest song to date, “Photo ID,” exiting the stage with the whole hillside crowd still waving their arms side to side and singing along.

Vampire Weekend - 6:30pm Saturday - Lands End (main stage)

It was a surprisingly early set time for Vampire Weekend, slotted on the Lands End main stage before Lizzo. American Electronic artist Zhu took the other headlining space. This is despite VW’s ever growing mainstream popularity. With their 4th LP, 2019’s Father of the Bride, the band leveled up from perennial Best Alternative Grammy nominees to full on Album of the Year candidates. For many, it’s still odd to see the band, considered among the best of the last 15 years, without their co-creative driving force from their first three albums. Rostam Batmanglij, the multi-instrumentalist producer, versed in everything from classical to all manners of world music, departed in 2016 to pursue a successful career producing and writing alongside the likes of Solange, Frank Ocean, Carly Rae Jepsen, Hamilton Leithauser and Clairo, to name a few.

Frontman Ezra Koenig’s first venture without his co-pilot led to a more rock and jam orientation. When collaborating with fresh new artists like Steve Lacy, such as on “Sunflower” and “Flower Moon,” the results sound as uniquely Vampire Weekend as ever. In other instances, like on single “This Life,” they strayed into a more down the middle approach that not even a “Crimson and Clover” type vocal effect could save from sounding generic. Saturday night saw them embrace all eras of their career. Five of the 16 song set came from Father of the Bride. Several of these songs, such as lead single “Harmony Hall,” received extended jams, not out of place on the grounds of the 1967’s historic Human Be-In. It may be telling though that the final four all came from their 2008 self-titled debut. To close out, there was a run of “A-Punk,” “Campus,” “Oxford Comma,” and “Walcott,” and it was the rowdiest segment of the night by some distance.

Best Costumes:

- Garth Maul (a combination of Garth from Wayne’s World and Darth Maul from Star Wars).
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Tax the Rich” dress from the 2021 Met Gala.
- A pack of Ned Flanders from The Simpsons.
- Many Ted Lassos (but only one Roy Kent and Keeley Jones).
- A plethora of Squid Games references (although no one thought to combine the character 212 with Azealia Banks’ “212” music video. Missed opportunity).
- Cheri Oteri and Will Ferrell’s iconic “Spartan Cheerleader” characters.
- An entire crew dressed as Trinity from the Matrix.
- A large crew of Dan Flashes shirts from the hit Netflix show I Think You Should Leave, complete with price tags and fedoras with safari flaps.