Spring Fling Rock AF 2016 Tour: Cage the Elephant, Silversun Pickups, Foals, Bear Hands
Sleep Train Arena, Sacramento • Saturday, March 12, 2016

As spring break vibes come to a bittersweet end for some—or are just about to start flowing for others—Sacramento was fortunate enough to experience this wistfully transient period’s sweet spot in what will now forever be remembered as the second stop of Spring Fling Rock AF 2016 Tour.

Four of the music industry’s hottest alternative bands graced Sleep Train Arena this weekend in an almost five-hour extravaganza of rock ‘n’ roll tunes. While many ticketholders may have showed up to witness Saturday’s marquee headlining act, Cage the Elephant, there were certainly shining moments to be found in the three preceding groups’ sets as well—namely, Brooklyn-based Bear Hands, the United Kingdom’s Foals and the California-grown Silversun Pickups.

Bear Hands kicked things off, promptly taking the stage at 7 p.m. to a somewhat underwhelming arena presence (it was early-going, with folks still trickling in). That didn’t stop the four-piece East Coast outfit from setting the mood for the rest of the night, though. As the house lights came down, the opening rapid-fire guitar strumming of 2014’s “Peacekeeper” snapped the low murmuring of the crowd into a spirited cheer—the Spring Fling was officially underway.

“You got a long night ahead of you,” said guitarist Ted Feldman about midway through Bear Hands’ seven-song set. How right he was.

Shortly after Bear Hands exited to a warm applause, Foals stormed the stage and immediately—like, no intro or anything—dove into its set with a thunderous opening track: “Snake Oil,” off of their 2015 album What Went Down. The song proved to be a perfect pivot back into the punk-rock grime this show needed to balance out the more indie feel of the previous act. While lead singer/guitarist Yannis Philippakis screamed into the mic, the crowd roared with excitement and Sleep Train Arena finally began to light up.

Unfortunately, Foals only carried a nine-song set list, but ended up with one of the most notable performances of the night. The ever-charismatic Philippakis showed a true sign of bravado during his band’s final number, when toward the end of the song he decided to move off stage. Lowering himself into the pit area and then hoisting himself back up onto the front row barricade, Philippakis came face-to-face with a sea of Sacramentans, singing to and with them all. And then, of course, he tried to crowd surf, which didn’t turn out all that well when a bunch of weaklings damn near dropped him. Come on Sac, the guy’s like 5-foot-6. We can do better.

And with that, Foals bowed out to make way for Silversun Pickups, who appeared highly anticipated and VERY well-received before they began to play even a single note (the high-pitched screams said it all). Their set—spanning 11 songs and pulling from albums as old as 2006’s Carnavas to as recent as 2015’s Better Nature—adhered to a much slower pace throughout and seemed to have a little bit of a slow-build/slow-burn element to them. Whereas Foals’ were upbeat and succinct both sonically and lyrically, Silversun Pickups’ music was much more layered and spread out (at least that’s how it felt). Nevertheless, they too had their highlights: be it lead singer Brian Aubert’s consistent showmanship in his onstage gesturing and engaging theatrics; or a duet sung between himself and fellow bandmate Nikki Monninger; or just the sheer number of entire-band solos that conjured wave after wave of applause and praise. Silversun Pickups finished up with a fan-favorite in “Lazy Eye,” gracefully leaving the stage soon after to what was without a doubt the biggest crowd reaction of the show until that point.

As if the energy in the room hadn’t been high enough already, Saturday’s headlining band took it to new, palpable levels.

It wasn’t long before five musicians filed in in almost single-file fashion—each man taking his post at his respective instrument—and the opening sounds of “Cry Baby” began to play. And when lead vocalist Matthew Shultz came running onstage last, wearing what looked like a silk white and blue cowboy shirt and tight black jeans, everyone knew Cage the Elephant had finally arrived. For brevity’s sake, I’ll keep this part of the review short and just say it was quite a spectacle watching Shultz and his troupe maintain an abnormally high level of enthusiasm throughout their 16-song set without once dropping the baton. Even more impressive was Shultz’s ability to use his voice and body as instruments in their own right, channeling Mick Jagger-like moves and star power into every single song.

From the cell-phone-light crowd swaying on “Telescope” and the straight up sing-along on “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked,” to the almost-attempted crowd surf on “Mess Around,” Cage the Elephant grew progressively unhinged. When it was all said and done, this so-called caged elephant had definitely been released, and the circus that had engulfed Sleep Train Arena was in full swing.

A three-month commitment to spring might still be coming, but it was nice to have a quick taste beforehand to sample the relationship.

The last time the beloved American rock band Cage the Elephant played Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento, they opened for the legendary Foo Fighters and nearly stole the show with their stage-diving, crowd-surfing, guitar-riffing, microphone-swinging insane energy level. Now, Cage is coming back to the old arena in Natomas for a headlining show of their own on Saturday, March 12 and they’re bringing with them three of the best rock and indie bands on the scene right now: Silversun Pickups, Foals and Bear Hands. The Spring Fling Rock AF Tour, as it’s being called, is only stopping in 15 cities, so Sacramentans are lucky as hell to have a rock-tastic bill like this coming through town. Tickets are on sale now at Ticketmaster.com and start at just $29.50, a bargain for how much talent you’ll get to see grace the stage. Come on out and jump into spring with the fling. Visit Cagetheelephant.com for more info on the night’s headliner

Music is awesome, isn’t it? Whether intentional or not, music is a big part of everyone’s lives. It’s all around us: on TV, in ads, in our headphones and earbuds attached to our smart phones with streaming audio. Chances are if you’re reading Submerge, you love music too. Even though there is more great music being made than ever and access to it is becoming easier and easier, it’s still sometimes hard to know where to look to discover new tunes. Enter Submerge’s annual year-end best-of list! In 2013 there were so many amazing albums released that we actually expanded this story to feature the top 30 instead of the top 20. You’ll notice that a lot of this list, approximately 50 percent, is local. That’s not by mistake. That’s not because we tried to include local albums just to round out our list. No, we just have that much talent right here in our own city.

Compiled by all of our contributing writers and staff, we hope this list will help you discover something new. And because all of our attention spans are so short nowadays (are you still with us?), we kept our reviews to 140 characters or less, because we all know that reading someone’s short, to-the-point Twitter post is a helluva lot better than reading someone’s four-paragraph-long Facebook rant. Now, set forth and discover some new jams! Who knows, your new favorite band/album may be waiting for you somewhere on this list.

30.

Danny Brown
Old

Fool’s Gold

What can you say about Danny Brown? He’s rap’s Jim Morrison, The Lizard King. Old has been on repeat since the day I got it. And will be.

29.

Run the Jewels
Run the Jewels

Fool’s Gold

As dope as promised, it gets no better than this. Killer Mike is at his best, and El-P provides the perfect sonic-scape for destruction.

28.

Biosexual
The Window Wants the Bedroom

Debacle

Fantastically produced debut album of avant-garde supergroup featuring the great Jocelyn of ALAK, brother Michael RJ Saalman and Zac Nelson.

27.

Paper Pistols
Deliver Us From Chemicals

Self-released

2 can do it all. Skinner & Lydell are all binary: beard/belle; drum/voice; age/youth; decadent/austere; beautiful/music.

26.

EGG
Overly Easy

Self-released

If Cake and Phish had a baby? Close, but doesn’t quite describe this amazing band. An infectious sound that makes you wanna get up and GO.

25.

M.I.A.
Matangi

N.E.E.T.

M.I.A. is pissed off, and still fresh as ever, rapping over aggressive beats and keeping the Sri Lankan sound alive.

24.

The Men
New Moon

Sacred Bones

Brooklyn noise punks retreat to a rural cabin, finding a balance between a Mudhoney dustup and a Grateful Dead peace-in.

23.

Gauntlet Hair
Stills

Dead Oceans

Gauntlet Hair dropped the dopest, weirdest album we’ve heard in a minute and then immediately broke up. Spacey, strange, with a dash of pop.

22.

Jacuzzi Boys
Jacuzzi Boys

Hardly Art

The Miami trio switched things up with a more polished than pure garage sound. Still playful and infectious, just adding new dimensions.

21.

Gap Dream
Shine Your Light

Burger

Mid-tempo sex appeal born of psychedelic melancholy and rock ‘n’ roll disco; drugs, dance, drugs, booze, dance, fuck.

20.

Miley Cyrus
Bangerz

RCA
 
Crying cats ftw! The most dissed/discussed AoY; w/ hits by Dr. Luke, Pharrell & Mike WiLL, twerk! This is Miley’s year.

19.

Chuuwee
Thrill

Self-released

With rap albums you usually either get bangin’ trap beats OR real lyricism. On Thrill you get both. One of Sac’s best in top form.

18.

Century Got Bars & Bru Lei
Midtown Marauders

Self-released

A flawless Tribe tribute and audible tour of this fair city’s nucleus. If you’ve spent more than five seconds in Midtown, you want this. 

17.

David Bowie
The Next Day

RCA

Charming, confidently progressive with kick-ass guitar solos. It’s classic Bowie with a modern, enthusiastically suspended twist.

16.

Black Sabbath
13

Vertigo/Universal

Pure smokin’ stoner doom rock at its finest! Timeless lyrics and riffs. This album picks up where the band left off with Ozzy 30 years ago.

15.

Nails
Abandon All Life 

Southern Lord

Yeah, it’s a light version of Unsilent Death (the most brutal album ever), but it’s still hard and evil enough to kill your grandma.   

14.

Bombino
Nomad

Nonesuch

A perfect album for trekking the Sahara. Blues guitar, smooth Tuareg vox, steady rhythm. Produced by Dan Auerbach (of The Black Keys).

13.

Meat Puppets
Rat Farm

Megaforce Records

Return to form for desert-baked Brothers Kirkwood. Simple, honest, catchy… Bare bones and poignant. May the Puppets live forever.

12.

Foals
Holy Fire

Transgressive

With Holy Fire, these British boys delivered their most focused (and heaviest) album to date, bringing a new meaning to “modern rock.”

11.

City of Vain
Back Against the Wall

Self-released

Sacto punkers bring forth one of the best punk rock records of the year, not just locally, but globally. Warm tones and classic style!

10.

Middle Class Rut
Pick Up Your Head

Bright Antenna

More fierce rock ‘n’ roll from Sac’s Dynamic Duo…and we <3 it! Grimy grooves and distorted chaos mark MC Rut’s best album to date.

09.

Horseneck
The Worst People Ever

Artery

Booze-fueled bone-breaking sludge metal with a sense of humor. This EP gives Sac’s heavy music fans something to smile about.

08.

Tel Cairo
Voice of Reason

Illicit Artists

Tel Cairo is the best kind of weird. If Kurt Cobain made hip-hop music in space it would sound like Tel Cairo’s Voice of Reason.

07.

Foxygen
We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic

Jagjaguwar

Flamboyantly lilting pop with occasional Jagger twists; creates proneness for nymph-like prancing, sometimes mincing.

06.

Death Grips
Government Plates

Self-released

A dizzying mix of poetry, yelling and other stuff people hate. But in the eloquent words of MC Ride, “Fuck your idols/ Suck my dick.”

05. 

Screature
Screature

Ethel Scull

A solid debut by the Sacramento quartet. Guttural lyrical torrents coalesce with shadowy, rhythmic tones, blending into a dynamic framework of sound.

04.

!!!
THR!!!ER

Warp Records

Your favorite dance-punk band is back again with more rump shaking, baby making, all-night-party-inducing tunes. Instant classic!

03.

Cove
Candles

Self-released

It’s an insightful album. An emotional excavation replete with lyrical fluidity, melodic flirtations and a groovy aftertaste.

02.

Doombird
Cygnus

Eightmaps

Vivid percussive landscapes seen through a celestial-tinged lens. Spacey harmonies embedded within hypnotic textures and bright timbres.

01.

Chelsea Wolfe
Pain Is Beauty

Sargent House

A beautifully haunting album. Wolfe’s ghostly vocals, layered with cascading guitars, violins and synths, will put you in a trance.

Foals continue their evolution with latest release Holy Fire

With the release of their third full-length album Holy Fire, Oxford, England-based rock quintet Foals have shown immense growth as a band, proving they have more diversity in their sound than most critics and reviewers thought possible. Much more ballsy and hard-edged than Foals’ 2010 sophomore album Total Life Forever and especially more mature sounding than their 2008 debut Antidotes (which has since become sort of a relic), Holy Fire is the band’s most direct and focused work to date. As their official bio puts it, “This is the sound of Foals arriving.”

“We’re definitely not the same band that we were when we were making Antidotes,” admits singer/guitarist Yannis Philippakis in a recent interview with Submerge. “It’s definitely been a process of us growing up through each record, so I’d expect them to be different. It keeps it fresh for us. It’s a constant evolution. What we sound like is the five of us making music, but it’s not in a definable box. All three records have been quite different, yet I feel that there is something consistent to the three of them. There is something identifiably us about each of the records.”

With an intense couple years of touring ahead of them playing sold-out club shows and giant festivals all over the world, Philippakis took some time to chat with Submerge over the phone from Zurich, Switzerland, in anticipation of their April 20 Sacramento show at Ace of Spades, just one day after the band plays Coachella.

Leading up to the release of Holy Fire, I was shocked to hear how heavy and gritty the first single “Inhaler” was. Then when “My Number” dropped, I was equally thrown off by how polished, clean and dance-y it was. What was the thought process behind releasing those two contrasting tracks first?
Just to throw people off the scent, really. I guess to show the diversity in the record. Definitely putting out “Inhaler” was the kind of thing where we relish in surprising people and being unpredictable to some extent. I think it was the song that we felt was the furthest from what had come before. And then “My Number,” you know, it was just the second song released, there wasn’t a particular tactic. I think it’s good to show people the scope of the record.

It keeps listeners off guard and seems like it’s a fun way to make it playful.
Yeah, exactly, playfulness is the right word. It keeps things exciting. It makes it feel less like you’re putting a product out and it actually becomes more psychological I guess.

Quite a few parts on the new album have a sticky, swampy, sort of delta-vibe to them. Where did that come from?
I think it came from different vantage points. One of the formative experiences was recording in Sydney, outside. We were in a studio, and it wasn’t really gelling. It just felt unnatural to be in a dark room while it was gorgeous weather outside, so we relocated to a river house. I think being surrounded by the natural environment and by insects in particular, things just sounded different in that environment. We felt it was an inspiring way to textualize the songs. It also similarly came from an imaginary understanding of things like the Delta and the Bayou, like old Alan Lomax recordings. You can smell the sweat on a lot of old blues and gospel recordings. There is a zealous energy to it. It just seeped into our pores basically, and it started to become what subliminally we were trying to achieve on certain tracks.

How was it working with Flood and Alan Moulder, two people who produced and engineered some of your favorite albums growing up?
It was great. It definitely brought stability to the recording process. There was a trust there. We were working with these elder statesmen of the British recording business, you know? It brought a balance. It made us feel content and confident. It turned the volume down on the neurosis that sometimes plagued our experiences of making records before.

Holy Fire has been out for a while now, and the reviews are all in. You’ve had time to breathe and sort of let things settle. What is it like to look back on it now? Relieved? Anxious to write new material?
I feel good about it. I feel like I kind of want to make another record already.

After the last two records did you immediately feel that urge?
Maybe not as much, but I don’t think it has anything to do with this specific record. At the moment I’ve got kind of an impulsive urge to produce more. Maybe in some ways it’s the pressure of the time that it takes, you know? It takes two years to tour and write. I want to be able to spend more time creating and then releasing quicker—not such a retracted period. There is such a long build up before we actually get to put music out into the world. A little of it is coming from that. But in terms of how I feel, I feel good about the record. It is what it is. It is a document of where we were at the time, and I think it sounds great. I have no real urge to re-do the record, I just want to make another one. I want to write the next paragraph in the book.

I thought I read somewhere that you said you have one more album in you lyrically. Still think that holds true?
I can’t say for sure, but I definitely have one more, then we’ll have to see. I feel like musically speaking we could write music and instrumentals, like riffs and pieces of music, for a long time. I don’t think there’s any kind of cap on that. I’m just not sure lyrically if I can… Trying to write songs is a different task. I definitely feel like I’ve got enough right now to do one more, but it just depends I guess on the life experience I have in the next two years. I feel like there’s a trap in contentedness. You slow down, you start to enjoy cooking, you have a pleasantly moderate social life, everything gets comfortable. And then that booming desire to spend all of your time working on music and trying to get yourself mentally into a place where you can write songs that you feel are meaningful is something that maybe the inclinations for it lessen. What I don’t want to do is make music without…I don’t want to do it for applause, or for money, or for security. I just want to feel like I’ve got some burning desire to make something and to say something. So, it depends.

The last time you were in the States you had a weird experience in Detroit, right? What can you tell me about that day on tour?
We had been touring for a while, and we got to Detroit. It was just a special moment. I felt something in that city, and I’ve felt it every time I’ve been there. But I had a specific encounter with a street drummer named Larry. He and I hung out for a little while and he was playing these incredible drum rudiments, real precision drumming but on a couple of trashcans. We got high together, and it was just kind of a semi-spiritual moment.

That’s pretty cool. Were you just out wandering the streets?
Yeah, kind of. We had played the show and it was great, it was fun. I just crossed the road and I could hear the sound of him drumming. I followed the sound. I was kind of entranced by it. Then you know there’s like these burnt out tenements behind him and the whole thing was just very surreal. For a middle class boy from England, to be in that sort of environment, the experience is just sort of a special one for me.

You and Larry are from two totally different worlds yet music, more specifically the rhythms that drew you to him, were sort of your guys’ common ground.
Yeah, exactly. There was just a real beauty to the way that he was playing, and that was kind of all he had on him were these two trashcans and some drumsticks.

Maybe Yannis will run into a Sacramento street performer and have another semi-spiritual tour moment when his band Foals hits Ace of Spades on Saturday, April 20, 2013. Locals Cold Eskimo and Desario will open the show. Doors open at 7 p.m. and all ages are welcome. Hit up Dimple Records, The Beat or http://aceofspadessac.com/ for tickets. Foals will also be at Dimple Records on Arden at 2 p.m. on April 20 for an in-store performance and signing.