Manan's notes

202308132316 Outside Lands 2023 reflections

Day-by-day artist breakdown

Friday

Ethel Cain was powerful, confident, and an excellent start to the festival. It was awesome to see how many people showed up to see her for an early time slot (2:30 PM).

We caught the last couple of songs of Raveena's set. She has a gorgeous voice and a lovely stage presence. Didn't see her for long enough to make too much of an impression.

I caught the first bit of Shaq's set. He was over ten minutes late and gave a stupid excuse (I was busy hanging out with Steph Curry and Draymond Green? Come on, dude). He did essentially nothing while DJing and was a glorified hype man. (He said "Hands up!" more times in five minutes than cops probably say in a month.) We left within five minutes of his set starting.

JID exuded great energy and was the most technically proficient rapper I've seen live. I don't enjoy most of his studio music but loved seeing him live.

Although we were technically at Willow's set, we couldn't catch too much of it from the dinner line we were in for ~45 minutes. She seemed like a fun performer, and there was a huge crowd for her set.

Kendrick is a virtuoso, and his set contained banger after banger. With that said, I liked but didn't love his live performance. His energy seemed low, and he didn't say a word between his songs. He also didn't rap significant chunks of his most popular songs and just let the crowd sing them, which was fun for a little bit but eventually got annoying. Overall, I was somewhat disappointed.

This was probably my least favorite day of the three. We saw the fewest artists, and no one blew me away. There were also the most people at the festival on this day, and the teenage Kendrick Kampers were super annoying.

Artist ranking

  1. JID
  2. Ethel Cain
  3. Kendrick Lamar
  4. Raveena
  5. Willow
  6. Shaq

Saturday

Geographer was absolutely sublime and has probably the most beautiful voice I've ever heard live. His set was so intimate -- just him and his guitar in the Toyota Den, with a crowd of a couple hundred people. Not to be too dramatic, but I physically teared up at several points during his performance from the emotions his music evoked in me. This set was a special treat.

Lovejoy was decent rock, but the frontman's energy kind of rubbed me the wrong way (it gave off major British fuckboy vibes). This distracted me a bit from their music, which I didn't enjoy too much anyway.

Mariah the Scientist has a nice voice, but she was 15 minutes late and used backing vocals too much for my liking.

NIKI has a very polished stage presence and a great live voice. My experience was dampened somewhat by i) people screaming in the crowd and ii) all the high schoolers camped out for Conan Gray, who didn't seem to give a fuck about NIKI at all. This also seemed to have affected NIKI's performance, as she didn't seem very energetic.

L'Imperatrice were so so good. Funky and sexy and groovy. Unfortunately, my experience here was somewhat ruined by the sheer number of people pushing and shoving past us to get… somewhere? I'm unsure where since many of them came back, pushing us in the opposite direction about five minutes later. We eventually moved to the back and danced for about ten minutes, but then I left to try to catch Foo Fighters. To top it all, they played my favorite song (Vanille Fraise) right after I started walking away. The biggest "what-if" set of the weekend for me.

Foo Fighters are absolute rockstars, and they went hard. They played an entire two-hour set, which meant they had time to do silly things like bring out Michael Bublé, and give extended several-minute intros for every band member. I had a crazy fun time with the ~6 songs that I knew. However, I ended up alone for this set, which meant I didn't have anyone's energy to feed off of during the songs I didn't know. The portion of the crowd I was standing in was also a little dead, and more and more people trickled away to see Lana during their performance. Also, Lana seemed incredible from what I've heard, so I'm a little sad I missed her.

Fun day, but the last few sets ended on a bittersweet note.

Artist ranking

  1. Geographer
  2. Foo Fighters
  3. L'Impératrice
  4. NIKI
  5. Mariah the Scientist
  6. Lovejoy

Sunday

I caught some of Jungle Giants' set while having lunch. They seemed fun, but their songs didn't make a strong impression, and I had to leave a bit early for Nanna.

Nanna's music was gorgeous and haunting; I felt chills several times during her performance. For some reason, only a few hundred people showed up for her, which made the experience so intimate. She also had a full band who were extremely talented and lovely to watch perform in their own right.

Inhaler was just good, old-fashioned, no-frills rock. Their songs were so fun to just nod along and vibe out to. One of my favorite sets of the weekend.

Clinton Kane had many technical issues with his set, meaning he started twenty-five minutes late. He has a great voice, and he sings sad boi songs which I generally like, but I didn't love his style of songs for some reason.

I caught a bit of Lil Yachty. By the time we reached his set, he'd already played his three rap songs everyone knows and proceeded to play psychedelic rock for 80% of his set. It wasn't terrible, and I stayed to listen for a bit but quickly lost interest. I also heard he got into some argument with his DJ at the end of his set, and it was generally a bit of a shit show, so I'm glad I didn't stay.

Cigarettes After Sex sounded exactly the same live as they do in the studio, which was quite impressive. Unfortunately, I think most of their songs sound the same as each other, and this didn't change when they performed the songs live. It was difficult to stay engaged for their whole set, but they performed well. The rolling fog and their minimalistic, austere visuals created a cool vibe.

I liked Soccer Mommy, even though I didn't know any of her music going in. She had some out-of-left-field songs that veered across different rock genres.

Matty Healy might be a racist, sexist, self-obsessed asshole. But he's very, very good at his job, and he has crazy rizz. I tried to resist cheering after each of The 1975's songs, but it got very difficult. The 1975's performance was one of the most enjoyable I've ever been to and was my number-one set of the entire weekend.

Definitely my favorite day of the weekend, music-wise. Sooo many good acts on this day.

Artist ranking

  1. The 1975
  2. Nanna
  3. Inhaler
  4. Soccer Mommy
  5. Cigarettes After Sex
  6. Clinton Kane
  7. Jungle Giants
  8. Lil Yachty

Food and drink highlights

Food

  • The vegetarian combo plate from Bini's Kitchen was very good.
  • I've been getting the vegetarian Ramenburger from NomBe for the last three years, and this is the first year I can say that it was genuinely good. Would (finally) recommend!
  • Loved the Mala fries from Mamahuhu.
  • The pizza at Pink Onion was delicious.
  • Rocko's Ice Cream Tacos never misses.

Drink

  • Juneshine was great -- I liked both of their kombuchas, especially the Strawberry Kiwi Crush.
  • Liked a Pinot Noir from Marine Layer.

Overall thoughts

I think I liked this year's OSL more than last year's, which I wasn't expecting after the first couple days of the weekend. Sunday's music was absolutely killer. Overall, the only part of the experience that was worse than last year's was the number of people pushing and shoving and screaming and generally being menaces, but I think that'll continue being a trend as the average age of the festival gets younger and younger (and as I get older).