Pitchfork

!!! photos by Blake Robinson; Crowd photos by Kirstie Shanley; text by Amy Phillips

For Scott Plagenhoef's previous Lollapalooza coverage, click here: Friday / Saturday / Sunday

For Amy Phillips' Lollapalooza coverage: Friday / Saturday

For Matthew Solarski's Lollapalooza coverage: Friday / Saturday / Sunday

!!! [MySpace stage; 5:15 pm]

The NYC Next Big Thing Class of 2001/2002 was in full effect at Lollapalooza: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, TV on the Radio, the Rapture, LCD Soundsystem. (Maybe Radio 4 and the French Kicks were busy?) But of all those bands, !!! have come the furthest over the past half-decade, both sonically and performance-wise. They used to be a big mess, a hippie drum circle somehow stamped with scene approval.

Elements of the drum circle are still there (see: the extended jam passages that allowed frontman Nic Offer ample time to work the crowd), but they've been pressed into the service of actual songs. Pretty good songs, too. Myth Takes bangers like "Must be the Moon" and "Heart of Hearts" aren't just sleek grooves that slink along at just the right pace for Offer's Hairspray-meets-stripper moves. They're also damn catchy pop tunes, made even stronger by the presence of singer Shannon Funchess, who joined !!! on stage halfway through the set.

Nic Offer is a lot of things-- a goofball, a bad but charming dancer, a dude who looks like he's at a beach party no matter the setting-- but one thing he's not is a good singer. Shannon Funchess is. A Brooklyn scene stalwart who has also worked with TV on the Radio (and guested with them at Lollapalooza), TK Webb, and her own group, Durty Na Nas, Funchess amped up the energy level every time she took the mic.

Advice to !!!: Let this woman be your new lead singer, and keep Nic Offer for the purpose of playing cowbell.

My Morning Jacket [AT&T stage; 6:15 pm]

Thank goodness Jim James is no Samson. Even though the My Morning Jacket frontman's long curly locks have been cut (but not the beard, whew!), he can still hit notes that soar above the Sears Tower. And boy, did he: "Wordless Chorus", "What a Wonderful Man", "One Big Holiday", and so many more achieved an alchemic balance between that sky-scraping voice and the deep, earthy crunch of the band in maximum power mode.

Besides James' revelatory voice, the most impressive thing about My Morning Jacket is how hard they play. For their Lolla triumph, they wore purple tuxedos and were joined by the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra for most of their set, but still, they rocked like a punk group playing a packed VFW hall. The orchestra was poorly amplified, unfortunately, so they could barely be heard above MMJ's din. But still, it was a trip to watch these kids with big grins on their faces as they dutifully sawed away behind the thrashing band.

Before the band and orchestra launched into "Gideon", Perry Farrell came on stage to announce that it was time for the crowd to turn on their camera phones and video recorders. Current TV is compiling the fan-made footage into some sort of music video. It's a cute gimmick, but it was highly disruptive to the flow of the set, and I'm sure anyone standing behind someone with a camera didn't appreciate the blocked view.

I have a feeling this kind of thing is going to become more and more commonplace-- earlier today, we reported that Daft Punk is doing the same thing at their New York show. Like the ubiquitous make-our-video contests and websites where you vote for which bands get record deals, this is part of the latest wave of internet-fueled band-fan interaction, where democracy rules and the masses are the gatekeepers.

In theory, all of this is great. Boo big corporate record executives! Yay little guys! But in practice, I'm not so sure. Do we really want My Morning Jacket's glorious set reduced to a collage of shitty camera phone footage?

Photos: The Crowd