Andrew Christopoulos: "Know Your Name"

I haven't been avoiding the Lolla Kidz Stage on Daijams, but I admit I haven't been paying much attention in the run-up to this weekend. I saw Keller Williams on the Kidz stage last year, mostly because I already loved him, and his set was fun and upbeat and mentioned both farm animals and "Freeker by the Speaker." The same (minus the freeky) will likely be said about Andrew Christopoulos, who plays the Kidz stage this weekend.

Christopoulos's story is touching. He started playing classical piano at age 7 before being diagnosed with LCH, a rare blood disease, a few years later. With the help of his father and music, Christopoulos made it through and got serious about both songwriting and singing. He's young, and his Internet presence is miniscule, but he must have impressed the Lolla bookers, because they scheduled him twice: Friday at 4 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

The piano- and guitar-based music is pleasant to listen to, and I love that he's done so much for someone so young. Could this be the early efforts of a music prodigy? He'll need to take serious advantage of the opportunity at Lolla. If you're near the Kidz stage and need a calming, squeaky-clean voice to shake out Ozzy's screams, I recommend Christopoulos.

Non-sequitur: Can someone tell me why we're teaching bad spelling to kidz? #englishpetpeeves

The Weeknd: "Wicked Games"

The week of magic is upon us!! Lollapalooza starts this Friday. Juke Box Hero and I are cranking out final recommendations all week, starting with the Weeknd, Saturday at 6 p.m. on the Red Bull stage.

What better way to remind ourselves of the fact that it’s Monday and the beginning of another work week than featuring a song from Ontario-born R&B vocalist and songwriter Abel Tesfaye, aka The Weeknd? The silky-voiced 22-year-old has only just burst on the scene in the last couple years, but his paltry catalogue of three mixtapes has already drawn critical acclaim from numerous music mags and critics. Oh, and he had an hour-long set to himself at the wildly popular Coachella Festival in April earlier this year.

Style-wise he’s a little reminiscent of Ben Harper, though guitar does figure a bit less prominently for The Weeknd. And there is perhaps a less-heavy influence from psychadelica. But the wide crooning range is definitely there: Tesfaye works his vocal spectrum beautifully by sliding between full and head voices with nimble precision.

Tesfaye’s smooth tenor bears a resemblance to the King of Pop’s, gaining him both extra credit as well as extra scrutiny. For some reason, “Wicked Games” reminds me of MJ’s “Dirty Diana.” (Fast forward to 1:10 to avoid gratuitous crowd noise.)

Obviously there’s a bit more electronic production going on in the 1988 performance versus the 2012 to make it more exciting. But I like that in each case we’re basically just seeing one man on stage – making it easier to conclude that while singers lucky enough to have voices like Terfay’s may draw comparisons to Michael, no one comes close to his pure energy delivery level. Yes, totally different kinds of songs, these, and could we ever call MJ an R&B artist? Maybe not, but the point is The Weekend is already a mighty musical force for being in the same paragraph as MJ with just two years of “public” (YouTube was an early recording-sharing platform in 2010) experience under his belt.

Now, Lolla-goers, you’re in somewhat of a tough spot: Though I can’t fairly speak to Washed Out, LP and Skream & Benga, The Weeknd goes on just 15 minutes prior to Franz Ferdinand (Saturday, 6 p.m.) and finishes 15 minutes prior to him. The savvy festivaller will bounce around, and it should be possible to see some of both acts, if not more, depending on how quickly the stage crews are moving.

Franz is great, but that’s my recommendation. And it may be nice to have a break from that inevitably dense, sweaty, and disgusting mass of people screaming the words of “Take Me Out” over and over again. So in both the case of the actual weekend and the band, each signifies a getaway from the grind.

tUnE-yArDs: "Gangsta"

tUnE-yArDs plays the kind of music that must have originated deep in the back woods of mastermind Merrill Garbus' family home in Vermont. The New England musician loops drum beats, vocals, samples, and ukulele into a soundscape that she then covers with bass, saxes, and snappy, African-inspired vocals. In the open air of the woods, she must have discovered the way to open up her songs, to the point that anything could come next, a different movement or time signature or set of sounds, saxes bleating like alarms or a new drum beat.

When she wasn't making music while living in Vermont, Garbus was studying puppeteering, she told Ink 19. That imaginary play time affected the development of her sound: "The songs I'm interested in creating are worlds, sonic worlds, with texture that you can feel, smells (as you suggest), things you can see." She left the puppets in Vermont and mostly lives on the road, but she brought the world with her.

Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs

tUnE-yArDs, which is intentionally stylized to be annoying, draws you in with the sonic chaos, but you stay for the show. Garbus is fascinating to watch as she starts a song with a beat, then another, then some harmonized pop vocals, maybe a dash of ukulele, and we're off to the races. She manipulates the start and stop, creating movements in her songs that come together beautifully after four minutes. Add to that Garbus' bright and/or hipster costumes, face paint, facial expressions under the face paint, and puppet theater-honed sense of stage drama, and you've got yourself a Lolla winner. She is going to absolutely kill it on Saturday at 5 p.m. on the Sony stage.

I watched the live video half a dozen times before discovering the music video, which looks like it was shot in pieces on the road, often at night, in bathrooms and train cars and hotel lobbies. It's fun to see the chaotic joy that I imagine Garbus sees when she hears her own songs. The worlds she's building are fascinating, to say the least.

Here's the music video for Gangsta:

tUnE-yArDs has two albums out, 2009's BiRd-BrAiNs (Marriage Records/4AD) and 2011's w h o k i l l (4AD).

Die Antwoord: "I Find U Freeky"

Juke Box Hero advises us on the unofficial Lolla Freak Show, a.k.a. the set of South Africa's Die Antwoord on Friday at 5 p.m. on the PlayStation stage. This is easily the creepiest press photo I've seen in awhile:

Take it away, JBH!

First, I apologize for dipping into the Letterman vault again, but sometimes it’s hard to find decent live videos outside of the talk show circuit, ok?

So, this group both excites and scares me. And not just because of their blatant disregard for correct spelling of the English language. Watching the South African duo perform onstage is like watching a great white shark in the water: You can see and appreciate the raw natural power, but you have no idea what they’re thinking, or what they'll do next. That’s a bit troubling, but it gets the pulse pounding, and who doesn’t love a bit of danger-based thrill?

Die Antwoord's raucous, aggressive brand of electronic sound qualifies as “rap-rave” and is fueled by the anti-posh yet somehow still posh virtues of South Africa’s “Zef” counter-culture movement. Apparently it’s built on a frugal foundation of “less is more,” but it sounds to me like Cape Town’s version of hillbilly.

Once the track takes off, it really blasts. You can't help but want to dance along as spastically as the man onstage. He’s acting out what’s in everyone’s head. Don’t worry about trying to make out the lyrics while you’re jumping around: The duo employs a combination of English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa that is nigh unintelligible.

But no one can understand shark either. Find yourself a safe cage.

Childish Gambino: "Heartbeat"

Juke Box Hero kicks off your weekend with a track from the decidedly unchildish Childish Gambino, who will perform Sunday at 8:45 p.m. on the Google Play stage.

American Donald Glover, who draws his stage name Childish Gambino from a web program known as the "Wu-Tang Clan name generator", is a despicably enviable modern media renaissance man, wearing hats as a writer, actor, comedian, and, naturally, successful recording artist. Without employing the typical hip hop tropes ("But here I am rapping about money, hos and rent again") he writes sweet rhymes, drops fat beats, and hooks as catchy as flypaper on velcro.

The Wu-Tang name of yours truly? "Amateur Warrior." Now, who wants to sign me?

Tame Impala: "Desire Be Desire Go"

The largely non-intelligible psychadelic rockers Tame Impala sound like they should have hit paydirt at the height of that genre in the 1960s. But in fact, their grandparents were the more likely Pink Floyd devotees, leaving their grandchildren to later discover the mindbending soundscapes of Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and the Beatles.

The Australian five-piece band, now in their mid-twenties and thus born in the mid-1980s, took the isolation of Perth, Down Under, seriously. Their sounds fill the space with music described by the band's well-written Lolla description as "bedroom psych." The space-like grooves fool the listener into thinking the sounds could have been produced alongside the psych rockers of that older generation -- you know, the one that smoked weed and blissed out together in droves. Or at least, they did it first.

I'm excited to see these guys at Lollapalooza on Friday afternoon. The festival will have just begun. As the older rockers waiting for Sabbath and the dubsteppers waiting for Bassnectar are still rolling in, the rest of us can recreate the bliss on the lawn of the Sony stage at 3:15 p.m. Afterward, pick up the band's 2010 LP Innerspeaker, a work of their genre's art rendered by hands much too young to have seen the 60s firsthand. Bravo, boys.

Blind Pilot: "We Are the Tide"

Juke Box Hero brings us Blind Spot -- er, Blind Pilot, who will be performing Friday at 3:30 p.m. on the Google Play stage.

If the city of Portland, Oregon, had its own theme-background music – music playing in the arrivals hall at the airport, reverberating through the trees in the parks, and pissing off all the super hard street punks – it would definitely be Portland’s own indie-folksters, Blind Pilot. I’ve only visited the fair, hipster-riddled city, but with its impression of relaxed creativity and general spiritual creaminess firmly planted in my braincicles, BP sounds like Portland coming out of speakers. They're similar to Arcade Fire in musical identity and multi-instrumentalist personnel (Letterman goes off on the trumpet/organ player), but it's like if you gave Win and Régine both an Ambien before putting them on stage.

Not that there’s anything wrong with their mellow-yellow approach to indie. The group’s 2008 debut 3 Rounds and a Sound is a great mood-setter for a totally chill afternoon or evening soiree. It’s full of sweet major and minor harmonies, rounded out with laid-back guitar, ukulele, string bass, etc. Lead singer/guitarist Israel Nebeker’s velvety tenor cruises along; the man has an extremely pretty voice in the vein of Beirut’s Zach Condon, but maybe less forced-sounding. If that’s possible? It just sounds so dern effortless.

BP made indie headlines in ’08 by touring the West Coast on bicycles fitted with custom instrument-toting trailers – could they be more Portland? Needless to say, the gimmick worked, and their stock started to soar. Before they knew it, they were touring Europe alongside headliners the Hold Steady and the Counting Crows.

The group’s sophomore record We Are the Tide came out last September and features a lot more of their characteristic chill melodies. But a number of tracks, including this title cut, pick up the pace, volume, and energy. I love the bigger drums driving throughout the song, bringing more of a sense of urgency to the music.

Okay, so it’s still no match for Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up,” but to be fair, I’d be extra jacked too if David Bowie guest-sang in my band.

JEFF the Brotherhood: "Heavy Days"

Juke Box Hero shines the spotlight on a swampy garage rock brother duo out of Nashville. Catch JEFF the Brotherhood on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. on the PlayStation stage.

They could’ve called the band Nature AND Nurture. Biological brothers Jake and Jamin ("jammin"?) Orrall hail from Nashville and happen to both be sons of singer/songwriter/producer Robert E Orrall. They were bred into music and formed JEFF the Brotherhood in 2001, as high school students. The pair couldn’t have avoided music if they tried, but it’s clear there is some God-given talent at work here as well.

Though their successful pop was more focused on country music, Jake and Jamin blend punk, psychedelic, metal, and even surf rock into an aggressive package that still manages to give off a laid-back sentiment that sets them apart from other blue-collar, male duos from the heartland. Yes, both produce wicked blues-based rock; but whereas Patrick and Dan of The Black Keys deliver a more soulful sentiment that is, by now, pretty tight, the Brotherhood sounds more unhinged, more helter skelter – somehow, more garage.

"Heavy Days" could be the most beautiful assertion of post-punk teen angst in the post-Nirvana era. With the entrancing guitar hooks and über-nonchalant, Jonathan Richman-esque vocals, it’s an anthem for simultaneously not caring and being angry as hell at the world. The observation "I guess it’s nice to see my friends, things are going pretty ok," bobs along over stripped down guitar (it only sports three strings – damn cheap hippies) in an aggravated salute to the mundane.

The lyrics suggest a reluctance to accept life being "pretty ok." The boys sound boxed in to the ho-hum world those lines create, and they pass on the turmoil via driving wah-wah guitar effects, raucous drums, and a vagueness in tone that not-so-subtly screams discontentment. You kind of want to smack them for delighting in cool affectedness. But they’d probably get off on that.

Let’s just agree to turn it up and enjoy them for what they are: A talented, eccentric duo that’s making the most of musical genes and circumstance, putting out a creative rock mélange that probably sounds as good in their basement as it will on the Lolla stage.

Avicii: Full Concert

It's Thursday night. You should probably be watching an hour and a half concert by Avicii, a.k.a. 22-year-old Swede Tim Bergling, a.k.a. one of the hottest DJs spinning right now.

Man, I feel old. And I'm only 25.

This is one of the better live DJ shows I've seen on YouTube, ever. Oh, and you like laser shows with your club beats? Giiiiiiiirl, I got you covered.

Catch Avicii headlining the Bud Light stage on Saturday from 8:30 to 10:00 p.m.

M83: "Midnight City"

Juke Box Hero goes French electro with M83.

If, like me, you’ve been aurally fixated on the elated, loop-tastic tones of eccentric popster Kishi Bashi for the past week and could use another setting of good strong electro-pop to burrow deep into your cranium and nest for a while, look no further than M83 and the radio-darling "Midnight City," off the French group’s 2011 double album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.

This cut, with its shrieking drone, walls of spacey synths, and pounding beats, has been getting quite a lot of airtime this summer, and not just because dance is dominating the pop charts: The song has everything. There’s futuristic male-female vocal harmony, wicked drum machine combos, sexy sax solos, and a head-swaying groove that refuses to allow your body to remain still. Did I mention the sexy sax solos?

Did I also mention the track bagged Pitchfork’s nod for NUMBER ONE on its list of Top 100 Tracks of 2011? Because, well, that’s worth mentioning.

After forming in 2001 as the brainchild of Frenchman Anthony Gonzalez (not the crazy-fast wide receiver), M83 released a series of steadily more successful records while simultaneously pursuing the ever more popular practice of remixing famous artists’ hits with a signature sound and then getting featured on their remix albums. Coattails can be a beautiful thing.

M83’s characteristic musical sound blasts are oft associated with the dronyness of the shoegaze genre, though that may be an unfair generalization. Particularly as the album count has risen, Gonzalez’s compositions have gotten more structured, more creative, more multi-faceted. Also, he tends to focus more on varieties of electronic sounds for melodic leads rather than guitar. And, thankfully for the Lolla crowd, these guys do a bit more onstage than just stare at their sneaks.

Givers: "Meantime" and "Up Up Up"

For youthful exuberance, look no further than Givers. The 20-something indie rockers from Lafayette, Louisiana, churn out poppy, happy beats on their debut LP In Light, which was released in June 2011 on Glassnote. They've played Chicago before (Schuba's), as well as SXSW and Coachella, but this will be their Lolla debut.

Fronting duo Tiffany Lamson and Taylor Guarisco are fun to watch, as Guarisco bounces around like a mad hatter with a guitar and Lamson keeps busy behind a stand-up drum set. Kirby Campbell (drums), Josh LeBlanc (bass), and Nick Stephan (keyboards) round out the quintet, but the parenthetical categorizations aren't much use as each band member plays a host of instruments, giving their sound access to flute, sax, trumpet, and ukulele, among others.

The five members of Givers

The multi-talented musicians came together after Lamson and Guarisco met at the University of New Orleans, where they both studied music. A slap-dash gig one night turned into a two-hour improv session, and the light bulb illuminated over their efforts and led the way to a shot at opening for the band Dirty Projectors. They all dropped out of college to prepare and work on Givers full time, and while I'd never encourage a young musician to forgo his or her education, it seems to have worked out so far for these young, hard-working dynamos.

In the video above, which was filmed in New York last October, I settled in to enjoy yet another boy-girl vocal harmony, but they get through just one verse before throwing a curveball and changing up the tempo at :45. I DIG IT! I can't figure out why Guarisco's eyes roll to the back of his head whenever he opens his mouth really wide, and I also can't understand most of the words he says, but his enthusiasm is infectious. Lamson is a total doll, and the moments her voice shines through solo are practically perfect. Here's another video from the same recording session that includes a short interview with Lamson and Guarisco:

Also, you know you've made it when Glee covers your song:

Givers will infect you with their happy rock on the Google Play stage at 2:15 p.m. on Saturday, August 4.

Of Monsters and Men: "Little Talks"

The six-piece Icelandic folk-pop group Of Monsters and Men makes its Lollapalooza debut on Sunday at 6 p.m. on the Bud Light stage. They'll be fighting indie rock powerhouse Florence + the Machine, electronica Big Gigantic, and "punk-hardcorepunk-posthardcore" At the Drive-In for your attention; the latter two crowds likely won't overlap, but anyone wishing to hear something with just as much heart as Flo but less exposure should take notice.

The group came together in 2009 when sole female member Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir, who performed solo as Songbird, assembled some fellow musicians to beef up the sound. It clicked, and the four-piece band -- which featured singer/guitarist Ragnar “Raggi” þórhallsson, guitarist Brynjar Leifsson, and drummer Arnar Rósenkranz Hilmarsson -- won 2010's Músíktilraunir (which translates to "Music Experiments"), Iceland's battle of the bands. After that the group added piano/accordion player Árni Guðjónsson and bassist Kristján Páll Kristjánsson, wrote some more songs, and went on KEXP to record this live living room set.

The video itself is charming; the band giggles before the song starts, probably a combination of excitement and nerves. But the band members had no way of knowing this video would help launch their career. Or maybe they did know, and they rose to the challenge. Either way, the song is well-constructed pop, catchy, good for singing along, down to the joyful, full-band yelling of "Hey!" Singers Hilmarsdóttir and þórhallssons' voices are sweet together in harmony, and the accordion line keeps the song firmly rooted in folk. 

The pop grooves worked. What followed was a hit debut in Iceland last September, which prompted a U.S. EP in December and a full album release in April 2012. The album, My Head is an Animal, peaked at no. 6 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and no. 1 on both the Rock and Alternative album charts. To date, this video has more than 2 million YouTube views, and the song reached no. 5 on both the U.S. Rock and Alternative charts. Buy the album for $2 on Amazon here.

The band has kept busy -- they were on Leno last Friday, and they're touring the U.K. and Australia before a few U.S. dates (Rhode Island, Maine, and California) and Lollapalooza. They're also playing an aftershow with Yellow Ostrich on Friday night at the House of Blues.

I like their music. Just don't ask me to pronounce their names.

Black Sabbath: "Hand of Doom" & "Rat Salad"

Juke Box Hero brings us the low-down on the oldest band on Lollapalooza's line-up, Black Sabbath (complete with Ozzy Osbourne). Catch them Friday at 8 p.m. on the Bud Light stage.

What more can be said about one of the most legendary rock bands of all time? The fathers of heavy metal? Members of both the U.S. and U.K. Rock and Roll Halls of Fame? (Do many other countries have them?) Their truly unique brand of gritty, over-blasted, blues-based, anthemic rock set a powerful benchmark few groups have come close to matching.

The original foursome came together in 1968 as "Earth," but a year later made the change to their current moniker after discovering someone else already had the name. Led Zeppelin came from the same vintage; it was a good age for music in the U.K. The years between have been fraught with reunion runs for the two iconic ensembles, but the Led has called it quits for good. The fact that you can see Sabbath this summer – ALIVE – is pretty special.

If Sabbath reuniting with Ozzy – who was fired from being their lead vocalist in 1979 after picking up a bad drug habit – and playing festivals with the original lineup for the first time since 1997 sounds like just a lazy, money-grabbing scheme, take heart: Last fall, the aging rockers announced they were recording a new album. The group hasn’t released new music with that combination of personnel since Never Say Die in 1978.

Whether you can still create great rock music and be a card-carrying AARP member, remains to be seen. But at least they’re giving it a go. And hopefully there’s some genuine creative energy juicing these guys up for their Lolla performance.

Though it should be a kickass set, doubtless it would take more than a healthy dose of Viagra and a ventilator to get a performance like today's jam, recorded in Paris in 1970. Watching/listening to it, you realize you've forgotten just how powerful (and genuinely haunting) Ozzy’s voice was, and also what a scintillating guitarist Geezer was. I'm sure these facts were not lost on the astonishingly small crowd of Parisians, who witnessed the band in their infancy, as their first two album releases came that year (Black Sabbath and Paranoid). Can you imagine seeing the Prince of Darkness and his minions of rock on such a small stage?

What I love most are the brief moments when you see Ozzy glimpsing back, hesitantly, at his band mates, showing their relative inexperience. It’s the unsure, unhinged exuberance of a kid lighting a massive firework: You know what you’ve got is gonna be big, you just haven’t figured out how exactly to control it after the spark.

More than 40 years later, let’s hope there are a few more "booms" left in their sticks.