More on Bumbershoot Sunday

"Fountain @ Bumbershoot 08" courtesy of Seattlest Flickr pool member sonoazure

Our Sunday began with deja vu from Saturday, as Shim ended their set at the Sky Church a full twenty minutes early. We don't know about you, but if we were a little band with a big captive festival crowd, we'd take advantage of our hour-long slot by any means necessary. If we didn't have enough original content, we'd fill our set with covers (or "covers"), songs we'd never played for an audience before, spoken word, and/or a straight-up soapbox delineation of our hopes and dreams. But we definitely would not end our set early.

From there we were off to the Broad Street stage for the Shackeltons (as previously mentioned), where Mark Redding accurately summed up Seattle as a "city that likes to kill fish and doesn't know what it's like to be African-American." We then hit up the KEXP lounge for Sons and Daughters, a Scottish four-piece who don't look Scottish at all, in that the lead singer is a vampy, statuesque brunette in delicate silver motorcycle gloves. Over at the Sky Church, Ravens and Chimes had no birds but a glockenspiel, and even the Crayolas showed up for the poppy sextet's soundtrack to films Wes Anderson hasn't yet made. Back at Broad Street, the Whigs played their version of "The Kids are Alright," while Speaker Speaker proved it with their high-energy set full of harmonies and just a hint of snarl.

Human Giant (Paul Scheer, Aziz Ansari, and Rob Huebel) brought the funny at the Charlotte Martin Theatre, blending sketch comedy, video clips and characters (Shutterbugs) from their MTV show, and some stand-up appearances by Doug Benson and Nick Thune. You can't go wrong with jokes about white power, Miley Cyrus, and lazy people in wheelchairs, not to mention all that timely festival humor (cracks about Jakob Dylan write themselves). Then it was time to close out the day at the Northwest Court. Throughout the festival, the Wells Fargo Stage has mostly hosted white guy jazz/fusion/bullshit bands, but last night it was home to Final Fantasy: just Owen Pallett, his violin and keyboard, projection videos, lots of pedals and loops and samples, and that dreamy choirboy voice echoing into the night.