Cool Music Central: Live: Plisskën Festival 2015 (Athens, June 5-6, 2015)

Saturday, June 27, 2015

Live: Plisskën Festival 2015 (Athens, June 5-6, 2015) - Day 2

In the second part of our coverage of Plisskën Festival 2015 you'll find our impressions, photos and videos from the performances we've enjoyed the most at Hellenic Cosmos Cultural Center on June 6.

Waxahatchee, live @ Plisskën Festival 2015

Our Saturday started very early in the afternoon with Waxahatchee playing an excellent set in front of just a handful of festival-goers who had the good sense to be on site in time for Katie Crutchfield's band live debut in Athens, coming just a couple of months after releasing one of the best albums of this year, the wonderful "Ivy Tripp".

The highlights of Waxahatchee's performance included also tracks from their previous, equally great, "Cerulean Blue" album and despite a few sound hiccups, the strength of the material elevated their set among our favorites of the festival, certainly deserving of a much better place in the line-up.

Sleaford Mods, live @ Plisskën Festival 2015

The other great set of Plisskën's second day came several hours later, around midnight, when idiosyncratic punk-hop Nottingham duo Sleaford Mods took over the second stage of the festival for a mind-boggling, totally awesome performance, full of entertaining, anger-fueled tirades against everything and everyone who gets Jason Williamson's goat.

The songs from last year's excellent "Divide and Exit" formed the backbone of their set list, including "Tied Up in Nottz", "Middle Men" and "Tweet Tweet Tweet", but we also got a first taste from forthcoming album "Key Markets" which is expected in July. Looking forward to it.

Mikal Cronin, live @ Plisskën Festival 2015

The last performance we attended at Plisskën Festival in the small hours of Sunday came from Mikal Cronin and his band and was also among the best ones of the festival. Cronin has a knack for creating memorable, psychedelic garage-pop melodies and his three solo records so far have provided us with plenty of great songs, a lot of which were present in his set, including "Made My Mind Up", "Say", "Shout It Out" and "See It My Way".

Earlier in the day, we got to see a super-charged set by San Francisco's Thee Oh Sees, powered by a thundering duo of drummers.

Thee Oh Sees, live @ Plisskën Festival 2015

John Dwyer's band has just released its new album "Mutilator Defeated At Last", the latest link in an admirably strong chain of powerful, psychedelic garage rock releases and looked fired-up on the main stage of the festival.

Ariel Pink, live @ Plisskën Festival 2015

The same, sadly, cannot be said about Ariel Pink's short set which came a little later on the main stage and didn't satisfy the majority of his fans who were certainly expecting much more from the eccentric, experimental musician who recently released the adventurous, acclaimed "pom pom" LP.

Steve Gunn, live @ Plisskën Festival 2015

An early afternoon performance that left us a good impression came from singer-songwriter Steve Gunn and his band. Although we are not very familiar with his work, his melodic set convinced us that we should take a closer look to his extensive discography.

Perfume Genius, live @ Plisskën Festival 2015

The second day of the festival included also appearances by Perfume Genius (as Waxahatchee, also too early in the day to attract a larger audience, but quite a stir nonetheless), rapper Pharoahe Monch, noise-makers Liturgy, eccentric noise-popers Pow, local garage heroes Acid Baby Jesus and Mogwai who were the headliners of the main stage but lost us to Sleaford Mods.