Bonnaroo 2024 Gets Rolling With Pretty Lights, Medium Build, Gwar and More

Strolling back onto The Bonnaroo Farm each year always feels a little strange at first. But then you see a bunch of adults dressed as bananas so they can find each other in the crowd or playing with The Parachute People’s parachute, and soon enough you’re in the festival rhythm. “Jump in the line, rock your body in time,” the late Harry Belafonte once sang, sagely. Bonnaroo 2024 kicked off Thursday under cloudless skies, with modest humidity that let the 90-plus-degree heat sneak up on you. Thankfully, neither shade nor water was hard to find, nor was the big ol’ mist tent. 

After a meander around Centeroo, we got down to the business of watching shows at That Tent. It took a little longer than expected, as technical difficulties delayed Medium Build (aka indie-rocking songsmith Nicholas Carpenter, who recently returned to Nashville after several years in Alaska) by about 25 minutes. But it didn’t dampen his spirit, and the payoff of heartfelt tunes from the project’s new LP Country was well worth it. Songs like “Crying Over U” short-circuit the mechanisms we use to distance ourselves from our feelings, and hearing them with a big crowd was the best way. 

The audience hung on Carpenter’s every word. Tearing up, he took a pause to give his earnest thanks and offer a little Bonnaroo benediction. He told the crowd how Bonnaroo played an important role in his musical development, from his older brother bringing home the fest’s CD samplers in the Aughts to his own first visit in 2012. “You’re here with your best friends, and it's a fuckin’ bitch to get here,” Carpenter said. “These four days of just being nasty little fucks — you gotta remember this.”

A little later, Brooklyn trio Nation of Language brought their expert blend of post-punk and synth pop to This Tent. Sonically and thematically, the group lands somewhere in a Venn diagram with New Order and Depeche Mode; aided by Alex McKay on bass, Aidan Noell creates and manages just about all of the instrumental soundscape onstage from within a nest of synthesizers, leaving singer Ian Richard Devaney to work the mic and dance. At Bonnaroo, it was like being handed a delicious snow cone; for our money this show would be even better in a club around town, maybe with General Trust as a local opener.

With the last rays of sunset lingering on the horizon, Colorado electronic artist Pretty Lights fired up What Stage as the official Thursday headliner, greeting the crowd with gusto and a new piece written just for the occasion. We didn’t catch a title, but the line “The sun machine is going down” served as a refrain amid a roller-coaster ride of organic funk grooves, wild breaks, crisp drops and strategically chosen samples. 

“Pretty Lights” is the moniker of central figure Derek Vincent Smith, but he’s long called on a band of ringers to expand his sound. The project was on hiatus from 2018 to 2023 but came back in a big way with this dazzling production dubbed Soundship Spacesystem, and the current live band for the Check Your Vector Tour is made up of turntablist Chris Karns, multi-instrumentalist Michel Menert, keyboardist Borahm Lee and drummer Alvin Ford Jr. What impressed even more than the intricate pieces and the, um, pretty lights was their phenomenal ensemble playing, pushing and pulling the rhythms around even while keeping the vast amount of production all synced up.

The fest billed Pretty Lights as a headliner but didn’t clear the rest of the stages during their two-set slot. To ease our FOMO, we dipped out after a bit and headed to see Nashville’s own The Foxies on Who Stage. The electronically enhanced pop-punky group played their proverbial asses off for a pretty substantial crowd, but had to fight hard through a gauntlet of technical issues. Singer Julia Lauren Bullock did her best to make lemonade, using frequent mic checks to keep the energy high. She also mentioned the band usually plays with tracks that we were not hearing; we didn’t really miss them, though we did miss her voice when it cut out, which it did often. The production crew was frantically trying to chase the ghosts out of the machine; here’s hoping the exorcism was successful heading into Day 2.

At This Tent, Dallas rapper BigXThaPlug’s hype man played him to the stage with a medley including Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” and Kendrick Lamar’s scorched-earth Drake diss “Not Like Us.” The massive crowd hollered back in unison on the “When I say ‘Big,’ you say ‘X’” chant for a good while, and then the man of the hour took the spotlight, flanked by a big crew. Big X has a superb stage presence, something like the Andre the Giant of contemporary hip-hop. He worked the crowd with gestures and facial expressions and saved his rapping for key moments. When it was time for him to fire off bars, he hurled them like boulders and you could practically feel them in your chest.

After cooling our heels, we returned to What Stage to watch Pretty Lights wrap up. The hour was growing late, but evil alien overlords Gwar had come all this way to be worshipped, so how could mere bohabs like us say no? The latest incarnation of the irreverent, gore-spattered metal ensemble with its extensive lore emerged to a heroes’ welcome. The cheers escalated when they beheaded the exceedingly annoying disc-jockey hype man who introduced them, unleashing the first stage-blood fountain of the night. Topics they poked, prodded, skewered and eviscerated as the set continued — in the most provocative, grossest ways possible, naturally — included celebrity social-media disputes and Israel’s invasion of Gaza. For some, the night was just getting started, but with energy reserves flagging, it was time for us to call it a day.