Witty banter would mean nothing without stellar music to back it up, and fortuately, Mumford & Sons have continued to deliver on that mark. Their performance is tight, without skipped beats or botched notes, but not so polished as to feel inauthentic.

Entertaining in an oh-god-why-can't-people-control-themselves sort of way was the drunk girl who sprawled out on stage, and eventually got up to drunkenly dance on the stage. This is why we can't have nice things, people.

For being a person who hates a) large crowds, b) large drunk crowds, c) heat, d) the outdoors, and e) being outdoors in the oppressive summer heat with large crowds of drunk people, a big festival like Lollapalooza has all of the makings of a nightmare.

When you've been waiting for twenty years to see a concert, there's essentially no hope of being truly objective when talking about the show. But that's just the way things are.

While Freelance Whales' music consists largely of jangly, glockenspiel-filled pop-rock songs, Peter Wolf Crier offers a dark, sometimes frantic, lo-fi counterpoint.

In front of a huge crowd of 11,000+ spectators, She & Him provided a breezy summer soundtrack for the evening.

Marcus Mumford has one of the more interesting voices in music right now. It's rough and creaky and weary beyond his years, but it fits the band's brand of folk music. From the very first song, all the way through their encore of "Whispers in the Dark", the band wowed the crowd with their intensity, sheer joy of playing, and, yes, even their dry British wit.

Bird's newer subject material isn't radically different from his more recent work. He's still playing with ideas and concepts related to natural disasters, and he still relates the macro to the micro, the impersonal to the personal. The word that I think best describes his newer work is apocalyptic, but I can't decide whether it's pre-, post-, or still happening.

Karin and Linford aren't on the road promoting any particular album; their most recent album of new material is 2007's The Trumpet Child. They're on the road because they love making music.

The tenth anniversary show for Shoeshine Boy Productions was an opportunity to get to see local music, featuring four local (or local-ish) acts on the stage of the Double Door.

If Peter Silberman had chosen to record Hospice in a studio, with all the technological wizardry and bells and whistles available to him, I think it would have come out sounding a lot like their show last month at Lincoln Hall.