ATP Day 2, Part 2: Lightning Strikes, Many Times

The late night portion of the ATP festivities kicked off with Les Savy Fav, and their adorably chubby frontman Tim Harrington did his damndest to get things off the ground with a bang. Harrington is known for nudity, costume changes, face paint and sharing his germs with audience members, and he did all those things last night while his bandmates played their angular punk rock as if nothing was happening. From our vantage point at the back, the crowd looked like a whirlpool of humanity, turning slightly redder as the set went on and Harrington shared his wine with them.

We split after LSF to chug an energy drink and watch a few minutes of a Chinese gangster movie before heading back down for Shellac, fronted by the notoriously cranky production genius Steve Albini. The band did their usual question and answer period (sample question: "why does God suck?" sample answer: "There is no God, dumbass.") and played our favorite violent revenge song, "Kill Him." We're still not sure what it says about us that our paramour put this track on a mixtape for us a while back.

And then, lightning struck the crowd. Lightning Bolt set up on the floor and proceeded to deafen the audience once and for all. We watched from behind the band, as the masses undulated and crowd-surfed. Now, we're used to crowd-surfing at, oh, the Warped Tour, but it's truly amazing to see people in their 30s ride across a crowd like they were 15 again.