M3F, the two-day music festival, returned to downtown Phoenix last weekend for the first time since 2020. Attendees got the opportunity to see a diverse lineup of acts from EDM to rock to soul, enjoy good eats at the food court, participate in drum circles and yoga classes, and more.
Here are a few of the most noteworthy sets from the weekend.
Bryce Vine
Bryce Vine first publicly appeared when he was one of 12 finalists in The Glee Project, a 2011 reality TV show seeking to find the next Glee cast member. His performance on Friday night blended elements of surf rock and frat rap, with elementary, but admittedly smile-inducing lyricism on hits like “Sunflower Seeds” and “Sour Patch Kids.” (“We go together like water in a pool” was one of many one-liners shouted by Friday night’s crowd at M3F.)After seeing his live set, it makes sense why the SoCal hip-pop artist didn’t win a reality TV singing competition, but it also adds up that he’s had the most illustrious career of any of his Glee Project peers. Vine's vocals didn’t land as smoothly as his studio recordings, but his nonchalant confidence and overall stage presence was still infectious — many times he lost his earpiece from dancing a bit too frantically, likely due to his motivation to bend genres, injecting bits of electric punk into pop tracks and shredding it on an unreleased mildly political track called “American Dream.” The punk influence confirmed a career shift for the pop rapper — he performed his recent singles with MODSUN and lovelytheband, which indicate an incoming dive into the exploding genre of punk rap.
Drummer Al Campbell from Bryce’s backing band was a highlight, but the band’s inconsistent synergy with their frontman occasionally caused confusion. At times, the four had to confirm the setlist with one another. The visuals were messy, too. On “Classic and Perfect,” the music video was played out of sync with the audio, displaying lyrics that more closely resembled “Perfect and Classic.” Bryce Vine’s catchy hits and lovable persona would’ve been dynamic as a daytime M3F performance, but his headlining 10 p.m. spot on the third stage was too disorganized for the billing.
Cautious Clay
When Joshua Karpeh, the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist known as Cautious Clay, first stepped on stage, he introduced himself with his raspy conversational voice. Those in the crowd unfamiliar with his music were probably thrown off guard when the Cleveland singer broke the silence with elegant and suede vocals. His performance served as a perfect hinge point in the middle of Saturday’s lineup, welcoming attendees still filing in from the multi-block lines at the entrance. After dropping a flute and saxophone solo in the first 10 minutes, it became clear that Cautious Clay was one of the most talented artists on the lineup.Cautious Clay’s hybrid of indie rock and neo-soul is one of R&B’s most accessible contemporary acts, and I’m buying stock. Karpeh was open about his introversion, but he opened a window into his private life Friday with intimate lyricism stacked with witty pop culture references. Karpeh meandered the stage with the focus of a songwriter pacing their bedroom floor for new ideas. At times, he was so lost in performance that he forgot he had a crowd to tend to at all. Karpeh fell to his knees and rolled around at the center of the stage while singing the final hook on “Blood Type.” Afterward, he exclaimed, “We’re having a fucking good time!” before turning to the crowd and seeking to validate what he noticed, asking “We having a fucking good time?”
Parcels
I think the overused “Don’t judge a book by its cover” mantra is totally wrong. The cover almost always helps. But with Parcels, an Australian funk rock fivesome, you were better off guessing their sound by rolling a sixty-sided dice of musical genres. On stage, the band’s members dressed in outfits that ranged from prime Freddie Mercury to the boy next door in a ‘00s high school comedy. Nothing could have prepared fans for their hour onslaught of groovy, psychedelic indie soul. Their song titles notably have no spaces, and their addictive performance didn’t either. (The first two songs combined for over fifteen minutes.)Parcels’ worldly percussion and bouncing guitar melodies drew the crowd into a trance. Time accelerated and slowed with each change in tempo, and I was only occasionally reminded of sentience by a key change or accelerando. “Tieduprightnow,” the band’s most popular track to date, was a hit, especially on the titular lyric when their hypnotizing gang vocals gained a few hundred extra voices. The sun set about halfway through the band’s performance and I didn’t even notice. The monotony of Parcels’ live sound is certainly an acquired taste, but nothing short of musical expertise.
A couple near me wearing Skittles hats and floral crowns danced unrestrained, never once breaking eye contact from one another, and they weren’t alone. Parcels demanded your attention without ever asking, and the sea of fans at M3F appeared to appreciate that. The five members gathered at center for an earned bow to the audience after welcoming the night and weakening the knees of all those who bobbed back and forth for an hour of uninterrupted disco pop.
Leon Bridges
I’ll admit it. I missed the first ten minutes of Leon Bridges’ set because of the monstrosity of lines in the food court. Thirsty, irritated and winded from navigating through the enormous crowd gathered outside the Pompelli Stage, I made it just in time for “Beyond,” Bridges’ second biggest single. I realized that you can’t stay mad for long during a Leon Bridges show. As the closest thing we have to a contemporary Otis Redding, the 32-year-old Texas soul star has pipes.Both Parcels and Cautious Clay, the earlier acts at the main stage, included bits of soul that were tangibly ‘60s, but Bridges took it to another level. Backup singer Brittni Jessie dressed with silver boot-cut pants that shined like a mirrorball. The jumbotron feed was cropped with rounded edges to resemble a classic antenna television. Bridges took the role of emcee and gracefully dodged momentary lapses in sound and lighting halfway through his set. When he wasn’t adding powerful vocals to his modern soul staples, he was displaying larger-than-life charisma.
Maybe it was because of M3F’s mismatched lineup of EDM and R&B, but there was an occasional disconnect between the fans and the singer. Younger attendees bobbed and howled during “Sweeter,” an introspective song where Bridges addresses police brutality. On his closing track, “River,” an acoustic ballad performed alongside Jessie, house music by Whethan played from less than a football field away, drowning out some notes. Hundreds of smartphones leaped in the air to record the experience. Bridges’ show was phenomenal in a vacuum, but given the circumstances of the festival, also created a strange generational contiguity.
Kaytranada
After a long day of instrumentalists, you had to respect the simplicity of Kaytranada’s stage design: two symmetrical stacks of monitors, a turntable in the middle, and a MacBook laptop. As he walked onto the stage dressed in a gray sweater and matching beanie, it was clear that Louis Celestin knew he was the main event. He didn’t need to prove it, but he did anyway.Celestin glided from song to song with effortless and unpredictable precision. He could have just given the crowd hits and they would have been satisfied, but he wove his most popular songs with moments of spontaneous production genius. Celestin might have one of the most envied Rolodexes in all of house and hip-hop. He’s collaborated with Thundercat, Kali Uchis, Kendrick Lamar, and Rihanna, but most of the visuals were simple looping handheld shots of Celestin walking through an empty city street. In them, sometimes he’d smoke and sometimes he’d playfully throw punches at the camera. The shots emphasized an intimacy and underground aura to his show that felt novel.
Celestin’s stage presence was contagious, too. When he wasn’t queuing up the next great song of the evening, he danced animatronically and added insouciant adlibs. Even his commentary was quantized, always coming on a downbeat or bridge. Remixes of Rihanna’s “Kiss it Better” and Chance the Rapper’s “All Night” had cases as the best moments of the whole festival. The seismic bass paired with his spellbinding guise made for an unforgettable headlining act.
Celestin’s fanbase is an admittedly niche crew, but there were no prerequisites to enjoying his set. After a perfectly timed hour of innovative house music, KAYTRANADA finished M3F in the best way possible: he turned the Venn diagram of rave enthusiasts and critically acclaimed music fans in attendance into one big circle.
