M3F Day One recap: welcome to the club

For the past few years, the lineups at McDowell Mountain Music Festival — better known as M3F — has been sliding from mainstream and alternative artists to an electronic-focused party.

This year we went from slide to full tip. The festival’s headliner slots were no longer for groups or songwriting artists — electronic scene heavyweights Peggy Gou and Mau P grabbed the festival’s top billing. It’s the DJs’ turn now, baby.

While Friday’s acts certainly did include major bands, by the time sundown came, the vibe at Steele Indian School Park felt more like a club than a festival. Adding to that effect was the odd lack of lighting around the festival grounds compared to years past. Festival organizers for months had hyped up the new, supposedly state-of-the-art lighting and laser system for the main stage. But as Chris Lorenzo threw down after darkness coated the park — and later as Gou mixed a lovely, eclectic, party-forward set — it started to settle that the hype was just not warranted.

The lack of lights was disorienting enough. Where were the water stations? You could grab a (free) bottle at the medical tent near the festival’s entrance or sip out of a fountain beside the epic bathroom line, but that was it. The park was dry and dark. The air was dusty and full of thundering EDM beats. It was like wandering a planet where the robots had finally won. At the official festival afterparty inside Walter Where?House, one attendee said that this was the first festival he’d been to that felt like it was organized by AI.

We can’t heap too much flak on the festival. It donates its proceeds to local charities, raising a reported $6 million for Phoenix charities over the years. And attendance at first blush appeared healthy: The mild weather brought out a strong crowd Friday night.

They found a lineup and an overall vibe that felt pared back from those of previous years. As always, for the pure-hearted people looking to have a good time, there was a good time to be had. You just had to look harder than usual.

Friday: swag, ‘Bulletproof’ and extra Cake

Let’s start with the lineup. Late 2000s pop megastar La Roux was one of the earliest acts of the day at 4 p.m., an intriguing spot for an artist with a hit, “Bulletproof,” that has racked up more than half a billion Spotify plays. But La Roux has been out of the game for some time. They took a hiatus from the music industry after going through what they called a “10-year mental health crisis” when we sat down with them after their performance. “I ran away essentially from the music industry,” they said. “I had a pretty traumatizing experience, business-wise and personal relationship-wise.”

Soon they’ll be releasing a new album and going on a tour supporting Hillary Duff. M3F was a chance to get back in the groove of performing. It’s appropriate too that it was in Phoenix, as the south Londoner is rising from the ashes.

“I was like, OK, now, come on — this is what you do. This is who you are,” they said of their return. “I’m very, very, very lucky and grateful for the fact that ‘Bulletproof’ will pay me whether I work or not.”

The audience loved their performance of the anthemic hit — a soft bounciness and delight settled on the crowd when La Roux played it at the end of the set. 

“Their outfit is so Portland gay — I love it,” festivalgoer Megan Claudio said. Told later of the comment, La Roux laughed and took it as a compliment.

And yet, we couldn’t help but notice: The intensity of their vocals didn’t quite line up with the coolness of La Roux’s gestures and the irregularity of the mic placement. It appeared La Roux brought their vocals pre-packaged. 

“This isn’t the ‘90s,” a festivalgoer named Rumin Tehrani said. “We’re not gonna let you get away with that.”

Over at the Cosmic stage, Neil Frances brought the energy, playing a fun, hip, wah-wah-heavy club set as the sun dimmed on the festival grounds. The set focused around their cover of “Music Sounds Better With You.” They played their own version while also mixing in the more upbeat Stardust original. This was the party getting started.

Back on the main stage after dark, British tech house DJ Chris Lorenzo played a darker, minimal set with punchy basslines — classic edgy club stuff with bombast and drama to his sounds. The highlight was when he played a remix he and Chris Lake (as Anti Up) made of Cake’s “Short Skirt/Long Jacket.”

Tokimonsta was one of the standouts of the evening, even if she was spinning a DJ set rather than drilling into her own (often superior) material. She’s “real swaggy,” someone in the audience said. She put on a clinic in funky disco beats in what might have been one of the most enjoyable sets of the day, deep enough into the night that the bedraggled audience was in every state of being: zoning out on their phones, shaking their asses, recuperating, or just getting their second wind.

If you’re more into music that makes you think rather than dance, alternative synthpop duo Magdalena Bay put on a more conceptual show (with elements of burlesque) at the same time. Sit back and enjoy the show, we did. They burst onto the stage with “Image,” the biggest track from their 2024 breakthrough album “Imaginal Disc.” The group’s singer, Mica Tenenbaum, flitted around on props and repeatedly changed costumes. When the set was over, she pranced off like a fairy.

Headliner Peggy Gou was an intriguing booking — and the South Korean queen of the decks did not disappoint. Her mixing has a wild, mercurial element. You just can’t pin her sound down as she pulls from all elements of music. Peggy Gou is thunder calmly composed and sitting in a chair delicately.

The electronic superstar also played the Cake remix that Chris Lorenzo had just spun. And while girls do it better on the decks, it was not quite as exciting hearing it the second time. A headliner in a lineup like Friday’s is always going to face this challenge: After an audience has been bombarded by nine straight hours of DJs, it’s no easy feat to bring truly fresh sounds.