Anyone I talked to yesterday thought I was insane for not planning to see Drake. In many ways, this was one of those festivals days where everything else felt like one long series of openers; all roads were leading to Drake. But this was one of the easiest festival conflicts for me to resolve in recent memory: I kinda can’t stand Drake, and MMJ are one of my favorite bands, as the increasingly voluminous amount of words I’ve written about them for this site can attest. (The first piece I ever wrote for Stereogum was about them.) This was my 18th time seeing them, and the first time seeing them play the excellent new material from The Waterfall. Florence + The Machine and MMJ were the pillars of my first day at Gov Ball this year — I caught what was left of St. Vincent after Florence finished and she was, as usual, great as well — and the two felt like chapters that played off one another for the night. Florence was the invigorating first experience to the excitement of catching up with old friends that’s seeing MMJ, but both offer the kind of hugeness I want in this setting. Both are driven by singers whose voices seem to come from someplace equally ancient and alien. The kind that are entirely entrancing, having different kinds of power in an enclosed theater as they do pouring over you in a large, loud, open space.

Last night was about the new material for me, since it’s the only stuff I hadn’t already seen live many times over. When I was getting into The Waterfall, I could already picture how some of these would work in a MMJ set, and they lived up to my expectations. “Compound Fracture” is a little fuzzier and stretched-out live, but comes on as a late-set dance party anyway; “Tropics (Erase Traces)” has a climactic second half that’s up there with the best of what MMJ has to offer, and it’s already holding its own hanging out between “Steam Engine” (my favorite MMJ song) and “Victory Dance” (one of their best live performances). They weren’t messing around last night, going with a set lined with heavy-hitters: “Wordless Chorus,” “Mahgeetah,” “Lay Low,” “Touch Me, I’m Going To Scream, Pt. 2.” In some ways, this isn’t really the way to see MMJ; their own shows can stretch to three hours and beyond, and there’s a certain rise and fall to their rhythms and energy that make the cathartic payoffs that much more intense. But there’s also something to be said for seeing them streamline it into a set under two hours, with no breathing room between some of their most beloved songs. And, of course, it all built to “One Big Holiday” at the end. I’ve seen this song performed live probably more than I’ve seen any other song performed live, and its power hasn’t diminished; if anything, it just keeps getting crazier. There is something deeply life-affirming about seeing a crowd of all different ages lose their shit when those first guitars crash in on “One Big Holiday.” It felt like going home. –Ryan