Spoon

Once you get to the fourth Bonnaroo afternoon in the Tennessee heat, you can use a little kick to start the night. Spoon, as ever, are the exact band for that. You don't go to a Spoon show expecting a lot of surprises (though they did play a new song and their recent Cramps cover, which was an excellent addition to the set). That's what's appealing about them -- they have so many consistently great songs that there are too many to fit into every set, but they manage to touch on most of them anyway. Mixing in highlights from last year's excellent They Want My Soul, they'd do things like play "The Way We Get By" into "Small Stakes" a few songs in, because why not? They have plenty of other heavy-hitters to save for later, "I Turn My Camera On" and "Don't Make Me A Target" going over particularly well in the latter half of the set. Interesting live touches were scattered throughout, too, like when the keyboard sounds of "Ghost Of You Lingers" grew and grew to the point where Britt Daniel's voice was almost totally drowned in the noise, or when he walked over to a keyboard to add a third layer of texture to the already lush ending of "Inside Out." These guys are just ridiculously good at what they do: sharp songs, performed raw but impeccably, as effective at a late night gig as they are on the field of a festival in the early evening. Spoon's one of the most immediately gratifying rock shows going these days. "Still with us?" Daniel asked the crowd at one point, before adding, "We're still with you." They're reliable like that.

Freddie Gibbs & Madlib

After Spoon, the goal was to find an artist that'd keep the momentum going through Sunday. Freddie Gibbs and Madlib -- playing in support of their album Pinata, a 2014 highlight -- seemed like a good bet. Turns out the set was a little woozier than might've been expected, characterized by a kind of lurch through and between songs that felt of a piece with the last few hours of blistering sun that this year's Bonnaroo crowd would have to experience. But while it was different than expected, it was still one of the best sets on Sunday, Gibbs rapping in fine form and in a great mood -- between often leading a call-and-response of “Fuck police,” he repeatedly reminded everyone it was his birthday, which in the encore would prompt him to tell Madlib, "Skip that one, that shit is sad, we happy in this motherfucker." He also brought Chance The Rapper onstage for a few minutes, thus continuing Chance's weird role as a pseudo-Bonnaroo cheerleader for the weekend, just popping up at sets randomly.

Florence + The Machine

There is no warm up at a Florence + The Machine show. She and her band come out and proceed to immediately decimate everything. Between billowy white clothes and a paisley scarf hanging from her mic, Florence Welch might look like she's going through her hippie phase, but that's a feint, because even if it's benevolently, she's here to conquer. She opened with "What The Water Gave Me," right into "Ship To Wreck" (a standout from her new album), right into "Shake It Out." I mean, who does that? Any of those songs could easily be rightful and powerful closers, but, hey, let's just not let anyone breathe right off the bat. (In fact, Florence and her band generated a little too much power at times, with the sound constantly sputtering out under the speakers on the left side of the stage.) Throughout, Welch basically sprinted back and forth across the stage, jumped down near the crowd multiple times, ran the walkway splitting the pit from the rest of the crowd like, four or five songs in, and was always somehow able to get back to where she was supposed to be and deliver another one of those choruses. "She's awesome, she's off the chain, she's bananas," a photographer in the crowd said in awe and sheer enjoyment. Even having seen her last week at Governors Ball and knowing what to expect, there was still no real preparation for how much of a live force Welch is, still no real answer for the one recurring question: How can one person have this much to give?

Robert Plant & The Sensational Space Shifters

It was a very, very hard thing to do, leaving Florence + The Machine's set early, but there was a very important reason: getting to Robert Plant's set at the Which Stage across the Bonnaroo grounds. The man is a legend, of course, one well-suited for a Bonnaroo slot, and even as he comes onstage in just a t-shirt, in front of a bunch of musicians you don't recognize, there is something next level that happens. Something that might not be talked about enough with Plant is how interestingly he's aged, how he's managed to explore new styles that fit his aging voice (which is still remarkably well-preserved, though) and the increasingly aged hippie/wizened mystic vibes he gives off these day. With his new band the Sensational Space Shifters, he plays old blues standards but puts them over rolling, African rhythms, or coats them in heavy electronics, or throws in a near-krautrock beat for good measure. All of this is to say: even if Plant was one of these old guys who refused to acknowledge his past, he'd still be worth seeing, because he's doing interesting things late in his career and not quite getting enough credit for it. Thing is, he's not one of these old guys who refuses to acknowledge his past. Shockingly, most of the set is devoted to Zeppelin material. You'd think that he'd have some disdain for this, given his demeanor in interviews regarding a Led Zeppelin reunion, but he still seems so full of joy playing these songs to people who are so full of joy at their opportunity to actually get to see Robert Plant sing "Going To California" and "Black Dog" live. Every now and then he even wields the mic stand like a weapon, like he used to all those years ago. The sheer casualness of just being able to walk up to a stage and see Plant, and to have other worthy artists conflicting with him (it takes a lot to make me miss a Caribou set; Plant qualifies), only makes the experience of seeing these songs performed all the more surreal. Plant himself kinda tempers the more overwhelming elements of it because he kind of acts like an old uncle who just wants to tell you about the history of this particular blues song they're going to play, or who's going to make a bunch of dry jokes onstage. "It's good to be back, if I've been here before," he said early on. "Here's a song from the Appalachians, which is somewhere in England," an anecdote congratulating their mandolin tuner in Nashville for having a child that day but ending with "But he should've been here tuning that shit," and simply "How the fuck did I get here, huh?" all followed. The set was drawing to a close as they settled into a slow blues jam. Plant sang a few lines, and then at some point snuck in "Because you need coolin'..." and you could feel the tension rise in the crowd. He raised his eyebrows, and shouted to a band member: "I got my voice back!" And not long after, that immortal riff from "Whole Lotta Love" echoed out from the stage and erased any other experience outside of that singular moment. This is one of those songs that's a gateway thing when you're getting into music, then it might get a little too over-exposed or old or whatever, and then you come back around to it a few years later and realize there is some unmistakable, cosmic power to what that band could do. This isn't that, but it's unreal to see Plant sing this stuff. They walked offstage, and for a moment it was unclear whether he'd come back for one more song with the few minutes still allotted for his set. When they did finally come back out, he told some story about milkmaids from Devon or something who used to sing an old song, and how he and his band were going to bring this "beautiful refrain" to the people of Bonnaroo, with peace and love, naturally. And then they went into "Rock And Roll." I don't know if anyone could walk away from that with any doubt that they'd just seen one of the greatest rock singers of all time.

Billy Joel

Is Billy Joel secretly one of the biggest badasses in classic rock? Here's a man with a career lined with hits, and then he just decides to walk away from recording new music after 1993's River Of Dreams. A new Billy Joel album, regardless of its quality, would make a ton of money. But Joel's already loaded, so he sticks around, plays shows, and does whatever he wants. Sure, he's been criticized in the past for schmaltz or whatever, but compared to last year's way-too-slick Elton John set on Sunday, there was something charming about Joel. He's still a showman, but he's also still some dude from Long Island. He plays a lot of hits, but not all of them, because he has too many to fit into one show. But then he'll gesture at the pit in front of the stage and ask "Are these the rich people tickets?" and then taunt "It's OK, just rattle your jewelry," as if he isn't the richest guy at the Farm. He's the kind of guy who lets his guitar tech come out and karaoke "Highway To Hell" during the final set of Bonnaroo 2015. (The crowd really loved this by the way.) By Sunday night at Bonnaroo, you can start to feel a little defeated. People sat laid down in near-total dark throughout the crowd; others droopily twirled glowing balloons whose glow was beginning to flicker. Others still lit up joints throughout Joel's set, like some bit of defiance and refusal to let Bonnaroo end. The genius of what Bonnaroo does on Sundays, though, is they book universals. Artists whose music is just in the atmosphere. Bonnaroo has a few different versions of itself within every year now, but no matter what kind of Bonnaroo attendee you are, you can go to a field and have a good time at a set like Joel's. "Movin' Out," "Big Shot," "Allentown," and like, every other song inspired festival-wide sing-alongs, providing one big communal ending to it all. "It's a pretty good crowd for a Sunday," Joel sang during "Piano Man," slightly changing its lyrics. It was good to see him, to forget about life for a while.