• Blue Scholars were up first and were really enjoyable. I know so little about hip-hop you couldn't even legitimately call me a late bloomer. But I dig these guys. Will be picking up their album in the near future.
• Pretty Girls Make Graves were next, and... meh. Uneven, I thought. Some songs I liked ok, others not so much. Moving on!
• Nada Surf played a great set, many favorites. It's such happy music. I think anyone who likes indie pop would like Nada Surf for sure.
• Arctic Monkeys really know how to rock and how to write great songs. Those dudes are darn young to be so talented and polished. One of the highlights of the day was the lead singer paying a "compliment" to the throng at the foot of the stage. After asking if they'd been there all 3 days of the festival, a great cheer went up, to which he responded, "You look tired... but in the nicest way, of course..." Later he commented, "That's the clumsiest crowd surfing I've ever seen. You need more unity. All it takes is a bit of cooperation, really!" It was all very British.
• The Decemberists are starting to annoy me. Mainly I'm just disappointed. When they first crossed my radar screen a few years back, everything I read more or less hailed them as the second coming of Neutral Milk Hotel. Well it's just not justified. I'm not sure whether it's the songwriting, the singing, or both that exudes a nasty vibe of overt preciousness, but I'm not that into it. Jeff Magnum puts so much emotion into his NMH songs. Colin Meloy just isn't in his league. Oh, but they did bring out uber-scenester Sean Nelson to play guest tambourine on "Sixteen Military Wives", which is a good song, but HELLO, guest TAMBOURINE in an outdoor AMPHITHEATER? You could barely make it out when you concentrated on it. Whatever. And I wouldn't call what they were singing a "harmony" by any stretch.

Packing up our stuff, we then headed over to the "Yeti" stage - the smallest of the 3 venues.

• Rocky Votolato sang his beautiful folky songs, with and without a backing band, to a very receptive crowd. There were pockets of singing-along throughout the set. We should try to remember to pick up his new album too. Note to self.
• Headphones were up next, and just NO. As if being terrible wasn't enough, the lead singer made a totally nonsensical but still-offensive fat joke. Ugh. We beat a hasty retreat.

At this point we were hungry again, and got some more semi-lame $7 festival food. While in line, because the food stands were adjacent to the middle "Wookie" stage, we heard the muffled sounds of

• Damian Jurado but sadly, it was all too muffled to really form an opinion about. And finally...
• Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were the last band on the Wookie stage. The lawn was massively packed. Before the set began, chants of "clap your hands!" broke out repeatedly. People were seriously pumped up. They played a nice mix of new songs and songs from their first album. The lead singer, though, sounded like he'd almost totally blown out his upper register. Even more scratchy and strangled sounding than on the album! I worry about him. Anyway, it was fantastic and blown-out upper register or no, I'd totally go see them again anytime :-)

Whew! And that's when we left, since we were driving back to town that night. Meaning we skipped Death Cab for Cutie and Beck finishing the night on the mainstage. Eh, no biggie.