Wonderfest 2024

Written By: Salome

Photos By: Salome

(@thehomelandobscurity)

Day 2

The lawn was especially busy during the afternoon as festival attendees, now familiar with the landscape, took their time perusing merchandise and exploring the various lounge areas, food, and fine art exhibits around the harbor as well as inside the festival grounds. 

Malibu Farm, arriving at Seaport Village spring of 2023 had hosted an after party the evening before. Their in-house café rests beneath the acclaimed brunch spot and offers craft espresso drinks, juices, and sustainably sourced bites to returning festival attendees on their way into the grounds. Guests would enter the festival to a dance party on their right hosted by Half Hour Late on the Harbor Club stage.

Half Hour Late was founded by Shane Dee and his close friends in the shed of his Ocean Beach home during the pandemic. The group migrated to San Diego in 2021 for their first show at The Holding Company. From here, they would proceed to perform at San Diego local gems: OB Beans, and Winstons Beach Club alongside Jules Duke, before their first LP “Busy Chillen” would secure a San Diego Music Award nomination for Best Pop Album in 2022.  

Uniformed in purple bleached denim overalls and refreshing wit, the indie rock quartet charmed the growing crowd with songs “Getting’ By”, and “Doctor”, as Kid Bloom assembled his set across from them on the Park Stage. 

Between them lies the official Wonderfront merchandise stand where guests are attempting to get ahead of the anticipated horde of purchasers expected to arrive as the day wears on. Vendors reminded passersby of the wealth of perks available: free shots of Baileys alcohol at 4pm provided by their official merchant stand that offered boozy chocolate drinks throughout the day, gigantic pretzels and craft beer cheese for under 10$, vacation raffles, clothing accessories and others. 

Kid Bloom takes the Park Stage just before 2pm PST and quickly acquired a throng of fans, curious perusers, and festival staff alike, as the allure of frontman Lennon Kloser’s psychotropic indie-pop sound in songs “Lemonhead” and “Shaky Knees” seized their attention. 

Prior to the release of EP “Lemonhead” in 2019, Kid Bloom was formed in 2016 out of Los Angeles by Kloser, who writes and produces most of the records. After working with The Neighborhood, The Bad Suns, and The Regrettes, Kid Bloom has continued to amass streams and critical acclaim. Their most recent album “Shaky Knees” has been described by critics as “tremendously funky and easy to listen to”, another one stating that “Shaky Knees masterfully melds vintage vibes with modern flair, showcasing Kid Bloom’s notable personal and musical evolution”.  

The band jives along the Park Stage, enticing fans to warm up against the overcast weather alongside them. With a bright red guitar and black hoodie, Kloser appears as a strong statement against the clouds as his energy eradicates the lull imposed by the skies. 

Later that afternoon, Q Marsden would embody this in his own way. Donning a black Arte shell jacket and a carnelian red buzz cut, Q pulled the hood of his jacket up against the wind and allowed the euphoric flow of his neo-soul and reggae conjunct R&B to wash over the lawn. 

Signed to Columbia Records, his release of “The Shave Experiment (Directors Cut)” put Q on the map in 2021. He has since released another LP “Soul, PRESENT” which includes fan favorites “Stereo Driver” and “Today”; a soul rendering ballad of desperation for certitude that millions of listeners can relate to in this post Covid-19 era.

  Amid the lawn singing these songs along with him, Q halted his set to attend an injured festival guest. Remaining unwilling to perform until safety was ensured should not be groundbreaking, however, historical tragedies of similar nature have gauged a deep unease among live music fans everywhere. By validating the sentiments that already exist in his music, Q was able to offer a rare type of comfort to those on the lawn as fans gained confidence in the sincerity of his art. 

Where projects like “The Shave Experiment” series describe the wistfulness that is familiar with twenty-something existentialism, Q’s “Soul, PRESENT”, offers lyrics of similar sentiment against dance inducing production. These are strong nods to the influence of his musical heritage which includes reggae royalty and father, Lenky Marsden, known for his contributions toward Rihanna’s “Pond De Replay”. 

Q invited fans onstage to dance with him against the weather. His hood is now off, and he bounces, beaming, alongside his dance partners. “See, everyone’s alright.” He said to the cheers of those on the lawn. 

Meanwhile, on the Ocean Stage, Milky Chance would also be found dancing and simultaneously expelling the lyrics to “Colorado '' with powerful force to their audience. The lawn joining the Ocean Stage and Main Stage quickly filled with even more bodies than the day before, as day pass purchasers continued to enter the grounds atop the weekend guests already present. They perused more merchant stands scattered alongside the walkway to the main stages containing racks of reworked vintage clothing items, luxurious leather cowboy hats with customization options provided by Brixton, and endless raffles for various brand t-shirts, as well as free clothing and beverage accessories. 

Milky Chance’s first release “Stolen Dance” held several international charts in firm captivity for the greater majority of 2013. The resulting album “Sadnecessary” wasted no time winning the European Border Breaker Award for Best Album in 2015. 

A duo from Kassel Germany, Clemens Rehbein and Philipp Dausch formed Milky Chance as teenagers and began playing live shows in 2013. After only two performances, they recorded “Sadnecessary” in Rehbein’s home that year, which quickly went viral on SoundCloud after uploading. “Stolen Dance” reached number one on multiple charts and resided on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for half the calendar year. Their second album “Blossom” had them on the charts again as song “Cocoon” went platinum in Europe and Canada, and occupied Billboard’s US Alternative Airplay Chart at number eighteen. 

Although Milky Chance ended with fans dancing to “Stolen Dance”, there was a general agreement to steal another one immediately after with Carly Rae Jepson on the neighboring Marina Stage. 

The stage underwent a disco-esque redressing, and Carly Rae Jepson heightened the aesthetic as she beamed across the stage, adorned in silver sequins and Barbie blonde beauty. The lawn became one gleeful scream as “Run Away With Me” was followed by “Shy Boy”, “Call Me Maybe”, and “I Really Like You”. 

A former theater kid from Mission, British Columbia, Carly Rae Jepson made her mainstream debut in 2007 by placing third on Canadian Idol. “Call Me Maybe” was released in 2011 and proceeded to spend nine weeks in the Billboard Hot 100 Chart’s number one seat. With accolades from artists like Justin Bieber, and Katy Perry, Carly Rae Jepson’s warm and vibrant hyper-pop music has decorated her with an American Music Award, three Billboard Music Awards, two Grammy nominations, and acclaimed screenwriter Max Landis’s famously unprovoked analytic manifesto of 150 pages, that explores the ingenious details within her music and the overarching themes they illustrate. 

As Carly bows, the Ocean stage is quietly humming with activity as musicians, festival staff, and Dominic Fike organize the stage for the “3 Nights” singer from Naples, Florida. 

Dominic’s first EP “Don’t Forget About Me, Demos” was recorded during a period of penitentiary restraints. Deprived of ability to physically present his music to the multiple executives enamored by the EP’s fusion of alternative punk and hip-hop, “Don’t Forget About Me, Demos” underwent an intense bidding war online between organizations before Columbia Records arose the victor. Fike signed with the label in 2018 and re-released his music to which “3 Nights” would go triple platinum globally. 

He has since been decorated with an NME award, and a 2022 Album Of The Year Grammy for his collaboration with Justin Bieber on LP “Justice”. His mantle also includes an MTV Movie & TV Award for his role on Sam Levison and Zendaya Coleman’s “Euphoria”. 

Dominic Fike was the epitome of casual sophistication, sporting a bleached buzz cut, shaved brows, and oversized flannel hoodie as he sang “Mama’s Boy”, “She Wants My Money”, and fan favorites “Phone Numbers’ and “Mona Lisa”. He continuously paused his set to give gratitude to the attendees for arriving, for the positive impact of the good day he was having, and for his lack of eyebrows. The pier lapped the edges of a now overflowing festival lawn as Dominic Fike took his exit and the Marina Stage lights began to oscillate for Weezer. 

Consisting of Rivers Cuomo, Patrick Wilson, Brian Bell, and Scott Shriner, the alternative titans from Los Angeles blessed us with “Weezer (The Blue Album)” in 1994. The LP went platinum with singles “Undone -Sweater Song” and “Buddy Holly” which blasted up the U.S. Alternative Airplay charts to the number two seat. Coinciding with music videos of attention grabbing whimsicality, the “Buddy Holly” visuals swept up the MTV Video and Music Awards, as well as an iHeartRadio Much Music Video Award scene with a combined ten nominations of which 4 resulted as wins.

They opened with “My Name Is Jonas” followed by “Beverly Hills” and “Undone -The Sweater Song”. By the time they performed “Pork and Beans”, the lawn was an asylum of crowd surfers. 

“Pork and Beans” won the 2009 Grammy award for Best Music Video, along with securing yet another MTV Video Music Award and breaking a Guinness World Record for most memes. Their success has catapulted the group into household name level success. Collaborations with visual creators Spike Jonze, Sophie Muller (for “Island In the Sun”), and Marcos Siega have secured the rock group's ingenious reputation and memorability in visual and auditory spaces. 

This sentiment is confirmed by the symphony of fireworks by the festival gates that erupted over the grounds before the group closed the night with an encore performance of “Buddy Holly”.