Another edition of M3F, the annual local nonprofit music festival, is in the books.
The 20th edition took place March 1 and 2 at its new venue, Steele Indian School Park, and filled the central Phoenix space with hours upon hours of music, mostly of the EDM and indie varieties.
Here are some recaps of noteworthy sets at M3F 2024.
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Motel Club
Mike Bengoechea
Motel Club, Friday 4 p.m. at Vista Stage
Anyone expecting to see English indie rocker Bakar on Friday (like yours truly) got a surprise when Motel Club took the main stage. The DJ duo, from San Francisco and New York, call their sound a “nice place you go to do dirty things.” They replaced Bakar a few days before the festival.
With warm sun beating down and beach balls bouncing across the crowd, which was starting to gain size and energy for the first time in the day, the duo’s ’70s-centric grooves made the set feel just like a midday motel pool party. Jules Duke, one of the duo’s members, who also played a solo set earlier, tottered and reeled across the stage like a hungover Bob Dylan with his leather jacket, unruly hair and sunglasses. The set reached a cathartic zenith when the duo played a mix of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.”
I recognized Duke that night at The Icehouse, host to M3F’s official afterparty. He was still wearing his sunglasses and leather jacket; he spoke to me in a voice like either Beavis or Butthead. Later while I was dancing he came up to me, grabbed my head and smiled at me. TJ L’Heureux
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Coco & Breezy
Mike Bengoechea
Coco & Breezy, Friday 5 p.m. at Cosmic Stage
With style, charisma, matching snakeskin outfits, amazing hair and beats that made festival-goers shake uncontrollably, Coco & Breezy were M3F’s unexpected show stealers and heart-stoppers. Their aura and stage presence were unmatched. They’re also twins!
I was chatting with another audience member who asked me which of the DJ/producers I thought was Coco and which was Breezy. I guessed what turned out to be correct: Coco (Corianna Dotson) has an afro and Breezy (Brianna) has long dreads. The twins launched their own eyewear company and were once tour dancers for the Prince, for whom they also made sweet shades.
The two spun a range of R&B and hip-hop classics in addition to their own songs. They played their new single “Manifest,” which came out earlier in the day. “We manifested this sh*t,” they said euphorically at the end of the set.
If you like to dance, do not miss an opportunity to see Coco & Breezy near you. TL
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Arlo Parks
Mike Bengoechea
Arlo Parks, Friday 6 p.m. at Vista Stage
At only 23 years old, Arlo Parks owns the stage like a professional. With smooth, soulful songs, the London singer-songwriter may have been the one soothing presence to take the main stage in a festival dominated by rockers and DJs. Her music is neither soft nor hard, neither slow nor fast. It pulses with pure honesty. She stood and delivered her songs straight to the audience in basketball shorts and a T-shirt, seeming to say through her music and outfit that she knows exactly who she is and isn’t trying to be anything else.
While the sonic complexity of her albums doesn’t quite come through on stage, Parks is a consummate performer and talented guitar player. Songs like “Cola,” “Too Good” and “Pegasus” (a track that features Phoebe Bridgers off her recent album) had the audience zeroed in as the sun started to go down and more festival-goers started to arrive. The set was a last deep breath before night took over. TL
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Hippo Campus
Mike Bengoechea
Hippo Campus, Friday 8 p.m. at Vista Stage
The one act that seemed out of place was Hippo Campus as Friday night’s second-to-last mainstage appearance. The Saint Paul indie band played plenty of familiar hits, such as the sticky-sweet, irreverent “Baseball” and the melodic, bittersweet “Buttercup.” But the former, one of my favorite songs ever, lagged in tempo a bit. In general, the performance seemed a bit slow not only compared to other acts, but also to Hippo Campus’ recordings. At least you could tell the band wasn’t lip-syncing or using pre-recorded tracks, a complaint some fans occasionally level against electronic music.
It’s likely Hippo Campus got a coveted top spot at the festival for being a well-known indie act. But their performance, the only one during the 8 p.m. hour, was a strange departure of the energy from acts earlier in the evening like Coco & Breezy, Dayglow and WhoMadeWho. It was good, but it didn’t seem to fit. TL
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Dominic Fike
Mike Bengoechea
Dominic Fike, Friday 10 p.m. at Vista Stage
By all accounts, Dominic Fike is a true rockstar. In the words of Keith Richards, “Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.”
Dominic Fike sure can roll. Once a song starts, he finds the groove and lets it take him along. The festival’s Friday night headliner attracted a massive crowd; a lot of the women I talked to had come just to see him. Fike’s unique, genre-bending music and his appearance on season two of cause célèbre “Euphoria” have earned him quite the following.
Fike’s set was full of his hits such as “Babydoll” and “Mona Lisa,” the latter of which showcases the man’s gorgeous vocal tone. But he also played excellent covers like the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Can’t Stop” and Gorillaz’s “Feel Good Inc.” TL
Saturday
Young Franco, 1 p.m. at Daydream Stage
At 38, staying at a rollicking country fest till 11 p.m. only to hit the EDM fest by noon the next day is not at all the move. Yet it was me, a crowd of less than 100 or so folks and the DJ called Young Franco. Was his set the greatest that I’d ever seen? No, it was in some ways a greatest hits of every dance and electronic performance I’ve ever seen (even if I ain’t always a connoisseur). But a lot happens when your early afternoon DJ approaches the situation with a pep and graciousness that makes you start thinking about the abundance of sharing these sounds no matter the time of day or how empty this massive park felt at that moment. That kind of earnest commitment can do a lot to make you a believer real quick, and maybe it wasn’t not magic but it’s still a barrage of remixed and reworked deep cuts and big hits that make for this utterly life-affirming medley.
The crowd seemed to feel quite the same, and they clicked with Franco right away despite the schedule and that a lot of these early sets only draw the smallest of responses. If anything, it was the crowd’s reaction — a communal gathering of friends in the name of unassuming dance — that further sold me on Franco’s good-natured vibes and commitment to fostering a mood in the best, most straightforward manner possible. So you should come early to fests like this one as you just might be generally surprised — or, at the very least, decidedly satisfied. Chris Coplan
Tim Atlas, 3 p.m. at Cosmic Stage
When I first entered the grounds on Saturday afternoon, I noticed that Cosmic was the de facto non-electronic/EDM stage. While I’m all for that kind of diversity, the first act on said stage, Will Worden, felt a little too out of place with his hearty folk music. A couple hours later, though, I saw Tim Atlas and I recommitted to the idea of the Cosmic Stage in general. Because while the young singer-songwriter was all about this sleek, mega-sensuous blend of pop and R&B, he was just electronic enough (in all the right ways) to make a bit more sense than a straight folk artist. And that made all the difference, as Atlas maintained the same mission statement of many of his fellow performers — earnest displays of emotion and understated party vibes — filtered through less overt sounds and with firmly more endearing sentiments overall.
It was pop music for a younger, perennially online audience, but in a way that none of it really mattered because if you can dance and hit that falsetto at the same time, all while talking about extra-messy love, then you’re clearly spanning every generation ever. The young Atlas also mentioned that this was one of his first festival gigs, and you couldn’t really tell given his straightforwardness and ease of charisma that defined a solid, albeit slightly shorter, set. But never at any point did this stage, or Atlas himself, feel like some sort of gimmick — it was a continuation and expansion of why M3F is so compelling, and another reason more diverse and robust lineups make all the difference. That, and a smaller stage is great for a small respite. CC
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It’s Murph
Mike Bengoechea
It’s Murph, 4 p.m. at Vista Stage
I don’t get behind those squares who think all electronic music is the same wobbly garbage. I don’t think any of it is garbage, but I’ll definitely concede that a lot of it is similar enough. Which is totally fine — there’s really only so much you could ever want to do if you’re a DJ playing at fests, because if you get too inventive or out there or whatnot, then you’re likely not to draw much of a crowd in the first place. (Even if sometimes I feel like you could take a song from every act, make a playlist, and no one would know which song belonged to what artist.)
Which is why I preferred Tennessee’s own Garrett Murphy (aka It’s Murph), who adds just enough edge and texture to his dance jams to make them feel different enough. Sure, they’re mostly the same vaguely sexual, body-infecting bangers at their core, but it’s clear that Murphy approaches producing and songwriting with a slightly more adventurous, borderline antagonistic approach, and that adds a weight to these open-ended soundscapes that’s routinely missing elsewhere. It’s an extended middle part, some unheard-of sample (was that “Pac-Man” I detected?) and/or just a thoughtful production decision meant more to irk than to engage and stimulate. Either way, it’s just enough variation to feel truly novel, a spin on EDM where that endless slow build and commitment for explosive payoffs takes a slight detour into the territory of all things slightly silly and kooky.
Sure, it doesn’t remain there for too long, but then that’s never the point; it’s about building in a new way and forcing the crowd to follow along to make them really work for that sweet, sweet release in a way you don’t always see at a specific fest like this one. No matter the path, though, Murphy made it easy to follow along with a focus on the joys of getting wonderfully lost alongside a couple thousand of your closest friends/neighbors. CC
Drama, Saturday 5 p.m. at Daydream Stage
One of the most unique acts at this year’s M3F, Drama is a Chicago-based duo consisting of producer Na’el Shehade and vocalist/songwriter Via Rosa. Rosa is a commanding presence onstage. The lyrics of the group’s self-titled song sum up her style: “And I need drama / I need action / I need movement / I need passion.”
With Rosa sliding and sometimes dancing wildly across the stage, the duo uses sultry moments of tension to build up to fits of explosive passion. Unapologetic and openly sexual in her movement, Rosa is a Vogue model, like a Hollywood queen of old.
At the smaller Daydream Stage, the crowd was packed tight to see Drama, making movement limited. Even so, the set was high on energy. The duo were among the most dynamic acts to take the M3F stages. TL
Valley, 5 p.m. at Cosmic Stage
There’s a great balance in the universe — and that holds true even for local dance fests. Whereas someone like Tim Atlas worked because of that flirtation with electronic and dance music, Valley just moved a bit too far away to feel like it fully clicked. The Toronto band’s pop-forward sound may have featured some light tinges of electronic influence (that vocal effect felt a little too obvious for their own good), but they were far more warm and organic overall. Something like that shouldn’t matter, but there’s no denying that in any other setting, this kind of music would feel more at home and decidedly more rich and joyous. But smack dab in the middle of M3F, it just felt too alien and too one-sided to really mash effectively with the DJ-heavy lineup.
It’s hard to tell if that affected the band, or if it somehow influenced the crowd. (In a fest where most folks start piling in around 5 p.m, the Cosmic Stage did feel a touch emptier than you might expect.) That uncertainty maybe spoke to just how much cohesion with the rest of the card matters, and how you can feel something just not click outright given that incongruous nature. Because it wasn’t the actual music — had the mismatch not been as noticeable, this would have been the perfect sort of sunset-ish dance party. (Even if the band’s subject matter was a little too “Oh God, I’m painfully in my 20s” at certain times.) Heck, it may have absolutely killed if it had happened midday at Innings on the other side of town. But all of those are just ifs and maybes, and the reality of it all was that Valley just didn’t hit the way we’d hoped just such romantic rock might have given slightly different circumstances. Plus, “Valley rocks Valley” would have clearly made for a much better headline. CC
Poolside, Saturday 6 p.m. at Vista Stage
No act has a more fitting name. Poolside’s Saturday sunset appearance on the main stage was a perfect segue into a night of high-powered grooves. I managed to dance through most of the whole set while eating a box of wok-fired soba and vegetables from Island Noodles.
Poolside, led by Jeffrey Paradise (“I didn’t know he was such a silver fox,” a woman told me), has made a name for itself thanks to a smooth musical style that manages to be both eclectic and extremely consistent. That style gives the music a retro feel that appeals to both young and old. One of the best moments of the band’s set played its cover of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” which the crowd received warmly. TL
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Duke Dumont
Mike Bengoechea
Duke Dumont, Saturday 8 p.m. at Vista Stage
I had such a good time at M3F that when I got to the front of the stage to see Duke Dumont, it was over and I wasn’t even mad about it. TL
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Roosevelt
Mike Bengoechea
Roosevelt, Saturday 9 p.m. at Cosmic Stage
Playing the smallest stage just before headliner Lane 8 took the mainstage, Roosevelt delivered a musically tight set. Not a single note sounded out of place. The audio sounded absolutely perfect for the German guitar player and songwriter, born Marius Lauber, who mixes an eclectic style of rock with synth-heavy electronic music.
The artist’s older songs like “Montreal” and “Colours” entranced the audience with elegant, soothing melodies and even-paced, grooving basslines. The music feels electric and mercurial, but always comfortable and fun for dancing. There’s a certain groove that runs through all of Roosevelt’s music.
For me, this was the best set of the festival in terms of pure sound. I first heard Roosevelt while traveling in Munich in 2015, before he had even released a full album. I was immediately obsessed with his music. Even so, I didn’t expect the set to be so good. TL
Lane 8, Saturday 10 p.m. at Vista Stage
There’s a reason Denver’s Daniel Goldstein, who goes by Lane 8, closed out the whole festival. Signed to renowned English deep house label Anjunadeep, the DJ’s music is complex, monumental and freeing.
The entire set was a blur of beautifully danceable sounds, a wild light show and psychedelic visuals imposed on the stage’s screen. The crowd was at full capacity and gathered around the main stage as Goldstein played Lane 8’s most popular song by far, “Road,” which turned out to be a moment of great release and awe for the huge audience. It’s a song about traveling through life and trying to make sense of one’s place in a vast world.
Wild, emotional and engrossing, the set was the most powerful and moving of the entire festival. It was a fitting note on which to end. TL
