Ken Carson, Muna, Tiffany and the best and worst of Day 4 of Summerfest 2024 in Milwaukee

Throwback Thursday at Summerfest brought nostalgia from Tiffany and Hawthorne Heights, while MUNA and Ken Carson excited fans with new sounds.

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Ken Carson

The younglings were in abundance for rapper Ken Carson’s appearance at the Generac Power Stage. So much so that security was visibly beefed up to cover the kids spilling into both sides of the park. When the hour hit ten, the kids all began chanting his name. It was deafening.

Playboi Carti label signee Carson can best be described as loud. The electro/trap sub bass may have shook loose a few of my teeth. It was that heavy.

Carson rushed the completely empty stage (not even a dj) and began rapping over his own lyrics. He was basically being a backup rapper for his own prerecorded set. While this is a strange norm today, it worked. His angsty performance was more about energy and crowd interaction. They knew every word of every song which bled through every time Carson dropped the mic. He talked to them as if they were a monolith and they responded as such. For some, it seemed, this was the best night of their lives.

— Damon Joy, Special to the Journal Sentinel

MUNA

MUNA lead singer Katie Gavin danced her pants off at the BMO Pavilion Thursday ? literally.

Ahead of “No Idea,” the sixth song of the pop band’s headlining set, Gavin teased that if people danced hard enough she’d rip them off, and the packed crowd evidently exceeded expectations, with Gavin dropping trou well before the song was finished.

But by that point, she’d been figuratively dancing her pants off through unstoppable, aptly self-described “queer joy” anthems like “What I Want” and “Solid,” her unstoppable energy often matched by bandmates Josette Maskin and Naomi McPherson, who frequently sprinted around the stage like they were in the most intense game of tag from your fourth-grade recess. No wonder Taylor Swift recruited them for some “Eras Tour” dates last year.

Not even an out-of-tune guitar halfway through could sour the mood, offering a cute moment where Gavin reflected on seeing the Fray at Summerfest in junior high, and met a fan who was taught seventh-grade social studies by her mom. The fact that this was a one-off show, with the band largely off the road while they’re in album mode, made their unstoppable energy all the more impressive. Across 14 songs and 70 minutes, no one in MUNA ever broke a sweat ? literally.

— Piet Levy, [email protected]

Hawthorne Heights

Lots of artists took trips down memory lane on Summerfest’s Throwback Thursday ? but perhaps none as effectively as Hawthorne Heights, and not just with their music.

“Pretend like you’re in your bedroom in 2004,” frontman JT Woodruff said from the UScellular Connection Stage near the end of the emo veterans’ evening set. “You put on a nice new pair of Skull Candy headphones. Your flatiron is heating up in the bathroom. You’re listening to your favorite song…and you found it from a MySpace Top 8.”

Then the band played “Gold Econoline,” a new song effectively designed to sound like an old song. It fit in nicely with the nostalgic theme of this set: a 20th anniversary celebration of debut album “The Silence in Black and White,” released this month in 2004, and partially recorded at Butch Vig and Steve Marker’s since shuttered Smart Studios in Madison.

Faithful renditions of album signatures like “Ohio Is for Lovers” further transported fans to that time, but Woodruff also infused the set with modern reflection that made the sentiments of these songs from his youth - and many of these fans’ youth - all the sweeter.

“You’ve grown up so nicely,” Woodruff (the only remaining member of the band from those days, besides bassist Matt Ridenour) told the large crowd. “You’ve probably got gym memberships. Some of you’ve probably got some 401k price-matching (expletive).”

“Keep your heads up. … You’re doing just (expletive) fine right now.”

— Piet Levy

Tiffany

Understanding the assignment on this Throwback Thursday afternoon at her first Summerfest, Tiffany promised to take listeners at her BMO Pavilion set to “retroland.”

But “retroland” it turns out can sometimes be a sad, scary place.

Stripped of the big budget production (and protection) from her run on the New Kids On The Block 2019 “Mixtape Tour” (which included a winning Fiserv Forum stop), the ‘80s pop singer performed with meek piped-in drums, a modest keyboardist, and an unfortunately immodest guitarist, who struck a couple very pronounced sour notes during his solo for “Feelings of Forever.” He was probably trying to overcompensate for the sparse set-up, and so too it seemed was Tiffany.

Unlike her bandmate she never outright embarrassed herself. But Tiffany’s singing, through older material (like “Could’ve Been,” her favorite song she recorded, she said, when she was 14), and more recent tracks (like 2018’s “Beautiful”), was consistently overwrought.

To her credit Tiffany was an energized, eager-to-entertain performer, and the scant crowd seemed pleased enough. But sets like this one are a reminder that sometimes it’s better to say no to the nostalgia trip.

— Piet Levy

K Camp

Kristopher Campbell, aka K Camp, is one of the best-known rappers to hail from Milwaukee. But having grown up in Atlanta where he broke out about a decade ago, K Camp has never made Milwaukee a major part of his identity ? to the point that he didn’t even bring it up well into his set at the Aurora Pavilion early Thursday night.

The place was crowded, but it’s less likely folks showed up to see a hometown hero than to hear the hits ? or as K Camp suggested, “hits upon hits upon hits upon hits….” That was undoubtedly a gross exaggeration, but the rap-along crowd definitely knew tracks like “Ice Cold” and “F W Y B,” supported live by four dancers, a DJ, a live guitarist, and a keyboardist ? although Camp’s confidence and lyrics were indisputably the main appeal.

He built up such momentum that when he dropped a new song, I spotted a stand-by EMT getting down. He may not be a loud and proud man of Milwaukee, but when he got off the stage to hang out with the fans during his salute to hedonism “Money Baby,” K Camp was indisputably a man of the people.

— Piet Levy

Sleater-Kinney

The Briggs & Stratton Big Backyard stage was filled to the brim with aging hipsters for iconic punk/alternative band Sleater-Kinney.

The two original members, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, have been cranking out music for several decades. They took fans on a trip down memory lane with songs from "The Hot Rock," which is celebrating its 25-year anniversary, up to the new emotionally charged "Little Rope."

The riot grrrl alums kept the energy high and still noticeably play off each other. Tucker's distinctive voice kept all at bay while Brownstein’s guitar work remained complex and seemingly impossible to do while doing her patented “hop scotch” dance as she played.

The highlight of the evening was definitely the happiness on the faces of ex-punks who have to go to the office tomorrow. They clearly got to go back to the good ol’ days for a night.

— Damon Joy

Eve 6

Alt-rock trio Eve 6 has received surprising renewed appreciation in the 2020s, but not primarily for its music.

Singer-bassist Max Collins, posting on X (formerly Twitter) through the band’s account, has been rightly hailed for his very funny trolling, including at his own expense. In 2024 the posts have been less frequent, Collins has suggested for mental health reasons, giving a sizable crowd at the band’s Summerfest set Thursday afternoon the best opportunity to tap into his quirky sense of humor.

And there were some good zingers at the UScellular Connection Stage. Collins recalled waking up before a Summerfest gig in 2001 or so, where eight guys from Staind’s team were ready to beat him up for mocking the hard rock band on stage at a show the night before. Collins smoothed things over, apologizing and saying he drank too much - although Staind’s singer, he said Thursday, was still ticked.

Collins also jokingly suggested Thursday their tune “Leech” was praised by critics as the “most heartfelt song of the new millennium,” and humorously likened new song “Black Nova” to “Peter Pan-ing ourselves into the gathering twilight.”

The commentary was the highlight, but when it came to performances of older material like “Open Road Song” and "Promise,” the band was hardly phoning it. It wasn’t all fun and games though. Some of Collins’ most recent tweets have expressed outrage about the conflict in Gaza, and that sentiment carried onto the Summerfest stage, with co-founder Jon Siebels sporting a large sticker that read “End Palestinian Occupation” on his guitar.

— Piet Levy

Certified Trapper

There’s virtually zero overlap between K Camp and Certified Trapper, aside that they’re both rappers and were both born in Milwaukee. Nevertheless having them perform at the same time at Summerfest Thursday night seemed like a mistake ? and I worried that attendance for Trapper, Milwaukee’s wonderfully weird and scrappy street rapper getting his biggest hometown showcase to date, would take a big hit.

But was I happy to be so wrong. When Trapper hit the stage at the Generac Power Stage Thursday, the area was absolutely packed. And this wasn’t a crowd simply camping out a spot for closer Ken Carson. These fans ? primarily high schoolers and college kids ? knew these songs (one woman’s deafening scream for “Long Nights” made people around her jump and laugh). They also mimicked Trapper’s unashamedly dorky dance moves too ? from disco-adjacent finger points to imaginary steering wheel turns ? showcased in his barrage of mostly self-shot viral music videos. (Trapper, a jack of all trades, does his own production too, helping to draw national attention to Milwaukee’s strange, twerk-inspired lowend sound.)

That said, I wouldn’t call this a show so much as a vibe. Rapping over backing vocals and a DJ hesitant to play hype man (and essentially no other on-stage support, or surprisingly, special guests), Trapper’s set was just twenty minutes. He was off stage for virtually all of it, too, dancing with people in the pit and posing for pics. And showboating just isn’t his style; at one point when he was dancing with fans during “Nights,” he suddenly stopped and humorously gave them a hard stare for getting too excited.

Successfully translating Trapper’s non-plussed online persona to a longer show on a big stage IRL, without sacrificing his authentic oddball appeal, is a challenge Trapper and his team will have to figure out for another time. But seeing him play a packed Summerfest stage Thursday was a definite win ? for Trapper, and also, for the scene.

— Piet Levy

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The best and the worst of Day 4 of Summerfest 2024 in Milwaukee