As the second day of Governors Ball got underway at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, New York on Saturday (June 10), attendees moved to and from respective stages from sun up through sundown and were treated to a night of fireworks at the end.
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Lovejoy was in the Air
Penetrating the park early in the day, British indie rockers Lovejoy shared a short but electric set, marking the band’s very first Governors Ball appearance.
Punching through their propulsive, punk-fused set, the band played songs off their third EP, Wake Up & It’s Over, released in May with the opening “Portrait of a Blank Slate,” through the breakthrough track “Call Me What You Like, ” which pulled in more than four million views on YouTube and nearly 30 million Spotify streams, before closing on “Concrete” from their 2021 release Pebble Brain.
I can’t forget that night / You said I looked like Suzi Quatro sang Suki Waterhouse through “Moves,” at the start of her captivating 11-song set. “This song is about suffering in Los Angeles,” said Waterhouse before moving into the sultrier “Melrose Meltdown,” also off her 2022 debut, I Can’t Let Go.
Playing a majority of the tracks off the album, Waterhouse also sprinkled in several songs from her 2022 EP, Milk Teeth (“Johanna,” “Neon Signs,” “Coolest Place in the World”), along with one that was nearly nixed from the release.
“The label tried to get me to delete this song,” said Waterhouse before closing on “Good Looking.”
Shapeshifting ‘Tree’
Topped in a short black bob and wearing a magenta-colored suit patterned by some Keith Haring-inspired accessible lines, Oliver Tree entered as one of his many alter-egos, one weaned by the fashion industry as a child. In between songs, more of Tree’s caricatures played in vignettes on the screen, all directed by the artist and his Olivetree Productions, including the bowl cut, JNCO jeans-wearing Turbo, and the blonde mullet-topped, fringed cowboy—the latter complementing his second album Cowboy Tears.
Playing several tracks off his 2021 debut, Ugly Is Beautiful, and “Alien Boy” and “Miracle Man” from his 2019 EP Do You Feel Me? Tree also plugged in his pop-western Cowboy Tears track “Cowboys Don’t Cry.”
Prior to Tree’s set, FINNEAS jumped all over the same stage—literally. Sat at his white piano one moment, then centered with his red guitar, FINNEAS ran through some tracks off his 2021 debut, Optimist, including “What They’ll Say About Us,” along with “Let’s Fall in Love for the Night,” off his 2019 EP Blood Harmony.
On the main stage, South Korean girl group, Aespa, who threw the first pitch the night before for the Yankees in the Bronx, warmed up the stage for headliners ODESZA. The group was one member short with the absence of Giselle, who announced she would not be attending Governors Ball earlier in the week due to illness, but never missed their beats—even changing outfits mid-way through their nine songs while their song “Savage” played.
A perfect close to night two, the electronic duo ODESZA fluttered through an explosive 24-song set, filled with pyrotechnics, and surprised the Governors Ball with a closing fireworks display.
Read our Day 1 report HERE.
Photos by Tina Benitez-Eves
