The bad news? By the time The Internet took the stage at Outside Lands on Sunday, more than half of its allotted set time had been eaten up by some serious technical difficulties.
The good news? The group was ready to roll with the punches. It took the stage determined to make the absolute best of the time it had left. “We’re going to do our best, you guys,” frontwoman Syd told the crowd. “This is not normal.”
“What y’all wanna hear?” she asked. “Some old shit or some new shit?” The consensus was clear: The crowd wanted to hear some old shit, and so The Internet prepared to dig into the archives.
But that didn’t mean that newer fans were left behind — Syd took care to bring them into the fold. When the group performed “Just Sayin” from its 2015 album Ego Death, she commanded the people in the crowd to channel all of their anger and frustration into the chorus, laughing gently at the looks on their faces as they shouted, “You fucked up,” back up at her.
It was near the very end of the set that the group finally delved into tracks from Hive Mind, its latest album. As the band played through the rolling R&B sounds of “Come Over,” it became obvious that the crowd had totally recovered from the disappointment of a long wait.
The band even managed to creep a bit past the time its set was scheduled to end, closing things out with a bracing guitar-heavy rendition of “Get Away.”
While seeing The Internet’s set cut short was heartbreaking, it was exhilarating to see the group march on despite the circumstances and put on a pretty damn good show nonetheless.