Summerfest Preview: July 2, 2017

Here's a quick look at some of the highlights in the Summerfest lineup for July 2, 2017. Scroll down for the full lineup.

P!nk
American Family Insurance Amphitheater
7:30 p.m.

The knock against pop radio in the early ’00s was that it all sounded so prepackaged—itwas dominated by Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson and S Club 7: acts thatcarried an air of artifice, real or imagined. P!nk emerged as a pushback to allthat, standing out with her loud personality: With her wild hair, skaterfashion sensibilities and fondness for casual profanity, she offered analternative to the more cookie-cutter pop singers of the day, even if her musicwasn’t really all that different from theirs (like many stars from her era, shegot her start singing in a teen-pop group).

Starting with her blockbuster sophomore album Missundazstood, which sold a head-spinning 15 million copies andyielded her breakthrough single “Get The Party Started,” P!nk has insisted oncreative control over her career, and it’s paid off well for her: The fouralbums that followed have all been blockbusters, including 2012’s The Truth About Love, which includedguest spots from Eminem and, more memorably, fun.’s Nate Ruess on the hitballad “Just Give Me a Reason.” She hasn’t released a record sincethen—understandably, perhaps, given she’s raising a family now—but in 2014 shereleased a low-profile folk album as part of the duo Rose Ave., with You+Me’sDallas Green. (Evan Rytlewski)

Car Seat Headrest
Johnson Controls World Sound Stage
10 p.m.

Last year was an unusually strong year for indie-rock. The genre seems to beembracing the “rock” part of the label once again, and fans couldn’t be happierabout it. Of all the buzzed-about 2016 indie records, though, one in particularseemed to emerge as a consensus favorite: Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial, a 70-minute romp offeisty guitars and snappy songwriting, all tied together by frontman WillToledo’s incongruously sleepy voice.

Toledo had been kicking songs around for the project since 2010, some of whichhe re-recorded for his 2015 debut for Matador Records, Teens of Style, but Denialmarked the moment where everything seemed to click: His songwriting was sowitty and tuneful it made the inevitable comparisons to ’90s indie-rocktouchstones irrelevant. The release wasn’t without its hiccups: An unauthorizedinterpolation of lyrics from The Cars’ hit “Just What I Needed” led to a recallof the entire initial run of CD and vinyl copies of the album, delaying itsphysical release by months. But even that incident may have worked out inToledo’s favor. It only called more attention to a record that everybodyalready seemed to be talking about. (Evan Rytlewski)

Big Thief
Johnson Controls World Stage
6:45 p.m.

On paper, nothing about Big Thief’s Masterpieceseems all that unique. The group’s Saddle Creek debut is another rootsyindie-rock record in a world filled with them, complete with the same lopsided,oddly tuned guitars that have been a staple of the genre since the Pavementdays. But paper doesn’t account for singer Adrianne Lenker’s twisty,unconstrained songwriting, which has a habit of wandering and digressing, yetnever fails to tug at the heartstrings. The sloppier her songs are, the morethey seem to connect.

Masterpiece was one of those recordsso loaded and so passionate, and so seemingly exhausting to create, that itfelt like a culmination of nearly a lifetime of songwriting. It’s a bitsurprising, then, that the band is releasing another one so soon: This monththe band will release its sophomore album, Capacity,a work that early buzz suggests is every bit as massive and immersive as itspredecessor. It was preceded by the single “Mythological Beauty,” a lovely,lilting ode to motherhood that further testifies to Lenker’s unparalleledability to mine beauty and anguish out of any subject. (Evan Rytlewski)