Sofi Tukker Score High at the Miller Lite Oasis

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If there’s ever been an ideal Summerfest setting, electronic duo Sofi Tukker had it on Friday night. The first Friday night of the three-weekend festival, with a warm day that ceded to a lakefront breeze, and not a chance of ill weather made for a big crowd at the Miller Lite Oasis, arguably the most popular ground stage at the festival. Couple that with an act that’s on the upswing, like the duo, and you’ve got a formula for instant success. While EDM is certainly not a rarity at the festival’s 55th anniversary (see the newly-added Sound Waves stage,) Sofi Tukker found every way possible to make their performance feel unique.

Opener Sam Feldt played just about up to the 10 p.m. start time, with his array of steam cannons and big beat drops to keep the energy up until it was time to strike his set. Large light up columns and a video board were behind him, already prepared for the headliner, but a jungle gym, risers, and a sit-and-spin were added to the stage. Sofi Tukker would treat the Oasis as their playground, partially because it was an actual playground for Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern to utilize throughout the night.

While many acts would save their biggest hits for the end of the night, the duo have the festival setlist mastered, opting to sprinkle in some of their more commercially recognizable tracks throughout the night to attract fans milling about the Summerfest walking paths. “Best Friend,” which the non-fan might recognize from an Apple commercial, was second on the docket. It also marked the first time that Halpern would use the jungle gym apparatus as an instrument, hitting strategically placed pads for each of the track’s overwhelming brass notes. Hawley-Weld would play out live, as well, with a flying-V guitar that would make appearances on and off throughout the show.

Later, Halpern would don a bass for the funky, yet addicting low-end of TikTok hit “Summer In New York,” while Hawley-Weld would run up to the raised portion of the stage to sit on a swing that dropped down from their entranceway. Just when you thought all of the tricks up their sleeve had been revealed, a quartet of backing dancers would make their entrance from either side of the stage for “Awoo.” Even if your attention span was short, Sofi Tukker knew how to capture it, with choreography that included the band as well as the dancers throughout the night. It was also a special homecoming for one of the dancing quartet, as this was the group’s first time in Milwaukee. The choreography then centered around a younger sister that he brought onstage, who took the microphone to say that she was having the best day of her life. Even with a tug at the heartstrings, the show would quickly keep the party going once again.

Within just over a dozen songs, each one felt like a spectacle. “Matadora,” a remix of the theme song to HBO series “White Lotus” was the midway point of the night, and “Emergency” would feature a dance break that had each member of the group twerking in unison. To keep the attention between tracks, the duo brought up a scoreboard on their LED screen, arbitrarily giving out points to the Summerfest crowd, who were tasked to beat the previous night’s crowd from Electric Forest in Michigan. Every singalong, or dance in unison would be met with a score from the group, and low and behold, Summerfest would magically beat out the previous night’s festival. Good thing Milwaukee brought their A-game.

No inch of stage was left untouched, with the dancers reappearing sporadically throughout the night, at times even within the Oasis audience between bleachers. It would all culminate in the group’s biggest hit, “Purple Hat,” complete with a drum-and-bass breakdown that would have every person on stage running wildly throughout the set, spinning and swinging at their heart’s content. It was a high note to go out on, in an hour-plus set that never stumbled from start to finish.

While exciting musically, even the best EDM performances can feel a bit pedestrian, with tropes like steam cannons and confetti that now have become commonplace to accent minimal required effort on the part of the DJ. Sofi Tukker, however, put their effort into everything but the music, which conveniently was already great. For the large crowd that came to the Miller Lite Oasis on Friday night, they received much more than they asked for, making for what is likely to be one of the standout performances of the festival.