• Photo by Johanna Breiding

Mirah, you are so good! A lot of performers would stagnate after recording and performing for so long— singer/songwriters especially, who might subconsciously feel confined by their form— so it was really exciting to be surprised by your set and to see you taking so many risks. I've seen you perform many times over the years, always thinking you to be one of the Northwest's finest singer/songwriters, but with your high-energy set yesterday, you actually took it to another level.

Gone are the days of softly strumming behind the guitar— Bumbershoot Monday saw Mirah on the microphone, rocking "The Garden" to an electro beat while a super-packed audience nodded their heads.

• Mirah on the Broad Street Stage

My next stop was the visual arts area, partially out of guilt because I heard some older folks bemoaning the fact that Bumbershoot used to truly be an arts festival, not just a music festival. So I headed over to "support the arts," and I'm damn glad I did.

There was Kerfuffle, a group show of works about the tenuous relationship between humans and the environment that included stunning photos of the light pollution from city skylines and a completely naturalistic-looking tree stump made entirely from cardboard. Description couldn't really do justice to the high caliber of the work.

There was also a presentation of the Arbitrary Art Grants from Dada Economics. Have you heard about this? Definitely a brilliant concept if nothing else, and although the quality of the results was wildly divergent, that's kind of the point.

• Protesting performance art with Dada Economics

Best in my opinion was the Arbitrary Art Grant for Performance Art. Entrants were asked to protest a performance at On the Boards, and their resulting signs were full of clever references. My personal favorite was the Karen Finley-ribbing "These go in your mouth, not up your butt!!!" next to a picture of a can of yams.

• Lease. Photo by Johanna Breiding

I caught the tail end of Lease and my preview was correct, it was a good time. Wing-It Productions had the audience in stitches. There wasn't a seat left in the (Center) House. It almost had me wondering how much of the show was actually improvised— the dialogue was deadpan hilarious and sure-footed. The songs were a little less confident, sometimes meandering a bit without a real sense of direction, but there were several strong voices in the cast. Thumbs up.

Why was the turnout for the Youth Speaks event at the Literary Arts Stage so weak? Okay true, they had a huge theater that would have been hard for anyone to fill. But if anyone was up to the task, it was this group of talented young poets, plus headliners Geo from the Blue Scholars and Def Poetry Jam alum Staceyann Chin.

• Photo by Johanna Breiding
• Geo from Blue Scholars at the Youth Speaks performance

Geo dropped some brand new verses, many of which were only days old and all of which were premieres. The crowd's (and my personal) favorite was his final piece, the most song-like in structure with a recurring refrain ending in "it's gonna take more than a few to fool me / you only get this timing if you study Kool G."

Then Staceyann Chin, phew, I mean really, what can you say? The woman is a force of nature. The sheer volume of her voice could blow the roof off the place, and then she busts off talking about her coming of age, her first period, her thoughts about white people. ("I love white people. They've never gone anywhere, and taken anyone's land, or anything like that.") I left the theater with tears in my eyes and the friends I brought with me were like, "That's it. Best performance at Bumbershoot wasn't on the Mainstage. Hands down."

• Staceyann Chin

I saw Metric last, before heading home, which was a throwback to the first Bumbershoot I attended when I first moved to Seattle. It was nice to see the same band in the same time slot and actually see sonic evolution.

• In every picture I tried to take of Metric, Emily Haines came out as a preternatural blonde blur. I decided to go with it.

Metric's set flowed seamlessly, one song into the next with lots of sustain, oscillating synths and a drummer who made jingle bells cool. At times the vocals were a little bit buried in the mix, but for the most part, Haines sounded great. She really is a versatile vocalist, conveys a lot with her tone and somehow manages to be pitch-perfect despite bopping around non-stop during the entire set.

The band especially nailed it on "Dead Disco"— the enduring dance floor gem from their 2003 album Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? The extended intro really worked for me, building an appropriate amount of anticipation, and the syncopated breakdown did too.

I could have done without the pre-recorded backing vocals on some of the tracks— they were a little creepy, and got me wondering if Joules Scott-Key was playing to pre-recorded drum loops, too. Not that that's a crime or anything, but it distracted me from an otherwise excellent set.

Bumbershoot, I'm sad to see you go. Especially since I never got one of those big, square bricks of french fries. Ah well. Note to self for next year...

All pictures by Gina Young except where noted.