Boston Calling had yet another successful run this weekend. The line-up had well-known and well-loved notables, like My Morning Jacket, Beck, and the Pixies, sprinkled into a diverse and experimental range of performers. Beautiful weather, good food, and great music made for a relaxed atmosphere and an overall enjoyable weekend.

The festival kicked off Friday night with singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten and psychedelic rock band Tame Impala. The sun was still up as Tame Impala went through their much-too-short thirty-five minute set. The smell of marijuana wafted through the air as they played through hits like “Elephant” and “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards,” properly setting the mood for Friday night’s headliner, Beck.

Beck, in all his infamous glory, had the masses in motion as he hit the crowd with all of his greatest hits from his extensive list of albums, capping off the night and setting the stage for the rest of the weekend.

Sunday was hot enough to keep the free water and sunblock areas densely populated until sunset, but not hot enough to keep anybody out of the sun and away from the stage as their favorite artists performed through the heat. Australian singer-songwriter Vance Joy drew quite the crowd, as did Chet Faker’s replacement, Lucius.

While the day was mostly populated with indie-folk singers, the night belonged to rock and roll. TV on the Radio brought us into the proper mindset for Sunday night’s headliner, but not before Tenacious D shredded the stage with some heavy metal and threatened us with “forty-five minutes of non-stop jazz.”
After Jack Black and Kyle Gass delivered some laughs at the Red Stage, the crowd migrated quickly over towards the JetBlue Stage for rock legends the Pixies. As Black had to eloquently put it at the end of his set, himself in anticipation of the final act to come, “There would be no Nirvana, Radiohead—there’d be no Radiohead—without the motherfucking Pixies.” And the Pixies did not disappoint. The crowd was entranced from the second they hit the stage until we all had to reluctantly disperse, almost two hours later, leaving behind a sea of empty plastic beer cups in our wake.