It was just last year when a newly imagined Project Pabst made it’s debut down at the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. With a fairly eclectic lineup for the actual festival and the night shows as well, patrons flooded in and out of the entrance gates with the gears in their heads turning as to how they felt about the festival’s new style. It’s almost impossible to pull anything off without a couple hitches along the way, but Project Pabst soldiered through another year of big acts and big piles of beer cans. The same is still true for 2017, just a couple of things seeing changes.
This year’s fest is scaled down in a few ways, but has grown a lot in others. Unlike the Project Pabst’s of the past, the 2017 edition won’t have any night shows at all. These night shows were held at various locations around the city and gave more opportunities for local acts to participate in the festival. Last year, Kyle Craft was the only local to make it to festival’s main stages. Project Pabst night shows also offered more in genre variance, since many of the festival’s metal shows happened at night. Local support this year comes but from just one local artist each day, though the ones chosen are two of the best in the city and have both been voted our Deli Portland Artist of the Month in the past.
Opening up Saturday’s festivities is the Last Artful, Dodgr. She happened to have played one of the night sets last year, but her distinct vocal style and bomb beats are perfect for the bigger stage. For Sunday’s sets, harsh post-punk group Lithics will be kicking things off. They’ve become more of a common name around town over the last few months, especially after basically being named the best new band in Portland by Willamette Week and participating voters.
What sets this round of Project Pabst apart from the others are the headlining acts. This isn’t to say that Duran Duran, Ice Cube, Tame Impala and Ween didn’t totally kill it last year, or that Tears for Fears didn’t a few years back. But each day this year has a pretty damn good trifecta of artists to close out everything.
Attendees will get a chance to see Spoon, Nas and Beck on Saturday, while Sunday patrons will get a little bit of good, old and controversial. South African "rap" duo Die Antwoord have been contentious musicians from the start, but the reasons that make them such could create problems for Portlanders at the festival. Die Antwoord is known for committing racial and homophobic acts under the guise of shock value, like using the n*word in their songs, dressing in blackface in music videos and referring to people as f***ts, so it will be interesting to see how the crowd will react if they pull anything go the sort on stage.
To detract from whatever potential drama that could happen, the coolness of singer-songwriter and all around pop culture jokester Father John Misty, along with the iconic existence of still-kicking-it rocker Iggy Pop guarantees the festival will end on a good note.
For those that want to keep the party going, a Project Pabst Cooldown party will be happening back across the bridge at the Know. This bill is all local, featuring Blossom, Myke Bogan and Foreign Talks from Vancouver, Wa.
This is one of the festival’s best bills yet and tickets are still available, so get yours before the chance is lost.