A Mysterious Solange Shows Real Houston Pride in a Day for Night Stunner: Plus How Justice and an Unlikely Viral Rebel Nearly Steal the Show

Day for Night’s final day mostly passed like a lazy Sunday. It had a leisurely pace safe from rain and rushed schedules. The intensity of the acts matched Saturday’s, but there were lulls between songs. Artists took the time to greet their fans and spread their Houston love.

There was just one hitch. Justice, the electronic duo behind smashes like D.A.N.C.E, cut their performance off at 9:45, a full 15 minutes before the allotted time. It was no surprise why. The sheer number of stereos required for their performance was staggering.

Day for Night employees promptly began ushering fans off stage at quarter ’til 10. But fans weren’t disappointed. The show Justice put on more than satisfied.

“The combination of the lights and the music was incredible,” said attendee Bart Caro. “It was by fat the best thing I’ve seen the two days I was here, Saturday and Sunday,” said Lee Cantrell. “The light show was even better than Pretty Lights — and they’re name is pretty lights.”

There was a little bit of unexpected controversy a few hours before, around 7 pm. On Saturday, politically minded performers had called out universally known figures like Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. On Sunday, the creators of Day for Night publicly called out their own enemy: Jimmy Nguyen.

The creators blasted a giant image of Nguyen on the screens flanking the red stage. The stage at the back read, THIS IS JIMMY NGUYEN. HE NEEDS TO LEAVE THE FESTIVAL IMMEDIATELY. The now-famous Houstonian had allegedly snuck into the festival with a fake pass — and the Free Press organizers turned it into  a bizarre incident that bordered on performance art.

The Nguyen frenzy got a chuckle out of the paying customers — and it made him Instagram famous.

The famous faces people were actually looking forward to included musicians like Phantogram, Solange, and St. Vincent. PaperCity gives you insights from these long-awaited musical festival acts.

Phantogram

Electro rock dream duo Phantogram takes its name from an optical illusion. In a phantogram, a two-dimensional image appears to be three-dimensional. The act’s Sunday evening set at Day for Night proved their nuance and dimensionality. They’re not just pretending to be elevated. There’s nothing flat about them.

They accompanied their music, which they’ve called “street beat, psych pop” with bold, black-and-white graphics at the start of their set. The large screen at the back of the stage played like an old-school screensaver, a series of stars flying farther away from you at a steady pace.

On either side of the stage, the screens showed photonegative versions of the band members playing.

Their performance visuals put a spin on their name — the planes of blocky, solid colors made them seem two-dimensional, cartoon-y.

Vocalist and trumpet player Sarah Barthel and vocalist and guitarist Josh Carter sang and played on stage next to these towering sketches of themselves.

“It’s bigger than life/It’s bigger than love/It’s bigger than all of us,” Barthel sang in her aerial vocals. Phantogram’s music is surreal — the keyboards, the echoes. Add in the soaring lyrics that are chilling, but honestly hard to pick out amidst the music. You hear notes rising and falling but can’t quite make out the words. It leaves you feeling at sea. Lost, but at peace with it.

The color scheme kept those newsprint shades, but the large screen at the back of the stage lit up brighter. The projection changed, sped up, like you were watching the stars in hyper speed.

Barthel’s profile took up the side screens as she sang “Turning into Stone.” The somber song, “Ain’t it lonely/Living all the time” samples Otis Redding’s Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song).

There was an unplanned break before the next song. Technical difficulties with the sound slowed down the pace, took the crowd out of the trance.

Barthel and Carter took it in stride. “It’s like being in a band, guys,” Barthel told the audience. Her voice was airy, even in conversation. “Sometimes things don’t work out. Sometimes they do. That’s life.”

They were soon back up and running. From that point on, Barthel took a moment after each song to announce the next one. Night fell.

“We’ve been thinking about Houston all year,” Barthel said in one interval. “You’ve been in our prayer and thoughts. We love you.”

Solange

Not long after 6 pm, the red stage took on a warm glow. The lights turned crimson, and the projector cast one simple, striking image on the back screen: a red circle on a flat white background. The screens on either side of the stage read SOLANGE UP NEXT.

This wasn’t Solange’s first association with the Japanese Flag, but it was just as powerful.

Back in 2011, her son Julez designed a T-shirt for tsunami and earthquake victims in Japan. Julez was six at the time. He painted a watercolor inspired by the Japanese Flag, the circle of the sun. The design was printed on white tees, and all proceeds went to Peace Winds Japan.

“It’s been amazing to show Julez the power of an idea,” Solange said during the project.

It was only fitting that the symbol came back to shine in her hometown. Houston is a place where you can find the power of an idea — now. It wasn’t always that way, Solange told the crowd at Day For Night.

“I remember growing up in Houston I didn’t have an outlet for people who thought like me,” she said toward the end of her set. “It’s amazing to see a lineup like this.”

Her first song of the night was amplified by that bright, stark backdrop. It glowed as she approached the mic with slow, purposeful movements.

For the first song of her set, she chose the first song written for A Seat At The Table, her critically acclaimed 2016 album. The slow, steady funk song, “Rise,” was inspired by police brutality in Ferguson and Baltimore, and the protests that followed. It’s shot through with synth, a contrast to Solange’s velvety voice.

Her back to the sun, Solange sang “Fall in your ways so you can rise.” Swathed in that red light, Solange and her backup singers drew out the single, final syllable. They lifted their voices and turned the word into its own melody, “Ri-i-i-i-i-i-se.”

Throughout her breakthrough neo-soul album, Solange delivers nuanced social commentary in a smooth, R&B throwback style. The subject matter is serious — rage, empowerment — but it comes in a gilded, almost mellow, package.

Featured tracks like “Weary” and the Grammy Award-winning “Cranes in the Sky” came to life at Day for Night, finding their home on the super-saturated stage.

There was the color, the sound, and the motion. The choreography was straightforward and strong, with motions as simple as steps backward and forward. But combined with Solange’s composure, they gave even more weight to the words.

All of the dancers, and even all of the musicians, wore neutral clothing with long sleeves and long pants. The attire was blank and unisex. The performance was stripped down in that sense, and entirely about the music.

The entire set was fluid. While other shows at Day for Night could be called compartmentalized — this projection for this song, this light show for that section, a series of distinct songs making up a performance — Solange’s performance was all on a spectrum, it seemed. It could have all been one continuous song, gliding from start to finish, and the audience wouldn’t have minded.

“It was my first time seeing her live,” Nick Arboleda told PaperCity. “It was enthralling. It was like everyone else disappeared, it was just her talking to me.”

Others felt that intense sense of connection. Solange’s performance inspired deep reflection and a little bit of irreverence, probably how she would have liked it.

“It was truly more of an artistic expression than a musical performance,” said Lacey Rybarczyk. “Solange is a mysterious, mystical, bad*** b****.”

In preparation for her last song, the anthem “Don’t Touch My Hair,” Solange put on a cowboy hat and addressed her Texan audience.

She broke down her Saturdaty for the crowd. She’d visited Rothko Chapel and eaten at Frenchy’s. She narrowly avoided Ninfa’s. She enjoys their food but decided it wouldn’t make for the best pre-concert meal. She’d reveled in Houston landmarks and steered clear of a “bougie” restaurant she refused to call out.

Solange sees Houston changing and isn’t exactly here for it, especially when it comes to the Third Ward. “Y’all can’t let The Tre go down like that and get gentrified,” she said. “We gotta hold that sh** sacred.”

St. Vincent

It wasn’t clear when St. Vincent would start. The stage was ominous, yet inviting, bathed in blue light. But there were just two microphone stands set up in the fog, with no instruments in sight.

That was all the musician wanted, and it soon became clear that it was all she needed. St. Vincent appeared out of the fog, backlit, silhouetted in her shiny pink bustier like something out of Weird Science.

She’d accented the bodysuit with a fuchsia belt, a pink furry choker, pink furry arm bands and thigh-high pink leather stiletto boots she managed to stand on for the entire set. The glossy pink heels were a nod to recent album art.

The look was both streamlined and vampy on the empty stage. The lights turned off, and a single spotlight trained on St. Vincent. She gripped the microphone with both hands and softly uttered “Marry me, John,” the start of a ballad from her debut album of the same name.

She’d written the imploring melody in more naïve times, at the tender age of 18 or 19. And she looked vulnerable up there even at 35, doe eyes wet as she begged “Marry me John/Marry me, John/I’ll be so good to you.”

St. Vincent side-stepped to the left-hand mic stand. An unseen roadie handed her a bright white electric guitar. Orchestral rock music sounded over the speakers, and she started strumming, her Berklee College of Music training clear.

It was time for “Cheerleader,” a song that starts with the soft admission “I’ve had good times/with some bad guys,” before veering into percussive “I-I-I-I don’t want to be your cheerleader no more.”

The next songs trended to that faster, more aggressive beat. She used a different guitar for almost every song, switching from pearl white, to bright orange, to a pink that matched her get-up.

She took a pause to greet her fans. The Dallas-raised artist shouted “Hello, Houston, Texas!” She laughed. “I know y’all. This is my home state, I’ve got home court advantage.”

The singer, looking for all the world like an otherworldly mannequin, sprang into Digital Witness. The sinewy hit had the crowd roaring.

“My hometown has my heart,” she said a little while later. “I’ve been all over the world. When I come back to Texas… when you’re a Texan, you’re a Texan first. You carry it with you whoever you go, whoever you are.”