McDowell Mountain Music Festival 2016 guide: From Beck, Kid Cudi to top Arizona draws

The McDowell Mountain Music Festival has lined up an amazing assortment of talent this weekend, March 11-13.

Friday’s bill is topped by Beck, who picked up Album of the Year at last year’s Grammys for the introspective majesty of “Morning Phase,” and Animal Collective. Saturday offers a headlining set by Kid Cudi with Porter Robinson and GRiZ, and Sunday’s bill is headlined by the Avett Brothers and Gary Clark Jr.

Here’s a guide to the main-stage acts and the second-stage headliners. The second stage also is packed with acts you’d do well not to miss, including touring acts and locals.

McDowell Mountain Music Festival

When: March 11-13. 3 p.m. Friday; 1 p.m. Saturday; noon Sunday. The Avett Brothers' performance is 8 p.m. Sunday.

Where: Margaret T. Hance Park, 1202 N. Third St., Phoenix.

Admission: $70 per day. Three-day passes are $170.

Details: mmmf.com.

Friday headliner: Beck

(9:30 p.m. Friday)

He thought he'd sealed his fate in 1994 when "Loser" crashed the pop charts with its beatbox-driven slide-guitar riff and a darkly comic hipster's take on post-rap talking blues. The pundits heard a "slacker anthem" in its chorus hook of "I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?" Beck heard a nail in his coffin. "I was pretty much certain," he says, "that I would be sentenced to being that guy for the rest of my life." Instead, he made an even bigger record, "Odelay." A double-platinum Grammy-winning masterstroke, it spawned three hit singles, led by "Where It's At," a hip-hop-flavored celebration of his "two turntables and a microphone." Since then, he has released a string of classic albums, including "Mutations," "Sea Change," "Modern Guilt" and "Morning Phase," for which he won album of the year at the Grammy Awards in 2015.

Big Wild

(8:30 p.m. Friday on the second stage)

I’ve only heard one single from this L.A.-based producer – “Aftergold,” a handclap-rocking slice of funky, somewhat quirky, totally infectious electronica released by Foreign Family Collective, a label spearheaded by members of Odesza. Clayton Knight of Odesza was quoted in Stereogum saying, “We are very excited to welcome Big Wild to the Foreign Family Collective. Big Wild brings a unique style and flavor to everything he touches.”

Animal Collective

(7:30 p.m. Friday)

Even after indulging what passed for their pop sensibilities on "Merriweather Post Pavilion" in 2009, Avey Tare and Panda Bear have managed to maintain their presence on the more experimental fringe of modern psychedelic music, pushing the envelope hard on 2012's "Centipede Hz." Uncut magazine called "Merriweather Post Pavilion" "one of the landmark American albums of the century so far."

MS MR

(5:30 p.m. Friday)

A dream-pop duo consisting of vocalist Lizzy Plapinger and producer Max Hershenow, MS MR cracked the Top 10 of Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart with a breakthrough hit called “Hurricane,” following with two additional Top 40 entries, “Think of You” and “Painted.” Plapinger co-founded Neon Gold, a vinyl-only singles label with a string of great releases to its credit, including tracks by Charli XCX, Marina & the Diamonds and Icona Pop.

Captain Squeegee

(4:30 p.m. Friday)

Their sound is heady neo-psychedelic prog as a van full of jazz performance majors raised on ska would play it. It's been two years since their latest album, "To the Bardos," and it still sounds like it dropped in from another planet ruled by trumpet-playing front man Danny Torgersen, a loopy, larger-than-life personality clearly meant to captivate an audience. They’re local, by the way.

CooBee Coo

(3:30 p.m. Friday)

Local rockers KC Barras and Jesse Morrison play atmospheric funk that works in elements of reggae and a soulful vocal style that’s sure to speak to anyone whose favorite Black Keys records are the ones they made with Danger Mouse.

Saturday headliner: Kid Cudi

(9:30 p.m. Saturday)

Kid Cudi's breakthrough single, "Day 'N' Nite," was 2 years old before it peaked at No. 3 on Billboard's Hot 100 on its way to going triple-platinum. That was 2008 and it still doesn’t feel like a pop hit. In a good way. With a keyboard loop that hits like something lifted from a kitschy science-fiction movie, it practically carries a sign that reads, "I am not pandering to mainstream sensibilities.” That song remains his only Top 10 but he went triple-platinum with 2010’s “Pursuit of Happiness,” which featured MGMT and Ratatat, and platinum with “Erase Me” and “Just What I Am.”

St. Lucia

(8:30 p.m. Saturday on the second stage)

St. Lucia is Jean-Philip Grobler, a Brooklyn-based synth-pop musician whose second album, “Matter,” earned a B-plus from an Entertainment Weekly critic who called it “ a durable, malleable passport to hedonism — loud when you want it to be, just funky enough, capable of holding up to headphone scrutiny,” concluding his review with “Sure, 'Matter' is boozy brunch music, but it’s probably the best brunch record ever made.”

Porter Robinson

(7:30 p.m. Saturday)

Rolling Stone magazine named Robinson one of the 25 DJs that rule the earth. He's touring a brilliant new album called "Worlds," on which the Chapel Hill, N.C., EDM producer appears to have taken the title of a track called "Sad Machine" as a statement of purpose. He sounds like the saddest machine alive on several of the album's strongest tracks, of which there are many.

GRiZ

(5:30 p.m. Saturday)

GRiz is Grant Kwiecinski, a DJ/producer from Michigan known for playing saxophone and a sound he likes to call future-funk. Spin magazine summed up a live performance in 2014 with “Deeper into the night, we stumble into the Pantheon Theater and discover a man playing live saxophone to his own wild remix of Stevie Wonder’s 'Superstitious.' ” This is Griz, a 23-year-old from Detroit who refreshingly inhabits a place located firmly outside of the cool-kids spectrum.”

Bloc Party

(3:30 p.m. Saturday)

These U.K. rockers cracked the U.S. market in 2005 with the jagged post-punk urgency of “Banquet,” a breakthrough single NME included on its list the top 100 tracks of the decade. Subsequent hits include “Helicopter” and “I Still Remember.” Released in January, “Hymns” is their first album with their current rhythm section. Entertainment Weekly loved it, writing that “Bloc Party never became the saviors they were supposed to be, but putting out your best work after a decade of near-constant turmoil has to count for something

Luna Aura

(2:15 p.m. Saturday)

This soulful young singer's self-titled debut made my list of best local releases of 2014. And her second EP, “Supernova,” put her on last year’s list. She calls her music "cosmic dream-pop electronica," and that seems about right, although it doesn't quite acknowledge the hip-hop sensibilities she explores on the title track.

Haymarket Squares

(1:30 p.m. Saturday on the main stage, returning 7:30 p.m. Sunday on the second stage)

These guys like to call their music punkgrass. But the punk comes through more in the attitude and spirit than the sound. That’s where the ’grass comes in, although it’s probably closer in spirit to the protest folk of Woody Guthrie — satirical messages served with righteous indignation and a wicked sense of gallows humor. Highlights range from “Light It Up” and the Talking Heads-referencing working-class warfare of “Working Reward” to the gloomy blues lament “Let’s Start a Riot.” “Horrible Inventions” takes a stand on immigration that would not sit well with Donald Trump supporters (“We like to think that it’s an awful crime / To risk your life to find a place to thrive / Don’t ask how many of them had to die / Because they crossed the line / That’s only in your mind”). On “No Such Agency,” they spoof the NSA’s invasion of our privacy ("If you ever feel like there’s no one to lend you an ear / Never fear / I’m right here”). And on “Part of the Problem,” they wonder if writing satirical folks songs is enough (“I want to inspire / Not preach to the choir”). There’s also a stomping bluegrass reinvention of “Fortunate Son,” the CCR song. Are they preaching to the choir? Maybe. But the choir should be thankful for so many great — and inspirational — new songs to sing.

Harper and the Moths

(12:45 p.m. Saturday)

They more than lived up to the title of their latest effort, “Rock.Pop.Soul.” (although they could have added Funk. for full disclosure). They set the tone with slinky funk guitar on “Diamonds,” its singalong chorus of “Diamonds are the new wave” performed as a call-and-response between lead singer Harper Lines and Kelsee Ishmael, who adds some vintage synth sounds to the mix. It’s a brilliantly executed bid for pop perfection. They follow through with several songs that scream “potential breakthrough single,” from the even funkier “Nighttime Tremors,” with Lines lapsing into falsetto to complete the mood, to “Walking Through Fire,” which features attention-grabbing bass from Dave Campbell (ably assisted by Nick Ramirez on the beat) and Lines driving the hook home with a great falsetto vocal.

Sunday headliner: The Avett Brothers

(8 p.m. Sunday)

Led by two brothers from North Carolina, these folk-rock revivalists hit the mainstream in 2009 with "I and Love and You," which topped a list of albums of the year at Paste, the magazine most likely to appreciate that sort of effort. They shared the stage with Bob Dylan and Mumford & Sons in that cross-generational hootenanny at the 2011 Grammy Awards that did more for Mumford & Sons' career trajectory than theirs or Dylan's (sadly). They've been promising a followup to 2013's "Magpie and the Dandelion" since mid-2014, so there is a decent chance you will be hearing new Avett Brothers material.

Gary Clark Jr.

(6 p.m. Sunday)

Named "Best young gun" four years ago in Rolling Stone, this Austin guitarist is touring "The Story of Sonny Boy Slim," his second consecutive album to crack the Top 10 on the Billboard album charts, following "Black and Blu." Entertainment Weekly said of his latest effort, "Texas blues-guitar whiz Clark's second album is less flashy than his debut, but in pulling back on the guitar heroics, he galvanizes his genre-jumping, too."

The Oh Hellos

(4:30 p.m. Sunday)

Taylor siblings Tyler and Maggie Heath are a folk-rock duo who make perfect sense on Sunday’s lineup, where their banjo should hit fans of the Avett Brothers' bluegrass-flavored folk revival where they live. Released last year, “Dear Wormwood” is a concept album on which they top those bluegrass elements with a richly textured wall of sound and ethereal harmonies.

Bird Dog

(3 p.m. Sunday)

These Brooklyn rockers should have gotten more attention than they did for an album called “Bon Bon Voyage,” on which they swagger in like the Band warming up for a Bob Dylan visit and take a dreamy psychedelic turn on the excellent “Dog Days.” As they explain their range of sounds on Bandcamp, “Bird Dog draws on influences from American folk to 60's R&B, psychedelia and West African highlife with lyrics evoking the trials and tribulations of love, heartbreak and the absurdity of modern life.”

Kaleo

(1:30 p.m. Sunday)

If your mind goes straight to Sigur Ros and/or Bjork when you hear the term Icelandic pop, you may not be expecting anything quite like Kaleo. Of course, they did move from Iceland to Austin a few years back and that makes way more sense. Their breakthrough single, “All the Pretty Girls,” is a haunted folk ballad with pedal-steel accents and a vocal that ranges from a gritty rasp to a trembling falsetto. And “No Good,” their track from the soundtrack to HBO’s “Vinyl” is a total blues explosion.

The Senators

(12:45 p.m. Sunday)

These local indie-folk heroes got off to a strong start with a promising debut called "Harsher Than Whiskey / Sweeter Than Wine." Last year, they posted a video on their website of a song called "Salt & Water," recorded live at Paramount Recording Studios in Hollywood. And that was followed by the horn-fueled "Hummingbird," which found them expanding the scope of their sound in an intriguing new direction.

Gus Campbell

(Noon Sunday)

Still in his teens, this guitar hero plays a heavy brand of funky blues-rock, a sensibility that started taking shape at age 7. "My dad popped Stevie Ray Vaughan's 'Texas Flood' into the CD player and that was it," he recalled in an interview posted on his website. "That's what inspired me to pick up the guitar — that passion for the instrument that Stevie Ray had. As a player, my influences run from Chet Atkins to Tony Iommi. But Stevie Ray was first."

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Twitter.com/EdMasley.