Six Pics: Young Fathers At Rock & Roll Hotel

While tens of thousands of tourists descended upon D.C. last weekend for some flower festival, elsewhere the District’s conventional and DIY venues were stacked to the brim. If you weren’t at 9:30 Club for Dan Deacon or The Ting Tings, you could’ve been at Damaged City Fest, or Paperhaus for Shark Week or Hole in the Sky for Two Inch Astronaut.

Capping off the weekend at Rock & Roll Hotel were Young Fathers, who took the stage as if it were their prey. The Mercury Prize-winning hip-hop group stormed through an hourlong set with an intensity and fury rarely seen outside of punk shows. They said nothing between songs and then walked off unapologetically after closer “I Heard,” leaving the crowd hungry for an encore that never came. The three vocalists and their drummer were all individually different, but somehow uniquely cohesive. Raw, but not quite unhinged.

The Scots are on tour celebrating their new record White Men Are Black Men Too, though their set was an even mix of their last few records and EPs. Openers Mas Ysa (who powered through a myriad of technical difficulties with humor and grace) and Bond St. District (which features venerable Baltimore rapper DDM), both played to a sparse but enthusiastic crowd before the room filled for the headliners.

img class=”alignnone wp-image-50660 size-large” src=”http://bandwidth.wamu.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Young-Fathers-18-1024×682.jpg” alt=”Young Fathers ” width=”900″ height=”599″ />