With Ellis Island clearly visible from All Points West’s Liberty Park, Trey Anastasio took time to salute his Italian grandfather on Sunday, who came to America through that very gateway in 1910, with a celebratory rendition of “Drifting” early in his set. Given the abundance of Phish T-shirts on site, it would have been obscene for him not to revisit some catalog classics and the first notes of “Gotta Jiboo” gave the green light to almost 15 minutes of pure, tie-died ecstasy.

“One of our favorite things about festivals is the musicians backstage,” explained Jack Johnson’s keyboardist Zack Gild, and it was no empty statement as Johnson humbly shared his big APW moment with Trey Anastasio and Matt Costa. The Phish man arrived onstage having just finished his own set moments earlier and threw down an apparently improvised guitar part on “Mud Football.” Costa meanwhile added his much subtler input to “Fall Line” before seamlessly segueing into his own song “Sunshine,” helping to add a collaborative finale to APW’s inaugural event.

[Photograph by Chris Tuite for RollingStone.Com]

After spending the first 10 minutes of his set fixing puzzling over a malfunctioning guitar with a slew of equally perplexed roadies, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals got themselves out of jail with an impeccably played and impressively varied set on All Points West’s final day. Although the rock-tinged numbers allowed Harper to indulge the guitar-solo lover in him, it was the softer folk-reggae of “Excuse Me Mister” that got the early evening stoners swaying in a lightly bombed unison.

[Photograph by Chris Tuite for RollingStone.Com]

The first night featured a dedication to Underworld, the second to Kings of Leon, but aside from a few cosmetic differences Radiohead performed a pair of solid two-plus-hour headlining sets at New Jersey’s All Points West festival this weekend. Both shows were heavy on material from In Rainbows, and the Friday night crowd emitted a particularly loud rumble of approval for “Idioteque” from Kid A. Orange and yellow lights bathed the audience during “Lucky,” waking fans from the drowsy lullaby of “All I Need.” With Manhattan looming behind the audience, Thom Yorke dedicated “Pyramid Song” to “a very hectic city.”

The band’s LED lights were just as mesmerizing on Saturday night, as Radiohead took the stage again to toy with distance and intimacy in a massive setting. The only shots the band allowed on the Jumbotron were extreme close-ups (Yorke’s wriggling scruff, a mallet hitting a glockenspiel), so the crowd went craziest for the most tender and human elements of the night — the vulnerable solo vocals on “Nude,” the extra slow version of “Exit Music for a Film” — but maybe they were just breaking the tension.

[Photograph by Jason Bergman for RollingStone.Com]

The Roots worked extra hard on Saturday at All Points West, turning the moody, apocalyptic songs off their last two albums into monster party jams — “Long Time” was fast and loose, “Criminal” was a funk beast. Catering to the jam-friendly audience, their “You Got Me” was a sprawling epic, complete with a Rogers and Hammerstein interpolation, a one-handed Eddie Hazel-style guitar solo and a brief cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” that made everyone go apeshit … or at least everyone who didn’t leave in the mass exodus during the bass solo, all attempting to get good spots for Radiohead, naturally.

[Photograph by Chris Tuite for RollingStone.Com]

While Kings of Leon didn’t exactly have the most energy onstage on Saturday at All Points West, their positive vibes and effortless cool certainly translated to the first massive crowd of the day, who pogoed happily to their classic-rock rave-ups. The unexpected highlight of their set was “Sex On Fire,” the first single off upcoming album Only by the Night, which the band played live for the first time anywhere. A mix of Springsteen and Cold War Kids, “Fire” was a real triumph in a set already bursting with triumphant hooks.

[Photograph by Chris Tuite for RollingStone.Com]

A diverse All Points West lineup and a prime 5 p.m. slot for Animal Collective meant that their faithful throng of indie-geeks commingled peacefully with Widespread Panic tattoos and Jersey bros — all together to watch a band finger KAOS pads and whack tablas into a noise-drenched soup. Luckily, the Animals’ dubby mush, suffocating echo and quasi-Afrobeat distorto-rhythms were just as good as anything for everyone to get stoned and sway. Even the three minutes of crushing goop opening Panda Bear’s solo turn “Comfy in Nautica” was met with hypnotic attentiveness.

[Photograph by Jason Bergman for RollingStone.com]

An almost 30-minute delay before Duffy’s afternoon All Points West set had the crowd decked out in colorful vintage wayfarers barking out U.K. soccer chants, begging the show to start. Once the rain settled down, Duffy, in red patent-leather heels and a red-and-white striped tank, came out strong to the sounds of her debut album’s title track, “Rockferry.”

After posing like a bashful sailor girl, swinging her microphone cord and repeatedly pointing her finger to the sky, Duffy exclaimed, “l’m an awful dancer — I can’t move to save my life.” Turning to the audience, she begged for “Movement please!” as she broke into “Serious.” She ultimately worked through nearly every track on Rockferry, including an incredible “Warwick Avenue,” sultry “Stepping Stone” and “Delayed Devotion.” Just as soon as the crowd began cheering when she broke into “Mercy,” it was over.

[Photograph by Jason Bergman for RollingStone.Com]

All Points West — the new rock fest at New Jersey’s Liberty State Park — immediately demonstrated why it’s not exactly the “the East Coast Coachella” on its first day Friday, when a spritz of rain came down during Mates of State’s afternoon set. It was ironic that the only precipitation arrived during the sunshine-sweet indie couple’s performance, but Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel kept their composure, rocking out drums-and-keys songs from “Jigsaw” to “The Re-Arranger.” With their eyes intently locked, the pair’s harmonies came easy, like they were second nature.

The clouds parted by the time Canadian power-poppers New Pornographers took the stage before a large crowd of true fans and others camped out early for headliner Radiohead. (more…)