At Just Like Heaven, indie nostalgia grows up without getting old

Nostalgia is baked into the DNA of Just Like Heaven.

The indie-rock festival returned to Brookside at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Saturday, Aug. 22, but if the festival is about looking back, this year also offered a reminder of just how far its music — and the fans who grew up with it — have traveled.

Across the dusty grounds were millennials alongside younger fans, older attendees and parents introducing their children to the crews that once soundtracked their own adolescence. Tiny band tees were everywhere, some matching mom or dad, while toddlers in protective headphones watched The Strokes from their fathers’ shoulders.

Even Cosmic Kids Land, where the Bob Baker Marionette Theater hosted puppets and activities throughout the day, drew plenty of adults seemingly happy to tap back into their own inner child.

Getting through the day, though, meant enduring scorching temperatures and dust kicking up across the grounds.

The heat didn’t stop EKKSTACY from trying to get things moving early, calling for what appeared to be one of the first mosh pits of the day. “I want this pit to open up,” he told the crowd.

Dayglow kept things sweet and breezy later in the afternoon, leaning heavily on songs from his 2019 debut album, “Fuzzybrain,” and telling the crowd, “This is pretty much our only show this year, so lets make it a fun one.”

But Feist understood perhaps better than anyone that nostalgia was the assignment.

“You guys must have been in this inferno for so long,” she told the crowd before asking whether the heat had made anyone angry or frustrated. She urged fans to locate that anger in their bodies and trace it back to one of their earliest memories of the feeling.

“We’re going to obliterate it through the power of music,” she said. Throughout a set that included “I Feel It All,” “1234” and “My Moon My Man,” Feist repeatedly asked fans to travel backward with her.

“Let’s go back to when you were 6, maybe in high school, first year of college, whatever it is,” she said. “Let’s go there together.”

Later, she painted an even more specific picture: “A Toyota in 2008 is playing this, and all the teenage memories and hopes are leaving with it as it drives the corner past your girlfriend’s house. And maybe you took a little something and you snuck into the graveyard. And now the car is gone. Goodnight! Thank you!”

For the millennial indie kids whose late-2000s and early-2010s years were soundtracked by Feist, it was hard not to know exactly what she meant.

Her music has found a new life, too. Two songs from her 2007 album “The Reminder” were prominently featured in the hit queer sports romance series “Heated Rivalry,” including “My Moon My Man.”

“In case any of you are fans of true love stories,” Feist said before playing it, “this song goes out to Ilya and Shane.”

Then came LCD Soundsystem, which delivered one of the most exhilarating sets of the festival.

The James Murphy-led band famously called it quits with a farewell performance at Madison Square Garden in 2011 before reuniting five years later. A decade into that second life, the band sounded anything but like an act coasting on nostalgia.

Opening with “Tonite,” LCD Soundsystem built its set piece by piece, its live band turning already great dance-punk songs into something even bigger onstage. Murphy was magnetic, but the musicians surrounding him were just as essential, building layers of percussion, synths, guitar and bass until Brookside felt like one enormous dance floor.

“We’re trying to be efficient,” Murphy joked. “Our songs are stupid long, so we’re gonna try and get through it.”

Those “stupid long” songs turned out to be part of the magic. By the time the band moved through favorites including “Someone Great,” “Dance Yrself Clean” and “All My Friends,” it was difficult not to wonder whether LCD Soundsystem might actually be better experienced live.

The Strokes closed the night with their own collection of favorites, including “Hard to Explain,” “Someday,” “Reptilia,” “You Only Live Once” and “The Adults Are Talking.” But between songs, Julian Casablancas seemed just as entertained by his own increasingly loose banter as the audience was. “I know you’re expecting a professional performance and I’m messing it up,” he joked at one point.

Casablancas called the area a “second home” before offering perhaps the cheekiest assessment of the night.

“Yeah, this is kind of a better Coachella, to be honest,” he said. “Yeah, I said it.”

And in case anyone was wondering what kind of evening the singer was having, he eventually provided the answer himself.

“I’m a silly goose tonight.”

For a festival built around music that defined a generation of indie kids, Saturday showed that growing older doesn’t necessarily mean leaving those years behind. Sometimes the songs grow with you, and eventually, you bring the kids along for the ride.