It isn’t strange to hear loud music bouncing off buildings when one is walking around on the streets of Nashville. I know I wouldn’t have paid any attention to the sound coming from a large P.A. as I strolled down West End on Friday, April 18 had I not been searching for Vanderbilt’s Alumni Lawn where the University’s annual Rites of Spring music festival was being held. As it turns out, my smug Nashvillian nonchalance would have caused me to miss a great show.

On the festival’s first of two nights, the crowd braved relentless rain to see their favorite acts, determined not to let the weather ruin their good time. Up-and-coming country rockers Lady Antebellum were willing to do their part to reward the audience’s perseverance. They gave us an offering of polished songs and a tight performance that one would expect from a Nashville-based act, and the crowd’s enthusiastic response to the band’s single “Love Don’t Live Here” was perhaps an indicator of the band’s likely rise to country stardom.

Later that evening, Colbie Caillat took the stage to enthusiastic applause. While the Myspace queen certainly sang beautifully, she seemed a bit insecure when talking to the audience, and her discomfort became apparent when she made the embarrassing statement that she was “freaking out” about getting to play her brand-new guitar for the first time that night. Overall, her performance was a bit long winded, as her band frequently took unnecessarily long instrumental breaks to enthusiastically strum bar chords and play uninteresting guitar solos. Still, the couple standing in front of me seemed to be enjoying themselves, as they used the lightweight jam sessions as an opportunity to embark on a journey to find each other’s tonsils.

The energy one hopes for at a music festival returned in force, however, as indie-rock all stars Spoon took the stage as the evening’s headlining act. Blending 60’s-esque pop and rock with tasteful helpings of punk-inflected noise, the band gave the audience a set of danceable, yet dignified songs, most of which coming from 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. The band’s excellent musicianship shone especially with numbers like the Motown-inflected “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” and the brilliantly minimalist “The Ghost of You Lingers.” Everyone left satisfied at the end of the headliner’s set, undoubtedly still humming “The Underdog” as they made their way to their cars and/or dorm rooms.

Better weather on Saturday night brought out a much larger crowd to the Alumni Lawn. After a set of bluesy rock from Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, neo-bluegrass group Old Crow Medicine Show took the stage and quickly became one of the festival’s biggest crowd-pleasers. The group’s comfortable stage banter immediately endeared them to the audience, and energetic performances of songs like “Wagon Wheel” brought everyone together in a down-home sing-along.

Next up was everybody’s favorite indie crooner—the lovely Miss Leslie Feist. Unlike Colbie Caillat, Feist decisively took control of the stage and left the “freaking out” to the audience as she wielded her hollowbody guitar with authority. Glockenspiels were a-tinkling and Stratocasters were a-jangling as the singer performed songs like “Mushaboom” and “I Feel it All” in her heart-melting idiom. The hipster queen put on an excellent show, and everyone enthusiastically sang along to “1 2 3 4” with visions of iPod Nanos dancing in their heads.

Saturday’s headliner, introduced by the announcer as “the pioneer of Crunk,” strutted onto the stage triumphantly the sound of thumping bass. Yes, Lil Jon and his crew took the stage with the genre-defining “Get Crunk,” a command which at this point was all but useless, as the majority of the crowd already had. Based on Lil Jon’s performance, I gathered that Crunk-style hip-hop mainly involves incessantly repeating simple lines over an infectious club beat. While there is little room for profundity in a subgenre defined by such constraints, the music served its purpose, I guess, as it gave the less-than-lucid audience a beat to dance to. Still, I, as one of the audience’s few “un-crunk” members, was not left out entirely, as Lil Jon provided me with an opportunity for nostalgia when he led the audience in a rousing chorus of “Knuck if you Buck.”

Overall, I found the Rites of Spring to be an enjoyable celebration of such a glorious season. With such a solid lineup, it would have been hard for the event to be anything less than awesome. While I recognize the (unnecessary) tension between Vanderbilt and Belmont students, I have to say that our friends across town put on a great show.