Portola Festival 2025 Day 1 Recap: Christina Aguilera, LCD Soundsystem, and the Chemical Brothers Light Up the Bay

Day one of Portola Festival 2025 opened like a love letter to San Francisco in motion. Fog rolled over the pier as Bob Moses, Despacio, Christina Aguilera, LCD Soundsystem, and the Chemical Brothers each carved their own pulse into the city’s skyline. More than a music festival, Portola felt like proof that electronic music here is still alive, restless, and always reinventing itself.

Zack Fox at the Ship Tent

By the time I hit the grounds on Saturday afternoon, the Ship Tent was already pulsing under a haze of LED color and half-spilled beer. Zack Fox was on deck, the comedian, rapper, and self-made chaos agent who once stole scenes on Abbott Elementary and spun internet absurdity into a micro-genre of its own. I last caught him at Outside Lands 2023 (yes, that happened) and again this spring when he DJed at SF MoMA’s Art Bash, a booking that made more sense on paper than in motion. Unfortunately, the same could be said for this set.

Fox’s energy is undeniable, but the mix still feels like it is figuring itself out. The pacing is uneven and the mood shifts before the crowd ever has a chance to lock in. It is hyper, impulsive, and more self-indulgent than self-aware, a DJ set that plays to his own imagination rather than the room. You can tell when a DJ is vibing with the audience and when they are vibing at them, and this leaned toward the latter. There were flashes of something interesting, a chaotic beat here, a weird groove there, but it never coalesced into anything with real weight.

It is not that Fox lacks talent; it is that the sound has not quite found its skeleton yet. It feels like watching someone still sanding down the edges of their idea, fun in theory but a little grating in practice. If he keeps experimenting and trims the noise to find the core of his rhythm, there is a version of this set that could really land next year. For now, it is more of a sketch than a statement, intriguing, messy, and not quite ready for the main stage.

Bob Moses at the Pier Stage

My first real main stage focus of the day was Bob Moses. It was my first time seeing them live, and right away I understood why people love them. Their sound has this balance that is hard to get right. It is emotional but not corny, polished but still feels alive. When you have male falsetto pop vocals, it can easily tip into either the boy-band pop world or the soft acoustic lane, but Bob Moses does something different. They take that kind of voice and lay it over danceable, groove-heavy electronic music that feels both intimate and big.

They opened with “Love Brand New” and “Back Down,” and later hit “Tearing Me Up” and “Inner Light,” all songs that pull you into a steady rhythm without ever overwhelming you. Each track rolled smoothly into the next, keeping the crowd swaying even in full daylight. It is the kind of set that feels like California in sound form. You could play it driving up the coast or in a late-night club and it would still make sense.

Both Tom Howie and Jimmy Vallance looked relaxed and stylish, the kind of band you instantly trust to deliver something cool without trying too hard. There is a confidence in their musicianship that grounds the electronics, and the fact that they perform with a full band gives everything more depth. The melodies are catchy, the beats are clean, and it all feels effortless.

Bob Moses is one of those acts that bridges the gap between live instrumentation and electronic production. It is not quite chillwave, not quite house, and not trying to be pop either. It is just Bob Moses, smooth, coastal, and quietly hypnotic. I would absolutely see them again.

Despacio at Portola
Eventually I made my way into Despacio, and it felt like stepping into another dimension of the festival. The noise of the pier dropped away the second I walked in. Seven towering speaker stacks surrounded the floor in a perfect circle, each one glowing softly and breathing out the warmest, most physical sound I have ever felt. It wasn’t blasting in your face. It moved through you, through the floor, through the air.

The room was dark but golden, filled with people moving in slow rhythm, completely lost in the groove. Nobody had their phones out. Nobody was trying to get the perfect video. It was just people dancing together, strangers making eye contact and smiling because they were all hearing the same thing at the same frequency.

James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and the 2ManyDJs brothers built this setup as a passion project, and it shows. Everything about it is human. The sound was all vinyl, mixed live from their personal collections. One minute it was deep disco, then Balearic soul, then something you could not name but felt like sunshine underwater. Each transition stretched and melted into the next until you stopped noticing where one song ended and the next began.

Despacio reminded me what it feels like to listen without thinking. It was warm, communal, and almost spiritual. It wasn’t about a drop or a headline, but more about connection. For a few hours it felt like the heart of the entire festival was inside that circle of sound.

Christina Aguilera at the Pier Stage

As a millennial, I am not sure there is a more glorious experience than seeing Mz. Christina Aguilera live outdoors at sundown. That was the scene at Portola Festival, and I am still processing it. Before she appeared, our newish mayor Daniel Lurie walked on stage to introduce her, which was random and unnecessary, but once she took the mic, none of that mattered.

Christina came out with a full band, a full set of backup singers, and a team of dancers who matched her energy move for move. It was a complete spectacle that felt more like a Vegas residency than a festival slot. She opened with “Dirrty,” surrounded by pyrotechnics, and the pier erupted. What followed was a seamless run of hits: “Fighter,” “Can’t Hold Us Down,” “Genie in a Bottle,” “What a Girl Wants,” “Ain’t No Other Man,” “Express,” and “Lady Marmalade.” Each song sounded massive, familiar, and alive.

Her look was everything her fans could have hoped for. She wore leather chaps, rhinestones, metal harnesses, and waist-length platinum extensions. It was classic Christina, unapologetic and theatrical, the same spirit that made her a pop icon in the first place. Midway through, she reworked “Genie in a Bottle” with a Latin rhythm that gave it a warm reggaeton glow. “What a Girl Wants” landed with pure sweetness, and when she performed “Can’t Hold Us Down” alone, she turned it into a quiet statement of endurance.

She stopped several times to take it all in, telling the crowd how proud she was that her fans had stayed with her for more than twenty years. “I am so proud of us all,” she said, smiling through the lights. It felt intimate, like a reunion.

By the end, people were crying, dancing, and holding each other like they had just seen an old friend walk back into their lives. That is the power of Christina Aguilera. She reminds you who you were, who you are now, and how much music can hold all of it.

LCD Soundsystem at the Pier Stage

After years of near misses I finally caught LCD Soundsystem, and it felt like being dropped inside a beautifully wired machine. The stage looked like a maker lab in motion, all synths, drum machines, odd little boxes with knobs, and stations to drift between. James Murphy carried that stoic, wry presence I always associate with early David Byrne, while the band moved with the calm precision of people who know exactly how to build tension and when to let it snap.

The set hit the sweet spot between analog grit and dance floor clarity. They ran through “Tribulations,” “Movement,” “Tonite,” “I Can Change,” “North American Scum,” “x-ray eyes,” and “new body rhumba,” with a mid-set stretch that felt like a long exhale before the next lift. Each song arrived like a gear locking into place, the bass lines patient and un-showy, the percussion dry and physical, the synths warm rather than glossy. It was heady without being precious and it kept the pier moving as one.

Part of the magic of the weekend was remembering that Murphy helped bring Despacio to Portola, that vinyl-driven, all-analog temple to fidelity built with 2ManyDJs. You could feel that same devotion to sound in this set, less flash and more feel, the kind of show that sends you out vibrating rather than shouting.

The Chemical Brothers in the Warehouse

The Chemical Brothers closed out the Warehouse, which is basically an airplane hangar built for cargo. It is long, narrow, and cavernous, with lighting trusses on every rafter and a bar that runs like a runway along the back. You can be shoulder to shoulder near the booth or stretched out in the middle with friends on blankets. It is a perfect shelter from the wind, and a perfect canvas for lasers.

I only stayed about twenty minutes, long enough to get absorbed. The rig turned the room into a living video game, light snapping across the ceiling like a spine. The music felt like a conversation between the classic Chemical Brothers DNA and something rowdier. You could hear the melodic, keyboard driven threads and the broad, orchestral lift, but the pulse leaned party. Jungle flashes, trance lift, fast and bright. The old architecture was still there, only dressed for a late night.

They sounded great in that space. Big but not muddy. Precise but not stiff. It felt like a smart choice to tuck them indoors. In this room the visuals matched the muscle of the sound, and the whole thing landed like a reminder that rave culture still knows how to build a world.

Getting home from Portola is a bus to a train to a bus and then a walk, which is very San Francisco. My transfer downtown drops me near the same Powell Street stop I used when I went to FIDM. The sidewalks on that block have tiny metal flecks pressed into the concrete. Under streetlights they glitter. I used to step onto that shimmer on my way to class. Tonight I stepped onto it after a real assignment, still buzzing from Christina at sundown, Bob Moses in daylight, LCD building a pulse, Despacio holding a circle, and the Chemical Brothers turning a warehouse into a beam of light.

It felt like coming full circle without leaving town. Same stop. Same sparkle. A different version of me. That is the gift of this city. I do not need to escape it to feel alive. I can take the 38, change trains, catch the shuttle, and end up on a pier where the bass moves through the ground and strangers dance like old friends. Then I can step back onto glittering sidewalks and know I am exactly where I am supposed to be.