Pharrell? Check. Ed Sheeran? Check. Sam Smith? Check. The pulling power of Apple guarantees that the annual iTunes festival bill is usually stellar and on trend, and 2014 is no exception. Apple's deep coffers, meanwhile, allow for another bill – of nil. Attendance is free to competition winners. This level of corporate confidence could allow for a touch more risk, however. This year, cutting-edge post-dubstep producer Plácido Domingo is in the lineup, alongside that secretive, minimal R&B maven Lenny Kravitz – 2015's coming man, according to the blogs.
Night two of this month-long series does feature two genuine oddballs from what you might call the more discerning section of the pop spectrum – native Californians on either side of 40 who have leveraged their eccentricities into mainstream appeal. Jenny Lewis opens, wearing a white trouser suit with rainbow colours that simultaneously invokes 70s lounge-pop and a kitsch, knowing take on My Little Pony. Her excellent band, five-strong, wear all white and swap instruments like busy angels; later they rock out like imps. Showmanship is key to iTunes, performances at which are streamed online.
Like tonight's headliner, Beck, genre is not a straitjacket for Lewis. Her set takes in 60s vamping, country pop and some deceptively perky, slick songs about despair from her latest album, The Voyager, which has some simpatico with Haim. Lewis's recent single, One of the Guys, comes early, raising a frisson of recognition. It's so breezy it's hard to tell the tune is about childlessness.
Lewis swaps between acoustic and electric guitars and keyboards. When she's untethered she stands on a little box, painted like her suit, occasionally kicking a leg or curling a lip; this may be showbiz but there is more going on with the singer than meets the eye. Her clear and penetrating voice can coo or cut through flannel with a decisive swipe, often on the same song. "What, you think you can change things? You can't change things, we're all stuck in our ways," she snarls sweetly on Rise Up With Fists!!, a song from her first, excellent 2006 solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat. Five other voices join in the celestial sigh of the chorus of Acid Tongue. "I'm a liar," it goes. My Little Pony, it seems, can kick you in the teeth.
One self-confessed liar is soon replaced by a self-confessed loser. The past few years of Beck's career have been so different from his years as a pop star, it's actually a shock to find the singer whipping out all his old moves to all the old hits. Out of contract for a time, and laid low with a serious back condition, the latterday Beck released a melancholic album about heartbreak last February, Morning Phase. You would not have put money on Beck still being able to rap about going "crazy with the Cheez-Whiz" while flinging his jacket around like James Brown. He seemed like the kind of artist whose immersive romantic and physical hardships had replaced the pick'n'mix wizardry of his 90s and 00s output for good.
At 44, though, Beck is still somehow built like a scrawny teenager and moves like a stranger to codeine. He and his loud six-man band start with Devils Haircut and work their way through the singles, with detours through most of Beck's phases: morning, high noon and night. At the end of E-Pro, a gnarly rock-out, the guitarists end up playing dead in a heap on the floor and are dragged off by their heels; Beck turns up with crime-scene tape and seals off the front of the stage.
They quickly return. "What laws do we want to defy?" shouts the hyperactive, veteran Beck bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen. "Tax laws?" It's the cue for Sexx Laws, an excitable funk cut from 1999 that, tonight, also features some high-speed banjo. Perhaps most impressive of all is Beck's inclusion of Wave, the enveloping orchestral centrepiece of Morning Phase. Bookended by all those hyperactive hits, this reverberating meditation doesn't seem a natural choice for an iTunes set, but it adds considerable depth.
Beck's two turntables and a microphone may now be two banks of keyboards and a fedora, but Where It's At, the set closer, has aged remarkably well. It lends itself to the band's virtuoso digressions through snippets of songs such as the Rolling Stones' Miss You. Without looking, Meldal-Johnsen lofts his bass over his head and into the wings. Without fanfare, a roadie's arm catches it, exemplifying how everything about this performance is on point.
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