What if we threw a circus and invited all our friends? Once upon a time, putting a circus-like, carnival atmosphere together with a niche music festival seemed a novel idea. Decades after the original Lollapalooza (which certainly wasn't the first to combine sideshows and large amplifiers), the concept is reborn on a local level that seems particularly friendly to grown-up music fans and hip parents, the new dominant paradigm in central Chicago. 

Brilliant Corners Saturday night might have been, in the the pure visuals department, the most wonderful music fest I've set eyes on in Chicago—meaning that it inspired immediate wonder in me. Big, bright throwback carnival rides (last seen at the St. Helen's Carnival), charming big-top circus tents, a mini and manageable Renegade Craft Fair and a nice beer/food alley with its own music stage all figured in to a picturesque scene. What Brilliant Corners could use more of, to be blunt, is people. There was a healthy crowd last night—and the line for the circus tent extended well into the park, but it still felt as if another thousand could have easily been accomodated.

In the music tent, the effect was something like being V.I.P.s at a very exclusive, private gig. I felt positively spoiled to witness Charles Bradley, from the Dap Tone tribe of soul revivalists, take the stage with his six-piece band. Bradley was once a James Brown impersonator, I'm told, and many of his moves are inspired by the requirements of that gig, but his songs and his voice are all his own—except for an upbeat, sly cover of Neil Young's "Heart of Gold." Bradley, in iridescent jump-suit and bedazzled vest of some kind, turned out the best soul set I've seen all summer, probably all year. His voice (vibrant, lively and with plenty of range) and performance emitted its own heat and burned much hotter than his somewhat subdued recorded material. Bradley's band was tighter than a welded seam on a 747. Bradley's face itself, even when he wasn't singing, was somewhere between about to break down and cry, and damn, I just smelled a smell funkier than some 100-year old rancid yak butter at the bottom of a sherpa's backpack. Bradley can sing soul, but his band could also throw out the funk. On "This Love Ain't Big Enough for the Two of Us," he threw himself into a JB-style fit and his band followed. Bradley tossed the microphone, danced, screamed maniaclly and humped the air—which I'm fairly sure he also impregnated. Bradley brought us up and then brought us down with the autobiographical "Why Is It So Hard?" about making it in America. Bradley finished shaking hands, then entering the crowd and hugging a good twenty or thirty audience members individually. That's no schtick people, that's how soul is done.

I took in a good bit of A Hawk and a Hacksaw, the Albuquerque band which plays Romany, Greek and other world music-inspired tunes heavy on the accordian, vilolin and percussion. Part of me was whisked away to the heyday of the Ottoman Empire, so evocative are the band's (to my ears) exotic sounds. Utilizing three stand-up percussionists, the band's rhythms were as hypnotic and complex, if not exactly rollicking in the way that punk-gypsy acts have led the genre in recent years.

Outside the music tent, I popped in to see a bit of El Circo Cheapo—a highwire act and juggler had the crowd well at hand. The Lonesome Organist entertained between acts. And on the Birdhouse Stage, I caught some New Orleans ragtime from Albanie and Her Fellas featuring some Chicago and Austin jazzers doing Hoagie Carmichael.

Back at the Criss/Cross tent, School of Seven Bells conjured the image of a forward fashion magazine come to (sonic) life. The band's singer Alejandra Deheza looks like she's wearing something that will be in style in two years (a sweater with a neck as long as her torso) and is commanding in front of a camera—or in this case, a crowd. The band has lost one of the twin sisters that made it more of a novelty years back and the band's Disconnect from Desire finds it maturing somewhat, losing the gauze. Tonight, while it combined muscular dance-rock, subtle electro rhythms and thick haze of guitar, it was Deheza's assured vocals that gave it a distinct vibe. As soaring and roaring as the band could be at times and as elegant a presence as Deheza and guitarist Benjamin Curtis were, School of Seven Bells never quite felt like the bring-the-house-down headliner that the fest needed. But that's no fault of the band, it was following Charles Bradley after all.