Crowds 'Raise it Up' at 5th annual Firefly Music Festival

The Woodlands of Dover International Speedway in Delaware - 295 acres - simply screams for a musical festival, especially considering the current entertainment cultural thinking that every wide outdoor space with grass and campers should hold a messy, multicultural gathering with bands, DJs, and food trucks.

Starting with July 2012's party, Firefly Music Festival became a quick contender on the circuit, gathering the likes of John Legend, Foo Fighters, Beck, and - in one day - Paul McCartney and Morrissey. So, for Firefly's fifth iteration, Thursday through Sunday, there needed to be more stages, acts, and options, all best navigated by swift golf cart or sturdy, unironic hiking boots.

Firefly 2016 embraced those who've been around Philadelphia recently (1975, Deadmau5); those who've been around town too often to bother (Death Cab for Cutie, who would play the opening of an envelope); and big acts such as Mumford & Sons, Tame Impala, Elle Goulding, and Jack Antonoff. The latter actually had his own festival to curate over the weekend in Seaside Heights, N.J. (Double dipper.)

Choosing Saturday as review day meant maximum fest impact: no work, school, or Father's Day to contend with, and young crowds in full-bore freakadeak mode. That meant witnessing wide-eyed kids shuddering after imbibing too much Ecstasy; nearly naked boys and girls hoisting oversize signs with crying Kim Kardashians; a man dressed as Cookie Monster (what, only one?); countless Bernie Sanders shirts; and overall amazement and confusion about being in the First State. "I've never been to Delaware," yelled experimental rapper Pell during his namesake band's jazzy, hippieish set.

Allowing the squelchy, post-bop hip-hop Pell to play for an hour was just part of how brave Firefly's programming was. So, too, was giving several showcases to the likes of polymorphing art-pop duo Chairlift (one live set early, a DJ set late in the evening) and Australian indie-rawkers Atlas Genius (who played near sundown and again toward the campground's close).

The mood-swinging Moon Taxi did one show of lolling African high-life-inspired pop at 6 p.m. and another at 9. Philadelphia's stark and soulful bluesman Son Little did two sets on different stages with even less time between and squeezed in a new tune, "All Wet."

The second stage hit, the pentagonal Coffee House, was a fun, intimate spot where one of the day's best sets - that of sweet-n-sour, gruff-and-graceful boy-girl duo Silversun Pickups - was held. You could nearly reach up and touch the mostly acoustic duo as they poked fun at each other while plying their contagiously rustic yet urbane trade.

On the bigger stages, Fetty Wap may have kept his sun-kissed crowd waiting for more than 30 minutes (his rousing "Trap Queen" made up for lateness) but his DJ shouted out LGBT rainbow flag-waving attendees and his "Puerto Rican homeboys" in relation to the Orlando tragedy. A$AP Rocky cut a dashing figure with a loud, proud, funky showcase that included a towering "Shabba."

For their first performance in two years, the souped-up, cheesy, synth-heavy M83 and its high-pitched front man Anthony Gonzalez pretended they were scoring '70s cop shows such as The Rockford Files when they weren't aping Giorgio Moroder's gorgeous arpeggios and repetitive bell tones. With the night's cool wind blowing her reddish mane from side-to-side, a powerfully emotive Florence Welch - resplendent in flowing robes and bare feet - led Florence + the Machine, harpist and all, through grand, yet elegantly nuanced, versions of equally windswept rockers "How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful" and "Sweet Nothing."

When it came to soulful, gospel-house cuts such as "Raise It Up," Firefly's crowd was at its mightiest and most vocally harmonic as it helped turned a campground into hallowed, churchy ground.