I’ve been an advocate for years on these pages for a strong Memorial Day weekend lineup at Bend’s Les Schwab Amphitheater, preferably with three concerts in three nights. That’s how it was in 2006 and 2008 and 2012.

It’s big. It’s fun. It’s an event. Three shows in three nights at the Schwab is a strong start to Central Oregon’s summer concert season.

We got zero Memorial Day weekend shows in 2007 and 2009. Two each in 2010 and 2011. And two shows last weekend: Cake and Built to Spill on Saturday night. Sigur Ros on Sunday.

And those two were great.

Would a third concert on Friday have been welcome? Of course. But on my walk to the car after Sigur Ros blitzed my synapses and melted my heart, I realized I felt musically sated, not stuffed.

Less is more, the saying goes.

Now, Cake fans might not agree. If chatter among the crowd — just under 4,000 folks — and comments on the amphitheater’s Facebook page are any indication, Cake fans felt like they got less Cake than they wanted Saturday night.

They have no one to blame but frontman John McCrea. His band was on stage from about 8:20 to 9:40 p.m., including a break before the encore. If they had played music most of that time, it would’ve been a reasonable running time.

But McCrea likes to talk. At length. His sense of humor is not dry; it’s arid. His sarcasm borders on insults. I didn’t time him, but I’d estimate he spent 20 to 30 minutes of Cake’s 80 minutes on stage talking, most of it while giving away a sapling (as is the band’s tradition) and ranting about cameras at shows (“YOU DON’T HAVE TO POST THIS TO YOUTUBE FOR IT TO BE REAL!”)

I loved it, but I think I was in the minority. Probably because Cake fans were the majority and they wanted to hear the band play its songs.

When they did play, Cake sounded great. They are a solid band with mostly solid songs and a few clunkers. The group adorned its acoustic white-dude funk with twangy overtones, brassy hints of Latin influence, and strong, bright four-part harmonies that stood out every time they happened. Cake harmonizes a lot more than I realized, and they’re good at it.

Highlights of the set included Vince DiFiore’s mournful horn on “Frank Sinatra,” the old-timey travelling song “Bound Away,” and “Long Time,” which sounds like They Might Be Funky Giants. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a sunny day,” McCrea sang as the chilly, cloudy skies finally started to drop steady rain (but only for a few minutes).

By the end of the evening, the band was ramping up to its hits: “Never There” closed the main set with a bang, and “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” and “The Distance” came in the encore, which was a good thing; if Cake had played a dozen or so songs and not done those two, there probably would’ve been a riot. A nerdy 30-/40-something riot, but a riot nonetheless.

Bottom line: Cake was good! But, they were also blown off the stage by the opening act, veteran indie-rock act Built to Spill. That’s no surprise; Built to Spill is infinitely better than Cake. Period.

What was surprising is that Built to Spill actually played longer than Cake did.

The Boise, Idaho, band was on stage for 75 minutes, but frontman Doug Martsch hardly says a word in between songs, choosing instead to fill his time with some of the most transcendent pop-rock unassuming-guitar-hero jams of the past two decades. Martsch is a genius, and one whose bushy beard is getting increasingly gray.

Anyway, Built to Spill — with two new members since they played the Domino Room in late 2010 — ran through a greatest-hits set, at least in my mind. We got the best stuff from across the catalog: the kraut-jangle of “Going Against Your Mind,” a sprawling “Kicked It In the Sun,” the rubbery lope of my personal favorite, “Else.” We got three older slices of perfect pop in “Big Dipper,” “Stab” and “Joyride.” We got a solo Martsch version of “Twin Falls” while the drummer ran off to do something. Maybe adjust his trucker hat.

I was also reminded that “Carry the Zero” is truly one of the greatest rock songs ever written. If you’re unfamiliar, drop your cereal spoon and YouTube it now.

It was an awesome set, and I’m so glad it was longer than the usual opener’s slot. Built to Spill wrapped up with a cover of The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?” after which it appeared every soul in the Schwab went to wait in line for kettle corn.

Sunday night was prettier, sunnier and not as rainy, but colder. Cold enough that Sigur Ros frontman Jon Birgisson sheepishly commented halfway through his band’s set: “It’s so cold. It feels like Iceland.”

Welcome to Bend, Oregon, in late May, I guess.

It was still nice earlier in the night when opener Julianna Barwick took the stage. She works alone, recording vocal lines, looping them and then recording more, building songs that sound like a choir of angels.

Her 30 minutes were gorgeous, if slight; I’d guess some folks in the amphitheater — 3,000 before the night was over — didn’t realize live music was happening on stage.

That wasn’t a problem an hour later, when Sigur Ros was a couple songs into its set, increasing in volume, its enormous stage setup crackling to life. A dozen or more light bulbs dotted the stage, interspersed among the 11 musicians. More lights and speakers hung from the Schwab’s structure than I’ve ever seen. (Venue manager Marney Smith confirmed it was the venue’s biggest lighting rig ever.)

Musically, the band was stunning, spreading the set list evenly across its five most recent studio albums and debuting four songs from the new one, “Kveikur,” due out in June.

As always, Sigur Ros was a study in dynamics, stretching songs to five, seven, 10 minutes and beyond, and using that time to grow whispered ambient sounds into a massive wall of noise, including small horn and string sections, various keyboards, kitchen-sink percussion and Birgisson’s bowed guitar and helium-pitched voice.

Picking favorites from this near-endless buffet of beauty is difficult, but I loved the heavenly arpeggios of “Hoppipolla” and the triumphant march of “Olsen Olsen.” And “Svefn-g-Englar” at sunset ranks as one of my all-time favorite Schwab moments.

After dark, I dug how the set shifted from sweet to strident in the second half of “Festival,” and from strident to sinister for a new song called “Brennesteinn” that booms and buzzes like nothing else in the band’s catalog.

And it was hard to keep my jaw off the grass during the closer, “Popplagio,” when a dazzling light show lit the song’s crescendo.

That last song was a feast for the senses, and exactly the kind of finale you want from a band so skilled at layering sights and sounds into something so beautiful. It was a perfect ending to one of the best concerts I’ve seen in Bend, and proof that, in the right hands, more actually is better.