The ominous clouds threatened to make this a very wet Pitchfork Festival but luckily for poncho-less people like myself, the rain stayed light and then abated completely by about 2:30pm. So, I got the best of both worlds – no terrible threat of dehydration and no Radiohead-like washout. I also decided that for the most part, at least on Saturday, I was going to try to catch bands that I hadn’t seen before and didn’t know as much about, eschewing bands like Fleet Foxes, No Age and Vampire Weekend that I’ve seen and reviewed before for acts where I’d only heard good things about them, but had failed to check them out earlier. This proved to be a rewarding way of attacking the various stages and made for a very enjoyable Saturday.
Titus Andronicus
I started this trend of catching bands that I’d never seen and didn’t know as much about with New Jersey’s Titus Andronicus. The first thing these guys did was bust out a cover of Pulp’s “Common People,” knowing full well that highlighted act Jarvis Cocker would not do so in his set later that night. The cover sounded sprawling and drunkenly off key but immediately went into a four guitar thrash. Patrick Stickles clearly took a couple of notes on stage presence from the school of Les Savy Fav as he stuck the mic cord in his mouth, climbed up the side of the stage and waved around a big yellow flag. I knew this was going to be a good day. The music itself filled the raucous discordant garage niche that I think The Ponys were supposed to fill last year and Titus Andronicus added a nice side of anti-establishment to go along. Stickles said that he was so glad to be in such a large place full of people who shared a common interest and are all friends since on Monday we’d all have to go back into the real world, where nobody is our friend. Cheers to that, mate.
Caribou
Why the hell have I not been in love with this material for years? I seem to remember back when Dan Snaith was going by Manitoba, listening to a song or two of theirs and dismissing it as not my style. I am now understanding why this was a grave error in judgment. Caribou were stunning. Despite not playing “Irene,” to the chagrin of some in the audience, Caribou played a set that was both intensely powerful and just wistful enough to keep our rapt attention. The best parts of the set were when Snaith put down the guitar and stuck himself onto a second drumkit, facing the first right in the front of the stage. The only complaint about their set has nothing to do with them. The rain stopped about halfway through and until Snaith commented, “I think the sun is coming out,” those of us in the audience had to deal with a tropical rainforest-like wave of humidity for about ten minutes which was fairly miserable. It was also forgettable due to the beauty that was occurring before me.
Dizzee Rascal
In my prior Pitchfork experience, the Balance stage tends to be the stage that time forgets. So while the Aluminum Stage (the huge one) and the Connector Stage (the pretty large one next to it) run on a tight schedule, the Balance Stage (the far off one that used to be under a tent) can run as much as a full set behind and as such, we had to leave the hyperactive and noisy Fuck Buttons after only three songs before getting into position for Dizzee Rascal. Dizzee Rascal apparently has a top single in the UK and wasn’t about to be treated like anything less. Which is to say, when the sound wasn’t up to his standards, he yelled, “This ain’t no folk shit!” to the sound guy until the knobs were adjusted correctly. He then proceeded to give us a set showing us why he is top of the pops over in England. His beats were great and he had an easy time getting everyone to raise their hands in the air, yell out like they just didn’t care and dance like no one was watching. Because no one was watching…all eyes were on Dizzee and whether or not anyone actually knew the words (which most people did), he made it easy to sing along.
Had I actually stuck with this plan of seeing acts that I hadn’t seen before, I would’ve just stayed at the Connector Stage all day, and one act where I regret not being in the center of the action was !!!. I’ve never quite understood their appeal and I only sort of like the two albums of theirs that I have but the live show blows their studio work out of the water…at least as near as I could gather from the jumbotron. While part of me wonders just how much speed this band is on to be able to move like that…another part of me doesn’t really care because the audience looked like they were having even more fun than the band.
The Hold Steady
Of course, the reason I didn’t go see !!! was to check out The Hold Steady who I’d thoroughly enjoyed on their tour with Art Brut back in November. Since then, they’ve recorded Stay Positive, from which they played a few tracks which work very well into their previous catalog of well told anthems from bars, high schools and the wrong side of the tracks. Craig Finn is a hell of a storyteller on the album, and in person he moves about with such urgency that it’s hard not to be swept up, especially as he ends his songs with this beatific smile. He smiled during the happy songs and during the sad songs and at the end he said that there’s so much joy in what they do…and he thanked us for being a part of it. They also came back for an encore (“Charlemagne” in case you were wondering) and although it was cheesy that he told us that we were all The Hold Steady, it was still a beautiful thing to hear since it was obvious that he really meant it.
When I told PJ immediately from Union Park that I was missing Jarvis Cocker to get myself into position for Animal Collective, that was only half of the truth. I couldn’t have gotten to the Connector Stage if I had wanted to because after The Hold Steady set, I could move forward. And that was it. I couldn’t move sideways and I couldn’t move backward. I was stuck like a sardine in a tin can for a good hour before Animal Collective even started their show. But I was temporarily able to get a good view on the jumbotron of Jarvis Cocker and some of the sweet moves that he could do onstage. He didn’t play any Pulp, but he did do “The Cunts Are Running the World” and he gyrated spasmodically on the stage close to the end in a manner that made me wonder if he was really into the music, or really having a seizure.
Animal Collective
Animal Collective was one of the major contributors (along with Public Enemy) in getting me to make the trip out to Chicago. i was told both that they were utterly fantastic live and that they were terrible live and just a bunch of noise. Actually…they’re neither. Animal Collective’s material is very fluid. They rarely stop the music to either talk to the audience or tune their instruments and for the most part, what we heard from onstage wasn’t exactly what we’ve heard on their albums either because there have been changes in what sample they’ve used, instrumental improvisations or additional lyrics in spaces where there might otherwise be a failed witty joke. So basically, much of their live show relies on the strength of their material and their skill as musicians rather than their stage presence. As such, this was not a set that would change minds and anyone who went into the set feeling ambivalent about Animal Collective probably stayed that way. Still, it was hard not to get caught up in some of the dreamier moments of the set.
For starters, Panda Bear has a phenomenal voice. Yes, anyone who has listened to Person Pitch or even Sung Tongs is probably aware that the man can sing but there’s a significant difference in what he sounds like on studio releases and what happens when Noah Lennox opens his mouth live onstage and this pitch perfect tenor reverberates in midair. Unless he’s turned to the side to play the drums, he tends to stay stationary but I couldn’t help but be moved when the second song that they broke out was his own “Comfy in Nautica.” Everyone in my little area had arms pumping in unison and although I’d seen that song solo…it was still very overwhelming.
Still, it seemed to me that the set was carried by Avey Tare. He’s not the most dynamic of frontmen but when he got into the moment he brought everyone else with him. The most intense pit of people that I got caught in wasn’t for Public Enemy, nor was it for Les Savy Fav or HEALTH. It was during “Peacebone.” The minute that sample started up, Avey Tare started grooving, the crowd went up for grabs and I think I broke parts of my feet in that group of extremely happy jumping people. Also, for the record, he actually can change his voice that quickly from normal singing to earth-shaking shriek to falsetto and back again. I was impressed. Except for moments like “Comfy In Nautica,” whether he meant to or not, Avey Tare commanded the pulse of the audience, determining whether they were relaxing or bouncing. After finishing off with a version of “Fireworks” that lasted about ten minutes, I thought the crowd was going to riot when he said, apologetically, that they really did have to get off the stage thanks to city ordinances and a couple of festival organizers had to come onstage to assuage the frustrated crowd.
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