I decided to skip Lollapalooza this year and instead focus all my music festival energy on Pitchfork. It’s cheap, it’s small, and the lineup is great. You can spend five minutes on Google and find many more reviews, but since some of you have asked, here’s a very brief recap of my dusty weekend (I’m still not sure I’ve scrubbed all the dirt off my feet). I saw, at least in part, the following acts:
- Voxtrot
- Grizzly Bear
- Iron & Wine
- Clipse
- Beach House
- Fujiya & Miyaga
- Oxford Collapse
- Dan Deacon
- Girl Talk
- The Sea and Cake
- Stephen Malkmus
- The New Pornographers
- Jamie Lidell
- Of Montreal
- De La Soul
Not bad for $35, although I missed a few bands on Sunday due largely to a CTA clusterfuck (and due partly to being a slowpoke and not getting going as early as I’d planned). In addition to the music and the hipster-wares being sold on festival grounds, Pitchfork also featured a poster convention, which boasted a surprisingly impressive collection of designers and artists (and all your favorite bands).
Biggest surprise for me was actually The New Pornographers—I’ve seen them half a dozen times, and their sound hasn’t changed all that much since the release of Mass Romantic, so I wasn’t expecting anything new (especially since Neko wasn’t with them), but they were probably my favorite act of the weekend. Solid performance, infectious energy, and even their pixieish faux-Neko (whom I’ve seen with them before and like just fine) was fantastic. It was also nice to hear Stephen Malkmus play Pavement, notably (for me, anyways) “Spit on a Stranger,” although most of the reviews concur that he is better when backed by a full band.
My favorite new band from the weekend is Fujiya & Miyaga, a British trio (I know!) whose tight, breathy, pop electronica was just as infectious as the big power-pop acts on the main stage. Jamie Lidell was another surprise, a one-man soul act who wore some sort of sparkly streamers around his head and played seemingly a dozen instruments at once. Biggest disappointment was Girl Talk, although it was hardly his fault—he was on the smallest stage, which lacked last year’s tent, and the crowd swelled to fill even the nearby trees. From where I stood, the sound was mediocre at best, and what I could hear was ruined by everybody around me yelling “Turn it up! Turn it up!” I ran into my friend John and his girlfriend, and the three of us tried moving to a better vantage point, but John was right—there was too much distance between Girl Talk and us to get really excited about it. So I guess I have to hit the next club he plays in Chicago.
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current book: Nature’s Keepers: The Remarkable Story of How the Nature Conservancy Became the Largest Environmental Group in the World by Bill Birchard.
current music: I just saw that the Old 97’s are playing Italian Fest here in a few weeks. Wahooo! It’s been awhile since I’ve seen them. I definitely need me a Rhett Miller & Murray Hammond fix.
current socks: Purple with frogs.
Filed under: chicago, music by admin2
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