Review: Pitchfork Music Festival 2007 (7/13-7/15)

My voyage to the great city of Chicago for this festival was a very, very interesting experience and one that I will almost certainly write about at length at a later date. At this point, I think I will just discuss the bands I saw and try to keep the gonzo bullshit to a minimum.

Friday

Slint – From the chatter I heard around the festival, it seems everybody criminally overlooked Slint’s fantastic performance of Spiderland. “I’d never heard the album before,” “They waited too long between songs,” “It was kind of boring.” What the fuck? If I were to make a list of albums that I’d expect everybody at this festival to like, Spiderland would be close to the top. Whatever, damn you all, this was a landmark performance. I think people are beginning to take this Slint reunion thing for granted; if I’d heard they were performing this album in its entirety when I first fell in love with it 3 or 4 years ago I would have flipped the fuck out. They managed to recreate the album almost impeccably, which is no small achievement. Many of the arrangements on that album are incredibly complex, and it took some serious musicianship and I’m sure tons of rehearsal to get it down. Honestly I was blown away. “Good Morning Captain” was every bit as epic as you would expect. Oh and I think I was standing by Steve Albini. Although it probably wasn’t him.

GZA – I was feeling really shitty and worn out and still kind of recovering from the 12-hour ride on a bus full of ex-convicts on Friday, so I pretty much ditched Liquid Swords to go get some grindage. I’d give my spinach pie about a 6/10 (really, pretty lackluster). I caught the last quarter or so of the album and the stuff they did afterwards — it was cool I guess. It was pretty typical hip-hop show fare, and didn’t really feel like they were performing an album. But, shit, it’s the muthafuckin’ GZA, so I guess there’s that.

Sonic Youth – Fuck yesssss. This was my third time seeing the Youth and certainly the most intense (I think their show at the Uptown on the Sonic Nurse tour was still better overall). Everybody was super super into the show, and with good reason. I knew everybody liked them, but everybody was way more excited than I would have predicted. People were dancing and thrashing around through the majority of the set. They really nailed every single song on the album. They sort of reverse-engineered these songs and figured out what the fuck they were doing 20 years ago, and in many cases fleshed out the songs a bit, with new codas and rockier bits. But no doubt, it was Daydream Nation. Basically the entire show was a highlight, but the best songs were “Silver Rocket,” “‘Cross the Breeze,” “Hey Joni,” and “The Sprawl.” Fuck it, it was all rad. They did an encore of the best jams from Rather Ripped (“Incinerate,” “Reena,” and “Jams Run Free”), and it seemed tame as hell, but it really showed how much the band has changed and it was kind of nice to recover to some nice pop songs.

Watch “‘Cross the Breeze:”

Saturday

Powerhouse Sound - These guys are probably some of the most talented musicians that performed at the festival, but lord knows the kids don’t care about talent. Legendary improvisational jazz musican Ken Vandermark, along with some guy on bass, and John Herndon and Jeff Parker (both from Tortoise) on drums and guitar, respectively. Really wild, jammy stuff, with a heavy dub influence and lots of cool little electronic freak-outs from Parker. I really enjoyed these guys.

Califone - I almost forgot I watched Califone, but thinking back, they really put on quite a performance. Rutili was backed by a bunch of guys on percussion and horns and whatever else, and they played a great set of a lot of their best material, largely from Roots and Crowns. Something about their recordings never quite clicked with me (I think it’s the sort of muddy production on most of it), but live the songs really opened up. “The Orchids” was heavenly.

Voxtrot – I only heard these guys in passing, but it’s worth saying: FUCKING ANNOYING.

William Parker Quartet – Just sort of dropped in for a bit on this one, but I did catch an absolutely incredible bass solo from Parker. Honestly, my mouth was wide open. That guy is completely mindblowing.

Grizzly Bear - I tried watching them, hoping that they wouldn’t be as boring live as it is listening to their album, but alas, it was. Probably even more boring. I just don’t get all the excitement about these guys. Their songs just aren’t anything special. They played “Knife” and I was still about to fall asleep, so I figured it wasn’t going to get much better and went and waited for Battles.

Battles – Okay, I caught Battles at the Record Bar on the Tuesday before the festival, and they played a completely mind blowing set, albeit at a horribly-run venue with the most obnoxious audience I’ve seen in a long time. Here, the environment was infinitely better, but musically, the pieces just didn’t fall into place. Tyondai Braxton first broke a guitar string and struggled for a couple songs to fix it and get settled, and then his entire table of electronics seemed to start malfunctioning, resulting in a pretty lengthy and uncomfortable silence in the middle of the set. All four of them seemed to be struggling to get through the songs. Apparently, though, nobody noticed too much; a lot of people were raving about how incredible they were. If a band still wins fans when they’re completely off, they must be doing something right.

Watch “Atlas:”

Professor Murder – I didn’t want to be bored to tears by Iron & Wine, so I figured I’d check these guys out. Nothing incredibly special, but they played some pretty fun, catchy tunes, with some pretty rockin’ keyboard hooks that reminded me of the Unicorns. The band gave off a playful party vibe, even if it did seem a little phony at times.

Oxford Collapse - I really really like these guys. They seem to sort of get lost in a lot of the trendy bullshit that occupies so much of the music press (especially Pitchfork), but Oxford Collapse makes lighthearted-but-smart indie rock/power pop that would be at home back in the ’90’s. They played a lot of jams from their Sub-Pop debut Remember the Night Parties, a damn fine album. “Please Visit Your National Parks” was a good time.

Watch “Let’s Vanish.” You know, their guitarist reminds me of a happier Isaac Brock.

Dan Deacon – Sort of like Battles, Dan Deacon was way, way better at the Jackpot Saloon in Lawrence a couple weeks ago. Tons of people were at the Balance stage waiting for Girl Talk, so the relatively small space was fucking packed with losers (“Oh my gawd he’s playing on the ground what the hell!!!!”) and it ended up being just sort of a terrible sweaty mess. The festival people cut him off early, I guess because of the fire marshal or something. I could have told you his show wouldn’t work at a big festival before, but I guess now we know for sure.

Watch.

Girl Talk – Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Girl Talk. Greg Gillis isn’t a great musican by any means, but the guy is an undeniably energetic and effective performer, and he really knows how to facilitate a party atmosphere. He had a bunch of people come on stage — a lot of just lame annoying kids shooting silly string and stuff, but also people from bands (the Grizzly Bear guys came out for a “Knife” mash-up, and I saw Bradford Cox from Deerhunter). He didn’t directly perform much from Night Ripper, just sort of, you know, played with a lot of samples and jumped around and took his clothes off. He did one cool bit with Of Montreal’s “Wraith Pinned to the Mist.” The Pitchfork dudes had him on a tight time limit for basically no reason, so he wrapped up after about an hour, unfortunately. Whatev, I think a good time was had by all, even if it wasn’t particularly compelling musically.

Yoko Ono – Hah.

Sunday

Deerhunter – Deerhunter’s set has probably stayed in my unconscious more than any other band I watched. They are definitely one of the best acts that played the festival, and it’s a shame they got stuck with a shitty half-hour time slot at 1 PM. However, they still managed to draw a nice crowd and played a great set that balanced their droning avant-garde compositions with their more straight-forward rock in the same way they do on Cryptograms. Bradford Cox is an incredibly interesting guy — he wore a dress that highlighted his abnormal body and gloves with puppets on the fingers and walked around the stage, almost approaching performance art. “Strange Lights” was rad, although it would have been better without the Grizzly Bear guys — I could not escape those bastards.

Watch “Hazel St.” (Check out their bass player — I think I have a boy crush on him)

Menomena – Saw these guys at the Bottleneck a while back, and they played a hell of a show, but I think they felt even tighter and more energetic at the festival. They definitely sort of blew up their songs to make it work for a fairly massive crowd. They only played songs from Friend and Foe, but those songs are consistently better, so whatever.

Watch “Muscle ‘n’ Flo.”

The Sea and Cake - They were definitely not anywhere near as good as they could have been. Obviously they are all fantastic musicians, but they were having some serious sound issues. The bass was feeding back through all of and between every song, making it just not very much fun to be there watching them. What I heard through the bassy murkiness sounded pretty good; lots of stuff from Everybody, and “Jacking The Ball,” which I was happy to hear.

Jamie Lidell – Seriously, this guy seems like a little prick, but what I saw of his set on the video screen while I waited for Malkmus looked like quite a bit of fun. He had some pretty fun-sounding jams, which were a lot more electronics-heavy and had less soul bullshit than I’d expected from all I’ve heard about the guy. He did look stupid with those damn streamers on his head, and at one point he messed it up somehow and somebody ran on stage to fix his streamers. Whatever brah.

Stephen Malkmus – Probably my pick for best of the festival. It was just Steve and his acoustic guitar for most of the set, and he unapologetically messed up on a lot of the songs, but goddammit he is just so charming and hilarious and if I was going to be completely honest with myself I would have to admit that I want to be him. He is the Brad Pitt of indie rock. For some reason I thought he’d be playing all Jicks/solo material, but he also did some covers and quite a few Pavement songs. Many of which are my favorites. You have no idea the deep, deep joy I felt when he started playing “Heaven is a Truck” or “In The Mouth A Desert” or “Trigger Cut” or “We Dance.” And, while I’m being honest, I had tears in my eyes during “Spit on a Stranger.” Oh yeah, he played a couple of the songs with Bob Nastanovich. Pavement reunion on the horizon? I sure hope so.

Watch his performance of “In The Mouth A Desert.” God it makes me want to cry re-watching it.

Cadence Weapon – I hauled ass over the the Balance stage to try to get a good spot for the Field after Malkmus, but they ended up being way behind schedule. However, I was incredibly impressed by this kid. So impressed that I decided to hang out and watch him instead of going over to the main stage and watching Of Montreal. His rhymes are tight, his delivery is spot-on, and the weirdo IDM beats are really sweet. Maybe it was just the excitement carrying over from Malkmus, but I think this was one of the better performers I saw.

The Field - I’m not completely sure why, but going into the festival, I was probably more excited for this guy than anybody else. Axel Willner (most badass name ever) played a fantastic DJ set of bits and pieces of From Here We Go Sublime and other stuff that probably hasn’t been recorded. It isn’t too exciting to watch a guy playing with a mixer and a laptop, but his intricate sequencing was so fantastic to listen and move to. A few lame bros (So many of these dudes were around. How could such losers possibly like good music?) showed up toward the end and danced like idiots and almost ruined it for me, but overall I think everybody was super into it, even if they were just waiting for Klaxons.

Watch “Over the Ice.”

Klaxons - I’d never heard their music but of course I’d heard a ton about them and the whole new-rave thing, so I figured I’d stick around and have a little dance party before I headed over caught the remainder of De La Soul’s set. When they started playing, people just flipped the fuck out! I mean I’ve been in much rougher crowds (Gwar, and Melt-Banana, for sure), but the cramped space and the heat made this not such a great place to go nuts — it wasn’t fun, it was just very very uncomfortable. After getting kicked in the face and almost having my glasses broken (again) I decided that it wasn’t really my scene. Oh yeah, and the music was lame as hell.

De La Soul – Honestly, I was done at this point. I watched a few songs, just enough so I could say I’ve seen De La Soul. I mean I guess it’s a big deal that they were playing, but I’ve never been into them at all. Their banter with the crowd was very entertaining, probably moreso than their songs. But, like I said, I was done. I just left and went to sleep.

Menomena + All Smiles @ the Bottleneck [6/22/07]

So here’s the thing. When you get into a lot of music through the internet/print sources, you don’t always necessarily learn how to say band names properly, so you’re forced to sort of bullshit your own pronunciations, with sometimes embarrassing results. For a pretty long time I was saying SURF-jan Stevens and Devendra BARN-hart. And I’m fairly certain I still am saying Les Savy Fav and Gastr Del Sol incorrectly. So what I’m saying is, up until last night I thought Menomena was said “minnow-meena,” when apparently it is in fact said “minnah-minnuh.” I like my way better.

Anyhow, pronunciations be damned, Menomena has been one of my favorite bands for a pretty long time now. I Am The Fun Blame Monster should be considered a classic, I think. Their creative and spontaneous songwriting is unparalleled, largely due to their unconventional process of composing their songs by arranging looped samples with a homebrew computer program. But can their songs translate to a live setting? Surprisingly, yes — very well, actually.

All Smiles opened Friday’s show at the Bottleneck. The solo project of Jim Fairchild, guitarist for some now-defunct band from Modesto called Grandaddy, All Smiles plays breezy, sunny jams that have been getting pretty solid rotation in my car stereo this summer. They’ve been touring as a four-piece band, although Menomena’s Justin Harris filled in for their regular bassist, who was out of commission thanks to a violent case of food poisoning. Jim sat on the stage teaching Justin the songs no more than an hour before they went on stage — really, that’s pretty rad that he would step up like that. Impressively, they made it through their set with only a few hardly-noticeable missteps, and generally sounded pretty fantastic. Jim’s voice is absolutely brilliant; he should have been the singer in Grandaddy. They played the bulk of the material from Ten Readings of a Warning, including the amazingly catchy “Moth In A Cloud Of Smoke” — check it out if you haven’t.

Menomena delivered a solid and very impressive set comprised of songs from both of their albums. Somehow, with a little bit of creativity and surely dozens of hours of rehearsal, they have worked their compositions into a very effective show that packs all the punch of their albums. They did a decent amount of instrument swapping and multi-tasking, but they held the chaos together very well, largely thanks to Danny Seim’s mindblowing skill on his drum kit — he beat the hell out of those things for the whole set, even while singing, egg-shaking and whatever else. Justin was rocking this awesome Moog foot pedal synthesizer while playing guitar. There was a certain tension, a feeling that everything could fall to pieces at any moment — the exact reckless energy that makes their records so brilliant.

They played basically all of the songs I wanted to hear them play. Highlights included the awesome “Muscle ‘n’ Flo,” “Wet and Rusting” (during which Brent Knopf’s voice sounded beautiful, like Mercury Rev’s singer but less annoying), the catchy but strangely unsettling “Rotten Hell,” and “Boyscout’n” (the ending was super climactic and rad) from Friend & Foe, and the spazzy “Cough Coughing” (Seim’s drum break bit in the middle kicked my ass) and a strong contender for my favorite song ever, “The Late Great Libido,” from their debut.

Menomena surpassed my expectations and delivered a very cool night of music. I left convinced that they are really a special group of musicians, probably with an exciting and productive future. They’ll still always be “minnow-meena” to me, though.

Check out my photos from the show on Flickr.

Review: Cursive @ the Bottleneck [5/30/07]

Sometimes I do things on weird, unexplainable impulses. Like going to a show with three bands I really do not give a damn about by myself on a Wednesday night. I mean, I guess I can sort of justify it: 1) I wanted to play with my new camera (a Nikon D40, a graduation present from my lovely parents), 2) The Show Is The Rainbow sounded like he could be cool (he wasn’t), 3) I wanted to listen to some music I downloaded, and there’s no better place to do so than on the highway, and 4) a freak storm system materialized over Kansas City that was really bumming me out. So I headed out west.

So okay. The first band that played was Dead Girls Ruin Everything. I think. Yeah, that was it. Too bad about that name. Dead Girls Ruin Everything “is the white-hot super group formed from the molten ashes of Ultimate Fakebook and Podstar” (thanks Lawrence.com!). Yes, they call themselves a super group. Obviously, Ultimate Fakebook and Podstar left an important and permanent mark on the Lawrence scene. That sort of lame rockstar mentality was disturbingly abundant throughout their performance. I wish I would have kept count of the alcohol references and the “you guys are fucking awesome’s,” because it would have been pretty high. Oh yeah, their music. Pretty typical power-pop/emo fare, I guess. I wasn’t really paying attention.

Then, The Show Is The Rainbow. This guy annoyed the hell out of me, and made me wish I had stayed at home and just played Galaga or something. He really, really, really, really wants to be that idiot-savant spazz-pop guy with the totally cuhh-razy! persona and phuckin weird videos, but he fails miserably. I mean, that schtick has been done well (listen to Dan Deacon). His set consisted of him projecting brightly-colored, annoying videos with equally annoying music made in FruityLoops or something in QuickTime on his iBook and dancing around in the audience, singing along to pre-recorded vocals. Fucking rad. I mean, I guess performance art types can get away with stuff like that, but there is no art involved here. And calling it a performance would be a stretch. Most of the kids there seemed to get a kick out of it (“DUDE THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME!”), which is exactly what he wants. He tries so hard to be interesting and arty, but it’s so self-conscious, it’s just embarassing. Literally everything he said was completely phony and scripted. When he was dancing around, he kept saying, “oh man, I just ate some ash!” THERE’S NO SMOKING AT THIS VENUE, DUDE. Do your homework. I feel so bad for the kids who live in Lincoln and undoubtedly have to put up with this loser at every show they go to.

Cursive. You know, they’re a pretty alright band. Not really anything I’m ever compelled to listen to, but they play some solid, uh, post-emo or whatever the kids call it. I have some respect for that Kasher fellow. They are definitely the only tolerable band to emerge from the scourge to humanity known as Saddle Creek, and probably from the city of Omaha (I sure can’t think of any other decent bands from there). They played a pretty solid, if predictable set. And if it was predictable to me, far from a fan, then it must have been painfully obvious for followers. But, it sounded pretty good! They played as a six-piece, enabling them to include all the touches of synth and horns/flutes which are sort of essential to a lot of their songs. Kasher’s voice, definitely the best aspect of Cursive, sounded fantastic all night. The mix was pretty impeccable overall, actually. They played every song I know by them (that is, “Big Bang,” “Art Is Hard,” “A Gentleman Caller” and “The Recluse”), and some, uh, other stuff. They didn’t play for very long, but that’s generally a good thing.

Overall, hey, there are worse things I could have been doing. Although playing Galaga probably would have been more rewarding. But really, when isn’t Galaga more rewarding?

Look at my pictures on Flickr.

Review: Animal Collective @ the Granada [5/20/07]

I am fucking wrecked from last night. I got maybe a couple hours of sleep before having to wake up and go to my pointless second-to-the-last day of high school, and the majority of my body is in excruciating pain, both from the physical exertion of the show and the dumb and rather random decision to work out yesterday morning (Seriously, who works out?). It has taken me all day to work up the ambition to write this.

Any discomfort I’m feeling now, is absolutely worth seeing — nay, experiencing — some of my favorite musicians playing absolutely beautiful music. I am not one to make grand, bombastic statements, but it is very tempting to equate the evening to a religious experience, or at least the closest to one I’ve ever had.

Okay, confession. My friends and I painted our faces before this. Normally I would scoff at such lame fanboyism, almost as much as I do at sharpie-on-Hanes homemade t-shirts at Decemberists shows or whatever, but I think Animal Collective is the one band for which such theatrics are not only acceptable, but almost necessary.

The arrangements for the shows on this tour are not really what you would expect from the collective. Really, besides a few drums and cymbals, there were no instruments on the stage. Essentially, the performance consisted of Geologist, Panda Bear and Avey Tare (Deakin is sitting this one out) playing with their samplers. I’m sure there was more than a little head-scratching going on, but it sounded fantastic and is necessary to perform the new material.

Yes, new songs. Lots of them. Setlist:

Doggy
Hey Light
Who Could Win A Rabbit?
(a very long string of new material + some unreleased Panda Bear stuff)
Loch Raven
We Tigers
Leaf House

They’re playing this exact set at every date this tour, an idea which sounds cheap at first but makes a lot of sense after a while; they’ve assembled this show the same way they would assemble an album, in the sequence which makes the most sense. And the selections of old material make me very happy. One song from Campfire Songs, one from Here Comes The Indian, three from Sung Tongs, and one from Feels? I love it. I personally know several people who went expecting them to regurgitate a bunch of Feels songs, and I almost feel bad for them. Well, not really.

But yeah, this new stuff fucking rules. Very swelly and very electronic. They’re continuing in the cuddly, lovey lyrics they’ve have always been moving towards, which is by no means a bad thing. I wish these songs had some working titles, but, well, highlights were: the first new song they played, with this very very pretty line about how this girl has “flowers in her hair,” this unbelievable song with this looped pan-flute bit, this one with this really cool super-slow synth swell, this utterly transcendant song with a chant of something like “I want to walk around with you,” and all the Panda stuff was rad. I can’t wait to hear this stuff recorded, which won’t be anytime soon. (The recently announced Strawberry Jam will have slightly older jams which they will probably pull back out later this year).

Honestly, though, a lot of the set is a blur of intense emotion and sheer ecstatic energy. Towards the front, we were having a good time through basically the entire show with body gyrations/tribal dancing/clapping/chanting. Lots of touching, lots of sweat; very free love. I danced with more enthusiasm and less self-consciousness than ever in my life. Basically, it was everything I hoped it would be. I did, however, inspect my body for ringworm this morning.

Oh yeah, no encore. I knew they weren’t doing them because, well, I’m really cool and look up setlists on internet message boards. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a show when people wanted one more badly than last night, though. I almost tricked myself into thinking we’d be the special audience that gets so excited that they HAVE to play more! But no. After a couple minutes I picked up a pretty cool shirt and a Pullhair Rubeye LP (so I can’t listen to it reversed even if I want to!) and headed out feeling thorougly intoxicated and pretty fucking great about life in general. Until, uh, I woke up this morning.