Pitchfork Music Festival, Day Two

July 14th, 2007 -- Still buzzing from last night’s Sonic Youth show, Saturday begins as another lovely, non-humid sunny day. The hardest thing about today’s lineup is choosing what to see. What was alternated between two stages last night, is now between three stages, with overlapping acts. Intrepid music pursuer that I am, I start out thinking I’ll catch a little of everything, but that falls by the wayside when a few acts are too engaging to leave. First up: the cage match between The Twilight Sad and Ken Vandermark’s Powerhouse Sound, is won by the former. Scottish band The Twilight Sad’s debut album, Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters is shimmery and expansive. Singer James Graham’s Scottish drawl an added point of interest. Its soundscapes grow cinematic, a widescreen shot of big instrumentation. Live, it’s even more effective; impassioned, loud and reverberating across the park, before fading back to quieter moments.

  Tim Rutili and his ever-rotating cast that is Califone take the stage. A four-piece horn section peppers songs with majestic flourishes, the folkier forays uplifted into something more extraordinary.

  From there, the five-piece Voxtrot pounces in with youthful, rambunctious energy, pogoing about the stage and about its keyboard melodies. The crowd is enjoying it, but the group seems an odd pairing for Pitchfork.

  Grizzly Bear’s name may sound ferocious, and while songs can reach majestic heights, it’s more graceful than attacking. While the quiet, psychedelic-tinged folk deliveries seemed lost in such a large setting, some songs build into inescapable and gorgeous crescendos, transcending the spatial challenge.

  Battles have no such problem. The four-piece begin with a electronic effects knob-twisting sounds and blips, and add dueling keyboard jaunts,  enticing guitar and drum rhythms, which both pummel and lope at equal turns. It’s an intense set, filled with a nervous energy that’s contagious.

  From prog-rock to kraut-rock influenced, English trio Fujiya & Miyagi mark the first of the, “Get ready to dance your ass off,” alerts. Artful and a whole lot of fun, the trio’s set is completely lost in the far-end of the small stage viewing area. Those right up in front, however, get the full effect of the handclapped rhythms and chant of “Collarbone” and the funkified synth of “In One Ear & Out the Other.”

  In the “Goddamn, you just rocked me” category, Mastodon, the sole metal act booked, is positively fierce. With a relentless bassline and high-velocity drum pummeling, the group incites headbanging and challenges earplugs. Guitars combat one another in a winner take all frenzy, with bandmates strutting about the stage like they are stalking prey. We are all at their mercy.

  Without the aid of its normal DJ, Clipse is definitely missing something. For one, the cartoony thunderclap sample that seems to end every song simply sounds hokey, and the fact that the MCs have to turn to the replacement DJ just to signal the song is done so he could hit the thunderclap button makes it all the more annoying. Still, “Keys Open Doors” and “Mr. Me Too” with bumping old school vibes are noteworthy.

  Running over to catch a bit of what would’ve been the last few songs of Dan Deacon’s set at the the small stage, I discover he is not onstage at all. Instead he is traversing the growing crowd, who are singing in unison, a choir of happy children, while others are getting crushed as the audience swells. The music swells as well, a box that fans are dancing on collapses, and soon thereafter the plug is pulled. No matter, the crowd continued the song, but the show is over.

  So back I go to Cat Power, who seems to have lost the crazy I last witnessed at her recent Chicago appearance. She sounds lovely, but it would’ve been nice to hear some of the Memphis soul legends who backed her last time (and almost saved that show) and played on The Greatest.

  “Get ready to dance your ass off” alert number two. Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, is relegated to the small stage — what a mistake as the majority of concertgoers are deprived of another major highlight from the fest. Gillis turns everything into a party, constantly changing up sets, song samples and stage styles to stay ever fresh each outing. The laptop whiz is dressed in a suit, throwing confetti and is flanked by a giant inflatable Palm Tree and framed by blow-up arches. Gillis intermixes radio hits, from hip-hop to indie rock, and cuts them into something entirely new. Songs by Tears for Fears, Missy Elliott, the Verve, AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Ludacris and Elton John all make appearances, sampled into his inventive “new” song creations. Band members from Grizzly Bear get up on stage and dance with the palm tree, silly string is flying and the beats are bumping. Gillis takes a couple stage dives into the audience. He rules. Enough said.



  Yoko Ono headlines and closes out the second night. As polarizing as she may be, depending on whom you ask, she’s a vision on stage. At the age of 74, she is cool personified. While often misunderstood and certainly an acquired taste when it comes to her vocals, she has influenced a bevy of artists. While her stage banter is often lost in the mix, her “singing” — a combo of piercing shrieks, guttural warbles, coos and howls becomes another instrument added to the avant-garde material. Thurston Moore joins Ono onstage during a song about, says Ono, “picking mulberries while they were bombing Hiroshima, and I thought, this noise is very appropriate.” Thurston plays a chugging melody while Ono sings “Open your eyes and see.” The magic moment and appropirate ending comes by way of a field-wide crowd chant of “War is over if you want it.”

Bookmark:

Comments down for maintenance.