There’s a vague subtext of “Us and Them” at most concert festivals: like, you know more than half the folks you brush elbows with at Bonnaroo have never heard of the Hold Steady, and most definitely will not be dancing it up next to you at Hot Chip. Not so at Pitchfork Music Festival, a now three-day affair in Chicago’s Union Park; it’s the indie-rock all-star game, a magical place where the deification of Dan Deacon and Deerhunter means that a dude like Bradford Cox is a bona fide celebrity. This is our first year here, and unlike the last installment’s sweltering cesspool of sweat and humidity, the air is refreshing, sun or shade — which meant the air was right for three of the greatest records in hipster history.
Day One of the ‘Fork Fest was a three-band affair; in conjunction with the now-international All Tomorrow’s Parties people and their Don’t Look Back series, Pitchfork corralled scene legends Slint, the Genius (or GZA to his friends), and the evergreen icons Sonic Youth to perform their masterworks: Spiderland, Liquid Swords, and Daydream Nation, respectively. Cool thing about seeing full albums: No need to stress about taking down the setlist. Even cooler thing? Three sets of bomb tracks and classics, front to back.
A crowd jester got the festival going by yelling “Play something new!” right before Slint pushed into “Breadcrumb Trail,” but that wasn’t what anybody wanted yesterday. Spiderland‘s hushed whispers/post-rock dynamism wasn’t the jolt folks needed to feel the festival flow right off the bat, but hearing the record was a massive thrill: Pajo’s harmonics searing their way through the heavy-crashing sludge, Brian’s “I miss you”s on “Good Morning, Captain” as angry and desperate as they were in ’91. Dude needs closure. GZA‘s set started about five seconds after Slint took their bow (different stages, naturally), and the Genius wasted no time letting Chicago know he was missing a Wu-Tang show in Amsterdam to unsheath his Liquid Swords. “Make me work for my money.” And he did, prowling the stage with a posse five-deep, getting the kids to put their “W”s up, shouting out to ODB on the encore with “Shimmy Shimmy Ya.” The Wu-Tang Clan plan on reminding you that they ain’t nothing to fuck with, bringing a new album this fall (Eight Diagrams).
Last up was probably our most anticipated: Sonic Youth. Daydream Nation. The MC jokily introduced the set as a “middle-aged riot,” and Thurston, Kim, Lee, and Steve blazed their way through everybody’s-favorite-album with the sort of whiplash cool that defined the epochal LP. Voices in check, guitar heroism on high … worship was in order. At some point during the set, out in the crowd, we ran into Britt Daniel — he was amazed by his enjoyment of the youth. (Also, he says “hi” to you guys and told us the proper way to say the new record: GaGaGaGaGa, like a machine gun fire. Britt said he couldn’t believe how big a deal the album name became. We laughed, he didn’t. Don’t think he was kidding.) The Youth closed out their show with a three-song encore of Rather Ripped jams with Pavement’s Mark Ibold (Malkmus is here, too, just wanted to note).
So, Day One in a nutshell: Perfect weather, perfect albums. Of course, not everybody was happy (surprised?). Reader Nix wrote in right after the show with a colorful complaint:
I just left Pitchfork Music Fest’s opening night and I have to let you know – the audio SUCKED. the crowd was screaming “TURN IT UP” and “LOUD-ER!” during both GZA and Sonic Youth. Hopefully before tomorrow and Sundays shows, they do some better sound checking. That was the worst concert I’ve ever heard – it would have sounded better out of my old 20″ tv. The only good part of the day was when 10 bats flew out of some trees in Union Park and started doing acrobats during GZA’s Shadowboxxing over the crowd’s heads.
So soundguy, there’s your constructive criticism for the day. Turn it up, and if you can, unleash more acrobatic bats. We’re running late for the Twilight Sad, so we’re out the door. Have fun with the pics, and more from today’s killer lineup soon.
SLINT
GZA
SONIC YOUTH
BRITT & ICE CREAM MAN
THE WORLD’S MOST UNNECESSARY LABEL
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How is Britt Daniel so cool?
It’s gotta be the fitted shirt.
one simply doesn’t get named britt and end up a douche.
those liquid swords shoes that gza’s rockin are fantastic
There are far too many colons and semicolons in this post.
I’m disappointed that you didn’t take the opportunity to give Pitchfork a 3.2 or something.
the only reason i regret not going is missing out on being that close to britt daniel. heeeey. but yeah we did luck out with weather; it is supposed to get back up to the high 90s next week
i met Britt the other day and i was going to ask him how many fitted shirts he owned but i was worried he would have like punched me in the face because i can only imagine how many times he has heard that before
stereogum needs to quit dissing it’s readerbase. This is the second story with a backhand comment towards us.
As soon as I divorce Anderson Cooper, I’m totally marrying Britt Daniel.
saturday’s sound was terrible, good bands playing but the sound guys just don’t know what clipping is or how to stop it, girl talk was on the shitty small stage cause i guess yoko ono gets the big stage, needless to say anyone who knows anything bout music went to girl talk but too many people and it was too quite to enjoy, so people just left after a good 5 minute chant of turn it up, and repeated threats to the sound dude. so p4k learn something bout music, hire professionals
Still pretty great so far, Chan during her set was apologizing for the sound but really it wasn’t her. While Kim was a bit hard to hear on Friday. Still overall, great fun for small price.
Glad to hear at least somebody made it there on Friday–I followed Pitchfork’s crap directions and ended up on the other end of town and never made it to the show. According to the woman at CTA apparently close to a thousand people made the same mistake. I rode the bus back with a couple dozen of them…none of us too happy.
Today’s performances were great but the sound sucked big time. Fujiya and Miyagi were nearly inaudible up until their last couple of songs. Grizzly Bear’s set almost got butchered as a result of technical difficulties early on. Get your shit together Pitchfork!
I felt so bad for Girl Talk! The sound was sooo bad, and they totally made him end early.
P-fork is really loosing major points on the festival this year, which is sad, because the past two years have been AMAZING.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed for a good sunday.
funny how everyone in sonic youth except lee renaldo still looks like the hip 40 yr olds i remember from the 90′s. What’s up Lee?
The sound at pitchfork is HORRIBLE and has been every year. It is really sad to see such great bands come off as poor live acts because of such crappy sound mixing and low levels. It is pretty sad when you are 30 feet from the stage and you can talk to the person next to you or talk on the phone. On top of that the mixing was so bad it sounded like everything was being filtered through a car muffler. EVERY performer I saw on saturday made some comment on the sound or apologized. The only decent sound of the festival was NOMO and Of Montreal. I would rather spend an extra 40 bucks to have professonal sound than to listen to great bands get butchered. It is still worth the cheap ticket because it is fun to be outside and all that but come on Pitchfork, hire some good sound people.
I heard the sound engineers from friday got fired and they got new people for sat and sun, didn’t really appear to help though.
The first thing I noticed standing in the pit at the connector stage Saturday was ‘holy shit this is louder’ I don’t know if they added all those speakers on the ground or if they just pulled them out from under the stage… they definitely caught wind of the complaints, though i agree the mixing was pretty poor for some bands.
Girl talk’s set was a dissapointment. It wasn’t his fault either, he’s got some nice stage diving abilities. I don’t know how the fire department and police ended up showing up during Dan’s set. The photo pit was fucked up for Sunday too. Really unneccesary.
I actually thought the GZA’s set was kinda disappointing. Part of it was that the crowd was there for Sonic Youth and couldn’t do much more than put up their W’s, but did no one else notice how under his game the Genius was? He didn’t keep up with his own verses. Killah Priest did “Basic Instructions” totally by himself? WTFGZA? Not to mention that the guy on the decks was total shit and made Cappadonna look like a total asshat by skipping the track.
However, I actually thought that Sonic Youth sounded great, but I was in front of that AV tent. You can’t hold the patrons responsible for not being close enough to the stage, but if the sound sucks, all you can do is try to get a good spot. I was pretty close to every band I saw (except for Girl Talk, which totally WAS way too quiet and I did leave after five minutes), so they all sounded fine to me. I wasn’t too far away, but Deerhunter was ungodly loud. My heart could feel every drum kick. Every band there should be as loud as Mastodon, even Cat Power and Iron and Wine.
Speaking of sound, the guy on Aluminum Stage working sound looked a lot like Kyp Malone. Was that Kyp Malone? How many guys look like that?
Pitchfork Media can lick my bits.