Forkified: Pitchfork Recap

All photos by Keegan Hamilton and Nick Lucchesi.

This weekend, Pitchfork put on its annual manifestation of the indie-rock zeitgeist for three long days on Chicago’s near west side. Between 41 artists on three stages and a whole lot of mud, blood and beer, we managed to catch some of it. Our 473-mile drive prevented us from seeing most of Friday night’s opening festivities, but allowed us time to see Public Enemy play It’ll Take a Nation of a Million to Hold Us Back. At least, that’s what Flava Flav kept calling it. Of course, the record is called It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, but perhaps Flav felt this historic performance was a good time for some titular revisionism.

All jokes aside though, Public Enemy was every bit as legendary as we hoped they would be, their set not only including the album, but classics such as “911 Is a Joke,” “Welcome to the Terrordome,” and “Fight the Power.” There really is nothing like watching a 90 percent white audience chant along to choruses that are so 100 percent black. Hip-hop live is usually like watching an onstage frat party, but this was a true show, by true showmen, complete with militant dancers, a turntable solo from Terminator X, and the greatest hype-man in the game—Flava Flav—who to this day is still a perfectly odd catalyst for Chuck D’s—the Joe Strummer of hip-hop—message of black empowerment and social justice.

Saturday was the beginning of the festival for most of those attending, and a rainy beginning it was, with the heavens opening upon Union Park for the first few hours of the show. Apparently God up above didn’t give a shit about seeing Jay Reatard either. The entire festival ground was soaked, and there were no chairs or tables anywhere to be found. What was the crowd like? If you’re reading this blog, then just look in the mirror, tousle your hair and multiply by 10,000. This was a gathering for a roll-out-of-bed culture, and everywhere you looked you saw every incarnation of the mussed—the authentically offbeat kind and the off-the-rack at Target kind. Some of them took the time to shower, but most of them took more time to choose a color scheme for no other reason than that it was the least agreeable palette of colors the human eye could combine.

Fleet Foxes played a sonically pleasing set that was folky and tribal, with pleasantly bearded vocal harmonies that immediately brought to mind CSNY and rhythms akin to Paul Simon’s Graceland. We popped over to Fuck Buttons for a bit at a smaller side stage and found ourselves thinking they sounded a lot like No Age if No Age were all electronic. All the buzzy pulsing swells and static soon morphed into zoo-house jungle cries and tribal beats. It was a perfect complement to the mild temps and Goose Island beers—Chicaco’s locally brewed beer served in biodegradable cups printed with soy ink. (Yes, recycle bins and organic/vegan food were aplenty in this hipster paradise.)

Soon it was time for one of the more anticipated sets of the festival—Vampire Weekend. We didn’t catch them at SXSW, so we were waiting to see how their jaunty reggae-inflected pop would hit us. Nothin’ to exactly love, but nothin’ to hate in this pleasantly inoffensive endeavor, we thought. So, at first we didn’t get it, and at last we didn’t want to get it. Folks, this band surely may be a simple case of the emperor’s new clothes. Has anyone else noticed that they kinda sound like Sublime? Seriously, just because indie rock has an AC/DC in The Hold Steady doesn’t mean that it needs a Jimmy Buffet in Vampire Weekend. Moreover, the drummer was wearing a Phish T-shirt. This alone should be enough to relegate this band, as Bill Hicks would put it, “off the artistic roll-call.” Automatic disqualification!

The Hold Steady kicked off their set and it was Our Band Could Be Your Life all over again, and by that we mean it was like we were old enough in the early ’80s to experience the college-rock explosion first hand. We just can’t listen to this band live without thinking of Husker Du. Craig Finn even sounds like Bob Mould with his beery bellowy voice, and their scrappy muscular garage rock treads the same ground. On record, I hear a little more Springsteen, but live, it’s all HD all the time. Anyone notice that most of the band is also from Minneapolis? That said, it was a terrific set and the crowd was all beer-guzzling fist-pumping devotees. But seriously, this band sounds like Husker Du.

Next up was Jarvis Cocker, who emerged as the one true rock star of the weekend, channeling David Bowie with the best moves this side of Morrissey, in a set that featured both solo cuts and Pulp material, with a band that took us straight to Sheffield.

While Cocker’s performance was the most rock ’n’ roll, it was not the most notable. That honor belonged to Animal Collective, who brought on a career-defining performance in front of 17,000 people, most likely the largest crowd they’ve ever played for. Pitchfork wields an obscene amount of influence over the tides of independent music, and Animal Collective’s coronation as a festival headliner is proof of that. As A.C. become a bigger draw, their shows have became more and more like raves, with tons of smoke and digitally cued lighting pillars that accentuate the more sweeping elements of their music. In typical A.C. fashion, the set leaned heavily on newer material, and by newer we mean unreleased.

Sunday was the third and final day of the festival, and with the sun shining it was clear from the get-go that the day was going to be much more comfortable and relaxed. The first noteworthy thing that we were able to catch was Les Savy fav—a band who has always had to be seen to be truly understood. The Fav brought out all the stops with singer Tim Harrington (who in the previous days had given haircuts and massages to festival goers) covering himself in mud, taking off his clothes and crowd-surfing in a trash can, all to the backdrop of angular guitar interplay and frenzied drumming. The crowd ate it up. They then closed their set with a note-perfect cover of Superchunk’s “Precision Auto.”

Sunday also brought us the other notable hip-hop show of the festival, Ghostface and Raekwon, who reminded us all that cash still rules everything around them and the Wu-Tang still ain’t nothin’ to fuck with. When they came on, the entire crowd put their hands up forming big W’s. We panicked and thought Weezer might have been making a surprise appearance. Luckily, such was not the case. It should also be noted that both the Public Enemy set and the Ghostface/Raekwon set gave us a good idea for a drinking came to play at hip-hop shows—every time you here the phrases “make some noise” or “put your hands up in the air,” you drink. Cream readers are welcome to make suggestions as to other phrases to include.

Sunday evening’s main stage closing line-up was an epic trifecta of auditory bliss, with a 1-2-3 punch of Spiritualized, Dinosaur Jr. and Spoon. The Spiritualized set was simply gorgeous, and while this band is pretty sedentary onstage, their performance was powerful, with epic peaks and valleys, effects soaked guitars, five different voices and a hypnotically tight rhythm section.

Dinosaur Jr. were the act that was most nostalgic to the older guard of underground music fans in attendance. And they were also one of the best, delivering a solid set of classics like “Sludgefest,” “The Lung,” and even “Feel The Pain.” J. Mascis is still the premier Guitar Hero of indie rock. Perhaps Pitchfork can finagle their own edition of the game—maybe even an Animal Collective edition of Rock Band.

Spoon then put a close to the festivities with a set that could only make one find hope in the tenacity of a band that has persisted for 14 years, much of that time spent in obscurity, to emerge as headliner. The performance was graceful, fluid, uplifting and remarkably confident, featuring many of the band’s finer cuts.

In between all these sets, we managed to spend time perusing the overwhelming music-geek wet dream called the CHIRP (Chicago Independent Radio Project) Record Fair, with tons of indies hawking their catalogs. (The festival also included throngs of vendors offering handmade goods, and even an entire section devoted to the Flatstock 17 poster convention.) This in and of itself could be seen as impetus enough to attend the festival, as it would have taken three days alone to dig through all that vinyl. By the looks of all the square plastic bags we saw concert goers carrying around in 90 degree heat, it was. All in all, the festival was a good snapshot of the current state of independent music, although we’re too hungover right now to really know what that is.

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