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Saturday
 Califone :: Pitchfork 2007 |
Entering the grounds on Saturday, we encountered a longer but not intolerable wait than in '06. Logistically, Pitchfork had most of the kinks worked out on paper, so even the first year went very smoothly. This year was very much the same setup. Union Park is situated on top of a public rail stop, so access was super convenient, and even parking was a breeze for anyone driving in. The beer ticket system leads to fast-moving lines, and four bucks for a delicious Goose Island microbrew beats almost any concert venue, not to mention $1 bottles of Water Plus or Fuze as well as the option of bringing in your own water. A wide variety of food stands featured plenty of options for vegetarian and carnivore alike, all from local vendors, and the enclosed marketplace was sure to yield great finds for the patient record collector - if you could tear yourself away from the music for long enough. Fortunately, with the wide variety of acts, there was almost certain to be a time slot when you could miss something.
Day two got rolling with The Twilight Sad, Scottish post-rock at its finest, with intelligible, passionate vocals to boot. Chicago's own Califone was another early highlight of the day. Califone's set started out sloppy and somewhat lethargic but worked its way into a lackadaisical cohesion, building in intensity with each song and really churning by set's end.
 Grizzly Bear :: Pitchfork 2007 |
Grizzly Bear fell victim to some of the weekend's persistent equipment problems, and their performance was very rough and minimal. A few songs suffered ("Knife" was particularly weak) but overall it was like a glimpse through the atmospheric production of their albums and into the raw makeup of the songs, where their passion definitely shone through.
Battles was another very bright spot on the day. They reproduced their studio technicality very well but also allowed for some great improv. It had a stark weirdness that occasionally locked into a tight groove before being dismantled and reconstructed over and over again. Enthralling.
 Battles :: Pitchfork 2007 |
Prog-metal upstarts Mastodon was a little hard to take seriously at times. The group is sonically eclectic enough to appeal to the non-metal crowd, and just vicious enough to give metalheads their only dose of real heaviness for the weekend, but Brent Hinds' troll-like visage induced snickering from time to time. Still, no band seemed more in command of the teeming masses all weekend - metal just works outdoors.
The only set I saw that fell totally flat on Saturday was Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues . There really was no power at all to Chan Marshall's vocals, and one can only hope that the Dirty Delta Blues moniker (cobbled together from the names of other groups the band members play in) is completely ironic. The music was often subtle to the point of near-nonexistence, with only a passing nod to anything resembling actual blues. The songs sometimes held potential but the band wasn't up to the task, and there was none of Marshall's trademark idiosyncratic stage presence. Her bouts with stage fright are well publicized, and this may have accounted for her overall timidity and the occasional apology. But, that's still no excuse for the rest of the band's rudimentary, recycled groove, a gritless thing devoid of emotion. In fact, it was basically the exact opposite of the performance that followed it.
 Voxtrot :: Pitchfork 2007 |
The grounds began to clear out as Yoko Ono's set began with a sort of videography, but again, the sound was a bit too muffled to make out much of what was being said. When she came on and started singing there was no denying her. Ono's voice puts virtually any other 74-year-old singer to shame. She shrieked, cackled and moaned with abandon while her band deftly propelled the songs forward. It took some intense focus to stay together while following the lead of an artist who clearly doesn't have a concrete plan for what and how she's going to sing. While she'd occasionally lose the rhythm during songs that had actual words - such as the blazing industrial makeover of "Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking For Her Hand In The Snow)" - her voice was every bit as forceful as it was 30 years ago. Ono introduced Thurston Moore for a heart-stopping guitar/vocal duet on "Mulberry" - only the third time she'd ever performed it, and the two musicians urged each other into multiple, chaotic climaxes. Moore stuck around for the rest of the set, clearly relishing his chance to collaborate with a true avant-garde original, throttling his guitar with untamed enthusiasm. The audience went all communal for a lengthy "War is over if you want it" chant that may have exhausted Ono. After one encore, a reprised "Kyoko" that hewed much closer to the 1969 original, she declared, "I just can't go on. I'm too hungry," and day two was over.
Continue reading for Sunday...
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