Notes from summer: The Pitchfork Music Festival
Music Review
Noam Faingold, Variety Editor
photo: Vince Fusco / Collegian
Every year music festivals strive for the perfect bill. The Pitchfork Music Festival is different, going for the complete experience. While festivals like Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza may get acts such as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Radiohead or brilliant comedian Patton Oswalt, tickets this year ran at $167 and $169 for each one, respectively.
Pitchfork, put on by Pitchfork Media, an on-line music criticism journal, does not try to compete with such high profile shows. Instead, they peddle in diverse sets filled with a combination of indie acts, veterans, hip-hop and even experimental, jazz and traditional acts.
In deep contrast to the high profil festivals, tickets for the Chicago-based concert go for $30 for two days of old and new music, which includes artists who also make stops at the other major festivals.
The Pitchfork Festival is a treasure chest for anyone who knows their rock history. Founders of the Brazilian Tropicalia style, Os Mutantes continued their reunion tour at the festival after a nearly three decade-long hiatus. The bill also included Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, noise punk pioneers Mission of Burma and the slighly more contemporary noise/indie groups Yo La Tengo, and Stephen Malkmus’ (of Pavement) original band, the Silver Jews.
Pitchfork did a good job of getting solid acts, but most of them were the types of bands that excel at making albums, not keeping live interest.
The festival really stood out in its providing safety and a sense of community between the environmentally and health-conscientious music lovers.
Festival vendors sold only Fuze fruit drinks, water and locally brewed Goose Island beer. Beverages and food were cheap and water and paramedics were plentiful. No one was hurt the entire weekend.
The festival featured two major stages, one for local Chicago and less well-known artists and also a vinyl and crafts tent, where owners of small record labels and their representatives gathered with local merchants to sell posters, clothing and records, many of which represented artists from the festival.
Surprisingly, some of the most popular bands were actually the least interesting. Bands like Spoon, The Futureheads and Destroyer were clean, but boring live. Spoon’s set was wrought with technical difficulties and the Futureheads, with their stunted garage yelps, came off like The Clash, minus the content. Destroyer would have fit better playing a high school prom.
The bands that had the most energy in the festival were Mission of Burma, the Mountain Goats and Art Brut, all of whom played on Saturday.
Art Brut, a raw, little-known British band that opened its set with the crashing opening of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” immediately following it with fuzzy bluesy power chords, mixing Chuck Berry and the Sex Pistols with the party lyrics of Franz Ferdinand.
“Ready, Art Brut?” lead singer Eddie Argos asked before every song.
They would then follow with high driven rock ‘n’ roll with songs about losing virginity and not going to work.
The Mountain Goats singer/songwriter John Darnielle strummed his acoustic guitar furiously while tersely spitting descriptions of his feelings. Darnielle, however, was too self-deprecating.
“I had a quiet song next. I thought to myself, ‘what the f**k are you thinking, dumbass?’ ” Darnielle said.
Instead of apologizing for not having a drummer he should have spent more of his time enjoying his attentive crowd’s undivided attention and the fact that he was the only acoustic act, giving his set a memorable quality absent from many of the other bands there.
Mission of Burma has spent thirty years getting ready to teach indie bands how to rock. A gritty jam band, they balanced power chords and guitar solos, rocking but eventually coasting, still keeping their intensity. They growled and exploited the power of guitar noise better than set mates Yo La Tengo, who would sometimes play one riff for ten minutes, and then go into a Steely Dan style lite-rock lounge tune.
Diversity in one’s set is important, but Yo La Tengo just couldn’t keep interest like Mission of Burma did.
Sunday, Devendra Banhart was the attention piece. Using a whiskey bottle as a slide device on his guitar, he gave a brief glimpse into his madness. Banhart looked like the lovechild of Rasputin and a hippie, Breaking into the indie scene with a voice like a blues singer on muscle relaxers. Armed with a band that looked like they stepped out of the 70s, they leaked a wall of shimmering guitars and jazz/latin beats.
To close out the festival, Os Mutantes played the kind of set one would expect from the Greatful Dead if Jerry Garcia were still alive. Os Mutantes, the best rock musicians Brazil has to offer, played like they had never broken up.
Mutantes dissolved in 1978 when guitarist Sergio Dias checked himself into an asylum. In 2006 Os Mutantes reunited, and their appearance at the Pitchfork festival was one of their first reunion shows.
Mutantes’ style is that of a jam band of virtuosos playing Tropicalia, a style of psychedelic rock with roots in art. Dias’ guitar solos screamed like he was playing a crying baby. His guitar complemented singer Zelia Duncan, who switched between Portuguese and English on their groovy samba and progressive rock tunes, eventually doing a duet with Devendra Banhart.
In the end, Os Mutantes made everyone else look like untalented musicians. Perhaps what many of the bands have in common at Pitchfork is that they are mostly self-taught, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s not like rappers Mr. Lif and Aesop Rock could have taken classical hip-hop lessons. In the end, the vibe and the value were great. But the lesson is that sometimes the best acts are the ones that feel like they have something to prove.
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