Pitchfork Music Festival 2012

Words by Brandon Goei; Photos by Patrick Putze
Originally published at fnewsmagazine.com on July 17-19, 2012

Day One: Rain or Shine

Pitchfork Music Festival’s first day was rife with drama. The intermittent torrential downpours, laced with stifling humidity normally reserved for an August afternoon and capped off by the lingering consciousness of Friday the 13th — there were plenty of opportunities for attitudes to grow sour. Still, the festival kicked off and never seemed to sag, even with the crowded masses dashing for cover under the trees and the green grassy fields slowly turning a swampy brown.

For me, the day started with two showers: one at home in the bathroom and one on the way to the train. After locating a set of dry clothes and finally setting off, I arrived a bit late to the last half of Lower Dens’ set, finding a pulsing rhythm and a squall of noodling guitars. A bit shaken by the rain delay, the crowd didn’t seem entirely in sync with the group’s brand of hypnotic bass/drum motorik. Later that evening, Jana Hunter and company played an aftershow at the Empty Bottle where the crowd reception was much better — every drum hit throbbed, every bassline wobbled and everyone in the crowd was dancing.

Over on the Green Stage, the Olivia Tremor Control was giving the crowd their daily dose of indie rock nostalgia. OTC, known as one of the original acts to emerge from the fabled Elephant 6 collective, brought an army of strange sounds and overlapping melodies, all coming from a barrage of multi-instrumentalists. Their set marked the first of many where a fog of weed smoke seemed to stay put a few inches over the heads of the audience. It made sense: the band’s jammy experimental sound often felt like a Haight Street hangout shaken loose from the threads of time.

At about this time, the rainclouds started to creep back into view, though the festival crowd seemed not to care. As the first few drops fell, Tim Hecker took the stage in the back alcove that the Blue Stage called home. Soon, A$AP Rocky followed suit, only in the sweeping open-air arena of the Red Stage. As the light faded temporarily and the frequency of raindrops quickened, both acts sounded like opposite ends of the same apocalypse, whirling along with the weather of the end of days — Hecker with his calm, often disturbingly deconstructed ambient swells and A$AP with his unabashedly hedonistic hip hop. Like many of the acts to come, standing inbetween these stages made for an interesting combination of bass rumbles and stray flourishes.

When Japandroids took the Blue Stage, the rain was still falling but the wind was dying, which meant that the level of oppression set on the crowd by humidity increased exponentially. On top of stewing in our own juices, it seemed as though the sound check would never end — just the excruciating taunt of squawks and cranks from Brian King’s guitar. Finally, when the music did start, the crowd was treated to an unbelievable level of distorted joy coming from the stage speakers. Japandroids, it seems, has mastered the keen combination of Springsteen and Swervedriver, where not only does every tunnel lead out of New Jersey, but the speed limit is 100 mph and your engine emits the sound of an overdriven Fender.

At their worst, the Dirty Projectors pierced eardrums with their incessant harmonies, each of which were part of the fractured fever dreams of one David Longstreth, whose unmistakable crooning shrieked across the festival’s largest stretch of open space without any discretion whatsoever.

At their best, the band’s set at the Red Stage seemed to cull the sun from its place high in the sky to the horizon with every angelic harmony that flooded every crevice of the field ahead of them. That said, it took the Projectors’ strange pop sensibilities to transition the crowd from the thrill of the rough-around-the-edges acts of the daytime to the scene-setting sets that would come from the evening’s headliners, Projectors included.

I’ll risk a bit of honesty here and say that before the announcement of the festival line up, I hadn’t heard of Purity Ring. Soon, though, I learned much about the Canadian duo — about their upcoming album out on 4AD, about their fast track on the internet hype machine, about their twisted but effective electronic sensibilities. Their live set closing out the festival’s first night didn’t fall short in the realms of eye and ear candy with Megan James prowling about onstage and Corin Roddick pounding about on sound-producing teardrop lanterns. Both members moved around on stage generating unnaturally warped sounds that kept the audience guessing, much to their delight.

This was all in contrast to the show that Feist was putting on at the Green Stage, which was definitely more classical and pop-driven. The simultaneous final sets had an interesting effect on the crowd, which split into two distinct factions and gave the impression of two separate events going on. The crowd at the Green Stage was comprised of an older crowd, many of which were entranced by Feist’s trembling, bare-it-all ballads, while those wedged into the Blue Stage’s alcove were much younger and much more stoned, excited by the notion of Purity Ring’s mystical clusterfuck of post-dubstep, post-witchhouse, post-whatever bass-and-voice-modulator extravaganza. By choosing a stage, it seemed you were unavoidably choosing a side — or, if you were as intrigued with it all as I was, you were skirted the edges of both crowds observing the old guard and the young guns each boosting themselves into the indescribable planes of joy that can only be summoned by a good live set of music.

Day Two: The Swelling Sky

As the crowd filtered into the festival grounds for Pitchfork Music Festival’s second day, two opening acts sent rumbles across the still-sodden earth from opposite ends of Union Park. It seemed inevitable that the crowd would turn to that keenly Chicagoan staple of conversation: the weather. Yes, the sun was shining again and it seemed to power the psychotic guitar-driven assault coming from the Psychic Paramount on the Green Stage and the Atlas Moth on the Blue Stage.

It was hard to choose between the two acts, which each had their own brand of distorted rock fantasies. The Psychic Paramount offered up their own sound — a harsh amalgamation of feedback and pounding drums, harnessed in a whirlwind of meth-and-mescaline fury. It was the sound of turbo junkies watching white paint lines streak by at unfathomable speeds.

The Atlas Moth, however, had a much slower tempo and a crushingly heavy timbre. For this native Chicago group, the blasts of sound came in tandem with throbbing forehead veins and cathartic howls. It was given a strange but welcome twist by the mid-set addition of gray-maned saxphonist and a stout female trumpeter, whose horns were sent into nosediving spirals by phase and delay effects.

At 1:45 Cloud Nothings took the Red Stage and offered their signature brand of pop punk, instantly transporting the slightly older members of the crowd to the Vans Warped Tour 2003. In the press tent, which was adjacent to the stage, the shift in sound was immediately apparent. “When’s NOFX coming on?” asked F Newsmagazine’s photographer Patrick Putze jokingly.

Soon the Blue Stage was occupied by Lotus Plaza, who launched into their own dreamy compositions, layered with shimmer and gleam and bolstered by a solid backbeat. LP frontman Lockett Pundt kept his trademark cool behind dark sunglasses throughout the set, relying more on the maelstrom coming from his guitar to illustrate his mood.

Pundt’s childhood friend and fellow Deerhunter bandmate Bradford Cox took the Green Stage as Atlas Sound, just as rain clouds crawled in from the south skies once again. Cox effortlessly assumed the role of irreverent prankster as he appeared onstage wearing white face paint and a straw hat. It looked as if he was attempting to make a statement by casting himself as the “straw man” of the Pitchfork scene, though the joke never seemed to click with the crowd as they shivered, wet and ragged. Even as he offered bizarre alternatives to his planned setlist — calling out obscure genres and offering (some would say threatening) to play them for hours on end — Cox’s coy sense of irony and self-awareness didn’t trigger any recognition from the crowd, which was glad to cheer at any statement he made.

The hypnotic loops that Cox created with effects pedals and a single guitar didn’t disappoint, however, as muddied feet continued to dance about in dazed glee. Each song built itself up one riff at a time until the fabricated storm of chorus and delay mirrored the actual one, splashing around back and forth hitting the whole crowd all at once.

Still, Cox never dialed down his role as the merry trickster when he appeared at the media tent for a post-set interview. He was seen poking holes into the lids of VitaminWater bottles before mounting them to his crotch and squirting a lucky/unlucky photographer. How’s that for product placement?

Cults flooded the main field with rays from a million Spector-esque sunbursts, and once again, the skies followed suit. As a group with a strong vintage sound, their timing could not have been more spot on, cutting through the heavier undertones of Brooklyn-based metal outfit Liturgy playing on the Blue Stage and the mind-melting acoustic clusterfuck of Atlas Sound with the bubbly pop of a proper summer. The dedication and energy level behind vocalist Madeleine Follin’s performance as she danced about on stage and belted out line after line of bouncy teeny-bopper gospel.

As a music producer whose alchemical wizardry of samples is enough to render one totally confused and utterly powerless to his beat, Flying Lotus did unsurprisingly well at the blockless block party that is Pitchfork Music Festival. What did surprise were FlyLo’s bold choices for samples — fellow PMF 2012 performer Clams Casino’s “I’m God,” the Jay-Z/Kanye West anthem “Niggaz in Paris” and Beastie Boys staple “Intergalactic” among others — which sent the crowd into a certifiable frenzy.

The ladies of Wild Flag opened up their set with a cover of Television’s “See No Evil” — a bold move for any band, which was elevated by the fact that Wild Flag is not just any band. The group, comprised of Sleater-Kinney vets Janet Weiss and Carrie Brownstein, ex-Helium guitarist/vocalist Mary Timony and former drummer for The Minders Rebecca Cole (most of whom have multiple other projects to their name), is a veritable slice of the female indie rock hall of fame. “See No Evil” was a particularly potent choice for a cover song as Brownstein’s vocal yelp closely mirrored that of Television’s Tom Verlaine, which set the stage for a thorough punk’n’roll shakedown as evidenced soon by Timony’s playing her licks behind her head.

Loud. It’s the word on the tip of the tongue of anyone who’s ever been in the crowd at a Sleigh Bells show. The problem, however, is that aside from the obvious male-libido-driven statement that follows (“Alexis Krauss is so hot.”) there doesn’t seem to be any other common praise. At times, the group does seem to be nothing more than a gimmicky entity — Bradford Cox was seen shaking his head in the media tent as they began their set, saying, “They make me feel like I’m in a stupid movie,” — though it’s hard to argue that it isn’t a satisfying gimmick in small doses. There’s a reason Sleigh Bells songs almost never hit the four-minute mark.

Stomping around with a jagged Jackson guitar and flexing thick arms through a camouflage shirt, guitarist Derek Miller blended seamlessly into the background, which was comprised of 12 stacked Marshall speaker cabs, flashing runway lights and the endless plumes of a fog machine. If anything else, Sleigh Bells represented something to the dumb jock brother you grew up hating, but whose charisma and power you could never deny.

The simultaneous sets of Chromatics and Hot Chip offered a great view of two sides of the same coin. Chromatics presented a stolid, standoffish electronic pulse while Hot Chip gave a cathartic and personal performance. Where the former embodied a cool midnight drive through a sea of neon streetlights, latter offered a sunlit jog through a bustling city park in springtime.

The final decision of Saturday evening came in the form of two wildly different acts. On the Green Stage were fabled post-rock legends Godspeed You! Black Emperor, whose lurching drones filled the air while Grimes was starting her set a few minutes behind schedule on the Blue Stage. Grimes, as my colleague Chris Kareska points out, has been continually heralded as the archetypal “post-internet” poster girl, mashing together every shred of input she’s received while growing up in an age of incessant overstimulation. The end results are dense nuggets of influences, presented mercilessly maximally.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor, however, held the flame for distinctively pre-internet acts, so-to-speak. The group, whose mysterious sonic tableaux are regarded as canon for any present-day artists concerned with instrumental texture, seem to exist off the modern grid — apart from the bustle of press photos and interviews, separate from shameless online self-promotion, disconnected from any such outside musical influence. Their set was the labor of an artist collective in real-time and required meditative reverence from crowd to truly be rewarding.

Those who didn’t have the same patience to endure back-to-back 20-minute sessions of the same note headed the the Blue Stage, where Grimes was featuring the instant gratification of K-pop beats, 1990s-era backup dancing and spastic on-stage gyration. The level of ecstasy was high enough that even the crowd by the boundary fence, which housed a slouching skid row of strung-out teenagers throughout the afternoon, was now standing shoulder-to-shoulder and tip-toed, hoping to catch a ride on the dopamine surge coming from Grimes’ radiant stage show.

Whatever the view was for you, the evening ended on a strong note. As we all stumbled to our homes, either dazed by monolithic psalms or dumbfounded by trans-cultural fusions, there was a buzz in the air that amounted to more than just simple tinnitus.

Day Three: Party Time

The third day of any festival is the endurance round for all in attendance. At this point, we’d all been beaten around by the weather, the barometer-breaking porta-potties and, not least of all, each other in the thralls of some of the greatest live music around. This was the day that all the UV radiation we’d expected finally appeared, and it showed in the form of ice cream cones and “big ass lemonades” as they were advertised by the food stalls, but it also gave us a chance to relax and enjoy the summer in a town that squeezes the life out of the earth every winter. Festivals Sundays can sometimes be a test for even the most diehard music fans, but due in no small part to the caliber of the acts and the “great vibes” as Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig continually noted, it always felt like we had the answers.

When Iceage took the stage, it was impossible not to notice just how young the band’s members were. The Danish punks are barely out of their teens — their first U.S. tour was only last summer on account of their members needing to finish high school — and they came onstage bearing the smooth-skinned, doe-eyed innocence of youth. Of course, as soon as they started playing, any trace of naiveté was torn to shreds. Frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt bellowed into the microphone, regurgitating guttural syllables with the conviction of a veteran showman. The set went on for less than ten minutes before something broke, which, in the world of hardcore punk, is a good sign.

At the Blue Stage, which seemed to always have more weed per capita in the crowd than anywhere else in Union Park, Thee Oh Sees brought fodder for sunny psychedelic freakouts that translated beautifully in the rapidly increasing temperature of the early afternoon. The group exuded a lucid energy from the very start of their set as guitarists Jon Dwyer and Petey Dammit cinched their instruments high — almost comically high — and whipped their heads around like pinwheel fireworks on a sugar bender.

Few artists today can achieve the same audience-wide stranglehold that Ty Segall had at the Red Stage. Segall’s forte has always been turning heads towards the turntable — where it seems impossible for any sound system, regardless of volume or fidelity, to be emitting such crushing tones. The band was there on Sunday with signature crunch in full force, only sped up dramatically by the adrenaline of a large crowd. Segall’s smiling snarl was evident throughout the full 45 minute set, especially when he abandoned the microphone to dive face first into the crowd.

The weekend’s quickest set went like this: a table crammed with electronics appears onstage, Daniel Lopatin sits down, spliffs and joints start lighting up. Transitions like this are the kind that perfectly highlight the strange nature of festivals — seguing from Kendrick Lamar’s high octane, call-and-response hip hop into the stupefying and meditative electronic auras of Oneohtrix Point Never was enough to send the stoned and zoned Blue Stage crowd into shock. After easing into the first few tracks, the feeling that we were all test subjects in a white room didn’t fade. With each of Lopatin’s signature clipped samples on indefinite repeat, it was easy to forget about the heat/humidity and enjoy trying to nod along to OPN’s irregular beats.

Londoner Archy Marshall gave a solid performance on Sunday as King Krule, bolstered by the incoming breeze and the breezy jazz-reggae basslines spouted from the stage. Of all the international acts at the festival, it no one twanged their accents quite as much as Marshall, who bared his English heart on his sleeve with a trademark belted baritone. The band behind him were as unequivocally smooth as the voice they accompanied, bringing humble class and a sense of soul to the weekend.

As the sun dipped lower towards the horizon, Beach House struck up a twinkling preview of the evening stars that would soon appear. The thick throb of the band’s keyboards sped up the process, battling a day washed out by the July heat with the warm tone of vintage Kodachrome — the romantic sound that put them on the map. Backed by plumes of fog (much like Sleigh Bells’ set the previous day, but with drastically different results) Alex Scally laid down smoldering guitar lines while Victoria Legrand added reverb-soaked vocals ranging from crystal clear highs to diaphragm-rumbling contralto tones. Pangs of nostalgia couldn’t help but be felt from the crowd, whose last remaining bits of innocence seemed to bubble up in the form of euphoric smiles and endearingly goofy dance moves.

For the first time in the whole weekend, the last few acts were staggered slightly to allow the migrating crowds to have their cake and eat it too. The Field were the last to have the Blue Stage and they held onto their spot well into the night. Those who had heard Axel Willner’s work on records exclusively might have expected the work of a single man, pushing buttons on a laptop, but Willner pleasantly surprised the crowd by adding a drummer and a bassist to the mix, abandoning the subtleties of his ambient techno for a thorough romp through pure rock’n’roll insanity.

Soon after, verified superstars Vampire Weekend were all set to close out the festival. With the horizon glowing a pale blue, the stage lights flashed on and all of a sudden Union Park turned into a bona fide stadium courtesy of VW’s vibrant guitar pop sound. Frontman Ezra Koenig was delighted to be playing the festival, which the band first played in 2008 just a few short months after releasing their self-titled debut. I hadn’t seen the band live previous to that night, and in truth, I’ve never been too much of a fan, but I imagine that much of what they’d learned in those elapsed years was on display that night on that stage. There were two things undeniably apparent about the band that night: a) they could put together and perform a damn good pop song, and b) bassist Chris Baio can really move.

In retrospect, the last few sets brought the crowd together in a way that mimicked the best house party you might have ever been to. Whether you decided to spend your evening spazzing out in the living room to Vampire Weekend, sweating through your t-shirt in the basement with the Field, or stargazing on the front lawn while listening to Beach House, there was a place for everyone. It was a weekend filled with incredible feats of creative innovation, with a final night that satisfied a swooning hoard of music fans.