This is finally it, the end of the festival that I wait all year to go to. Day three didn’t have nearly as many acts that I was excited about performing, which made it the perfect opportunity to check out the record tent and the Flatstock poster fair. I purchased the official pitchfork poster, by Chicago’s own print artist Jay Ryan. I purchased the new Dirty Projectors album from the Permanent Records booth (they are a record store near my brothers apartment.
The weather for Day 3 was much better, not too hot but the sun did give me a pretty rad sunburn that I was able to showoff for days. It eventually turned into a beautiful farmers tan, which I am still sporting to this day. Anyway, these are the acts I took in on day 3, reviewed in the same, direct to the point, sans bullshit style that I reviewed day 2:
Times New Viking: Rock. Good, I remember liking them at the time, but I don’t remember them now.
Dirty Projectors: Crazy harmonies, edgy singing, complex songs and guitar parts. Very cerebral. Loved it, my favorite from the weekend. I stood in awe watching them much the same way I stood in awe 2 years ago watching Liars perform.
Boris: Pure metal, loud aggressive and fun. Too bad they had to cut their set short because, apparently, they could not get the power that they required. “Not enough electric power” they said after the drummer jumped into the crowd, crowd-surfed and then they left the stage after about 30 minutes.
HEALTH: Good electronic set. Way better than Fuck Buttons, that’s for sure.
The Apples in Stereo: Great, poppy, retro-tastic set. I really like their songs and their live performance was tight.
King Khan and His Shrines: Zappa + Sun Ra + James Brown = awesome. We were in time to hear the end of his set, which included an army of people on stage, horns, keys, guitars, drums, backup singers etc. and King Khan performed a gospel song about cunnilingus. He was very detailed.
Les Savy Fav: The most out of control set of the entire weekend. The lead singer walked through the audience, climbed atop everything on stage, had a camera with him so that we could see his point of view. Their set was great, entertaining and energetic. Said lead singer was seen running around the park all day, and the day before was giving out $2 haircuts to anyone that happened to pass by.
M. Ward: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzz……..
Spiritualized: Tight set. Great guitar work, though I felt that the singer wasn’t really making an effort to connect with the audience. The rhythm section and backing singers were fantastic though.
Dinosaur Jr.: I find Dinosaur Jr. really kind of droll. What I did like was the fact that J. Mascis was surrounded by Marshall stacks while he played, and hearing that song that I knew was great, the one with the dudes playing golf around NYC, riding their golf carts all around the city, yeah that one.
I was standing by the other stage Jockying for position for the Spoon set.Spoon: I’m glad that I get to see these guys again. The last time I saw them was at the 2006 Pitchfork Festival, which followed the release of their album “Gimme Fiction” which I am not a big fan of. I thought it was funny that back then the only song of theirs that I knew was “Small Stakes” and now I know all their stuff. They opened their set this year with the song “Small Stakes” and I laughed to myself. Their set was really good and they played a lot of my favorite songs and I was really looking forward to them, the lame thing was the audience.
The audience up front during the Spoon set just stood their, seemingly dazed for their entire set. It was infuriating to me. I was jumping up and down, singing along and really getting into it, but after a time I felt awkward and self-conscious and I stopped and just stood and watched like the rest of them. Attention: concert goers….it’s loud, it’s outside, it’s a rock concert, get animated, move around! Get into the music! Don’t just stand there!
All in all it was a great festival, as usual. I always have a good time at the Pitchfork Music Festival. As before I have included some videos below from that day. I didn’t take too many, my camera has been giving me problems, the battery won’t last long enough to take tons of video anymore.
