In the Belly of The Beast: Thoughts and Impressions from the 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival (Part 1)

Animal Collective / Photo by Francis Chung

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So should we really all be okay with this? A highly influential website dedicated to ultra-specific music criticism throwing its own back-patting three-day festival that books the same bands they push in a not-so-subtle instance of agenda pushing? I mean, the scenario is crawling with potential corruption. Well maybe corruption is too strong of a word, but you know what I’m getting at.

The Pitchfork Music Festival has increased in size, substance and resonance every year since its inception, and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Considering that a sizable portion of the American alt-crowd get their precious music tips primarily – sometimes exclusively – from Pitchfork’s dominium, a festival like this is like a snake eating its own tail.

But it’s silly to think so hard about those things – the Festival is an elementally strong production; stages are handled deftly, depots are constantly stocked, and the line-up is always indisputably strong. It’s an easy thing to feel good about once you spent a few hours within its gates, which is good – complexities can get tiring pretty quickly.

Day One of Pitchfork Fest has been guinea pig to a variety of ideas: there were those full-album performances that never managed to catch on in the way publicists expected them to, and that flash-pan “write the night” segment which ambitiously let the fans compose a setlist which, like its namesake unwittingly implied, lasted only one night in 2009 – ostensibly after it became clear that the set the fans wanted The Flaming Lips to play was what they were going to play anyway. So now Friday exists as a truncated version of the rest of the festival: no gimmicks, no dual headliners, just a handful of music – and that handful begins with EMA.

Erika M. Anderson’s jagged, brazen debut record Past Life Martyred Saints seems to ratchet up album-of-the-year talks every week. It’s in my personal top-tier and everyone from Pitchfork managing editor Mark Richardson to journeyman rap-critic Tom Breihan has evangelized on its behalf. It’s a fairly safe place to holler from, the woman’s music is so swollen with raw, true, soul-scraping emotion that it becomes pretty clear why so many writers have been converted to her desperate charms.

On stage, Anderson is not that same burdened, bloodthirsty woman. She’s been through those ordeals and has landed on a bill with a popular record and a happenstance fanbase – naturally she seems pretty happy about that. She jokes, she smiles, and she cheerfully babbles in between songs, all full of nervous cursing and apropos thank-yous. It’s an image of a woman in a rock band, not an icon of struggle. She introduces the buzzed-about ‘California’ like The Who gearing up to close a stadium with ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again.’ The EMA project seems to be past the tribulations that birthed its music but when Anderson is in the belly of these songs, like the gnashing ‘Butterfly Knife’ or the quiet implosion of ‘The Grey Ship,’ her whole presence is lapsed back in time. It’s those moments where she still looks like the angst-riddled, broken-hearted, South Dakotan-transplant whose arms and legs are a little too long for the rest of her body. EMA is unafraid to go back to that place; I suppose that makes sense given how bare-faced she’s been with us thus far.

Right after EMA another woman, with a similarly rising profile and persona gears up to play across the park. I speak of course of Merrill Garbus’ tUnE-yArDs. Her notoriety has skyrocketed so quickly since the deservedly-awesome w h o k I l l dropped that I’m immediately turned around from the Blue Stage when I realize the best I can do is see a small, body-painted dot partially blocked by a tree in the foreground. Bummer. At least from what I hear the woman is still on point, and I think we can all agree that whatever cult she has, she’s earned it. So I turn to a pretty good plan B.

Battles are not unlike tUnE-yArDs on an aesthetic level. Both play mind-boggling, precisely-calculated inversions on pop music – but Merrill is always centered on her voice, while Battles, erm, lost their freaking frontman in the hiatus following Mirrored. However, almost impossibly, they remain a prominent act as a trio, without Tyondai Braxton’s iconic, squelched vocals. It’s pretty substantial that they managed to put out a second record, much less tour without his contribution – but after watching the three remaining members melt away everyone’s skin with an absolutely bone-chillingly precise take on ‘Atlas,’ it’s pretty clear that there never ought to be concern. While there’s not a man with a microphone on stage anymore, it doesn’t matter. It never mattered and we didn’t need it. What we need, as it turns out, is Ian Williams, standing between two inwards-slanting keyboards, hands on each of them, pounding out synth-melodies like he’s on some bizarre, futuristic, music-making treadmill. We need John Stainer rev up what might as well be a jet engine with the sole, indomitable power of his drum-kit. So what if this song has a vocal-track on the record? Just project Kazu Makino’s pretty face on a few screens and let the band’s fucking scintillating instrumental prowess take care of the rest. As it turns out, Battles never needed Braxton, just like Braxton never needed Battles.

There aren’t a lot of crossover fans between Curren$y and tUnE-yArDs (I really hope I don’t have to type that again), because posting through the massive exit at the blue stage after her set finishes is pretty easy. Curren$y’s slack-jawed, sleepy-headed flow never rubbed me with the same euphoric, psych-slathered glow that he seems to give lots of other people, but I’m eager to see what the rumpus is about. I still don’t think I get it in the same way others do, but I will say that in an age of full-body inkjobs, blatant, perspective-blind, does-he-actually-think-that-makes-him-look-cool braggadocio, and party/barcardi rhymes, Curren$y puts the goofy charms back into shit-talk better than anyone in hip-hop today – and this is coming from someone who considers himself a Rick Ross fan.

His quicksilver cadence glosses over warm,soulful beats in two-minute intervals, usually cutting out in the back-third and letting his flow run a capella – it’s one of the oldest tricks in the book but Curren$y lavishes in those moments with pure contagious joy. The haters he harps on seem like mere foils to the punchline, his sole purpose is to smoke, flirt, and have a good time – he’s a rapper who has everyone’s best interest at heart, and that makes the Curren$y brand decidedly retro. He’s on his way, he’s got his own hand-symbol and everything, I just wish his flow would click with me on a deeper level.

Das Racist follows and continues to skirt an odd little line between smirking irony and bounce-laden, fan-pleasing bangers. I’m not sure there’s a single remark in the between-song banter that can be taken at face value, and while that sort of sums up the group’s entire trajectory, it also makes it difficult to commit to their music with a whole-heart. They play big songs for big crowds, mixtape highlights like ‘Amazing,’ ‘Rappin’ 2 U,’ ‘Rainbow in the Dark’ and a couple new songs that has everyone just as enthused as the familiar stuff. When they’re deep within the content of their jams they drop any perceived pretenses and lose themselves in the gleefully-hedonistic bass-drops and shout-along choruses, but afterwards it seems like they almost feel guilty for engaging in such traditional showmanship – they’re the Pavement of indie-rap. It’ll be interesting to watch their personalities develop as their popularity inevitably increases.

I wander over to the Green stage in preparation for the night’s headlining Animal Collective slot. It’s that nice, balmy, just-cold-enough-to-merit-a-hoodie kind of sunset; illuminating the partly-cloudy sky and the foot-tussled grass – the perfect scenario to watch Neko Case perform on a giant screen on the other side of the park. Many a music writer has talked about Neko’s near-perfect live show, but this is the first time I got to see it for myself. There are no gimmicks nor panders: most of Neko’s staff seem old enough to be playing in bands long before the woman was born, and she absolutely kills it. Her shining, from-the-earth voice that sounds so warm on record has no trouble grabbing hold of a body-ached, late-afternoon festival crowd. By the time she ‘s done, most people are wondering why everyone else has a hard time playing things straight. They don’t have what Neko has – and what she has is delectably abstract.

The crowd for Animal Collective is enormous. It seems that for a lot of people, Friday is a $45 Animal Collective concert with a lot of openers – these kids, either through misinformation or blinders-on brute-force, still don’t seem to understand that Animal Collective kinda suck live. James Murphy, when asked why he didn’t play the new stuff early on in the tour, said “I remember being a kid taking the train two hours just to hear ‘This Charming Man’ only to get ‘Panic’.”

So here are a bunch of kids who waded through planes, trains and automobiles to hear Panda Bear and company jam their way through a series of loosely connected psych-squalls, robot-farts, and the occasional, almost cursory melody. This is what it’s like to see Animal Collective; you probably won’t sing along and only the most dedicated of fans keep their heads away from phones through the entire set. I’ve come to terms that I’ll never see the band that birthed Sung Tongs in 2004 simply because I wasn’t going to their shows in 2003.

And then, out of nowhere, they play “Brothersport” and immediately a wave of “fucking finally” euphoria rushes over the crowd like some great big justifiable twitter-hashtag release. We dance, we jump and we praise the powers for playing something we know – all which is quickly replaced by a profoundly annoying smudge-song that involves Mr Lennox repeating the word ‘mercury’ in an artless, seasick belch.

Animal Collective has such a rich catalog of undisputed anthems for a certain demographic of kids. They have the power to incite a thorough riot in a festival – but they just don’t. It’s curious to wonder why – certainly, seeing a sea of adorers repeat the words to ‘My Girls’ or ‘Peacebone’ is gratifying on some level,but apparently such an appreciated performance is beneath them. They continue to sabotage prayers of rapture and sell the records that will eventually contain fleshed-out versions of these live-previews.

Read about Day 2 and Day 3 of the Pitchfork Music Festival.

Day One of Pitchfork Fest has been guinea pig to a variety of ideas; there were those full-album performances that never managed to catch on in the way publicists expected them to, and then there was that flash-pan “write the night” segment which had the ambitious thought to let the fans compose a setlist, which, like its namesake unwittingly implied, lasted only one night in 2009 – ostensibly after it became clear that the set the fans wanted The Flaming Lips to play was what they were going to play anyway. So now Friday exists as a truncated version of the rest of the festival, no gimmicks, no dual headliners, just a handful of music – and that handful started with EMA.

Erika M. Anderson’s jagged, brazen debut record Past Life Martyred Saints seems to ratchet up album-of-the-year talks every week, it’s in my personal top-tier and everyone from Pitchfork managing editor Mark Richardson to journeyman rap-critic Tom Breihan has evangelized on its behalf. It’s a fairly safe place to holler from, the woman’s music is so swollen with raw, true, soul-scraping emotion that it becomes pretty clear why so many writers have been converted to her desperate charms. But on stage, Ms. Anderson is not that same burdened, bloodthirsty woman, she’s been through those ordeals and has landed on a bill with a popular record and a happenstance fanbase, naturally she seems pretty happy about that. She joked, she smiled, and she cheerfully babbled in between songs, all full of nervous cursing and apropos thank-yous. It was an image of a woman in a rock band, not an icon of struggle; the buzzed-about ‘California’ was introduced as if it were as clichéd as The Who gearing up to close a stadium with ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again.’ The EMA project seems to be past the tribulations that birthed its music, but when Anderson is in the belly of these songs, like the gnashing ‘Butterfly Knife’ or the quiet implosion of ‘The Grey Ship,’ her whole presence is lapsed back in time. It’s those moments where she still looks like the angst-riddled, broken-hearted, South Dakotan-transplant whose arms and legs are a little too long for the rest of her body. EMA is unafraid to go back to that place; I suppose that makes sense given how bare-faced she’s been with us thus far.

Right after EMA another woman, with a similarly rising profile and persona was gearing up to play across the park. I speak of course of Merrill Garbus’ tUnE-yArDs, the notoriety of which has skyrocketed so quickly following the release of the deservedly-awesome w h o k I l l, that I was immediately turned around from the Blue Stage when I realized the best I could do was see a small, body-painted dot partially blocked by a tree in the foreground. Bummer. At least from what I heard the woman is still on point, and I think we can all agree that whatever cult she has, she’s earned.

So I turned to a pretty good plan B. Battles are not unlike tUnE-yArDs on an aesthetic level. Both play mind-boggling, precisely-calculated inversions on pop music – but Merrill is always centered on her voice, while Battles, erm, lost their freaking frontman in the hiatus following Mirrored. However, almost impossibly, they remain a prominent act as a trio, without Tyondai Braxton’s iconic, squelched vocals. It’s pretty substantial that they managed to put out a second record, much less tour without his contribution – but after watching the three remaining members melt away everyone’s skin with an absolutely bone-chillingly precise take on ‘Atlas,’ it was pretty clear that there never ought to be concern. Yeah there’s not a man with a microphone on stage anymore, it doesn’t matter, it never mattered, we didn’t need that. What we needed, as it turned out, is Ian Williams, standing between two inwards-slanting keyboards, hands on each of them, pounding out synth-melodies like he’s on some bizarre, futuristic, music-making treadmill. We needed John Stainer rev up what might as well have been a jet engine with sole, indomitable power of his drum-kit. So what if this song has a vocal-track on the record? Just project Kazu Makino’s pretty face on a few screens and let the band’s fucking scintillating instrumental prowess take care of the rest. As it turned out, Battles never needed Braxton, just like Braxton never needed Battles.

There are apparently not a lot of crossover fans between Curren$y and tUnE-yArDs (I really hope I don’t have to type that again,) because posting through the massive exit at the blue stage after her set finished was pretty easy. Curren$y’s slack-jawed, sleepy-headed flow never rubbed me with the same euphoric, psych-slathered glow that he seems to give lots of other people, but I was eager to find what the rumpus was about. I still don’t think I get it in the same way others do, but I will say that in an age of full-body inkjobs, blatant, perspective-blind, does-he-actually-think-that-makes-him-look-cool braggadocio, and party/barcardi rhymes, Curren$y puts the goofy charms back into shit-talk better than anyone in hip-hop today – and this is coming from someone who considers himself a Rick Ross fan. His quicksilver cadence glossed over warm,soulful beats in two-minute intervals, usually cutting out in the back-third and letting his flow run a capella – it’s one of the oldest tricks in the book but Curren$y lavished in those moments with pure contagious joy. The haters he harps on seem like mere foils to the punchline, his sole purpose is to smoke, flirt, and have a good time – he’s a rapper who has everyone’s best interest at heart, and that makes the Curren$y brand decidedly retro. He’s on his way, he’s got his own hand-symbol and everything, I just wish his flow would click with me on a deeper level.

Das Racist followed, and Das Racist continues to skirt an odd little line between smirking irony and bounce-laden, fan-pleasing bangers. I’m not sure there was a single remark in the between-song banter that could be taken at face value, and while that sort of sums up the group’s entire trajectory, it also makes it difficult to commit to their music with a whole-heart. They played big songs for big crowds, mixtape highlights like ‘Amazing,’ ‘Rappin’ 2 U,’ ‘Rainbow in the Dark’ and a couple new songs that had everyone just as enthused as the familiar stuff. When they’re deep within the content of their jams they seem to drop any perceived pretenses and lose themselves in the gleefully-hedonistic bass-drops and shout-along choruses, but afterwards it seems like they almost feel guilty for engaging in such traditional showmanship – it’s like they’re the Pavement of indie-rap. It’ll be interesting to watch their personalities develop as their popularity inevitably increases.

Afterwards I wandered over to the Green stage in preparation for the night’s headlining Animal Collective, it was that nice, balmy, just-cold-enough-to-merit-a-hoodie kind of sunset; illuminating the partly-cloudy sky and the foot-tussled grass. It was the perfect scenario to watch Neko Case perform on a giant screen on the other side of the park. Many a music writer has talked about Neko’s near-perfect live show, but this was the first time I got to see it for myself. There were no gimmicks, nor panders, most of Neko’s staff seemed old enough to be playing in bands long before the woman was born, and she absolutely killed. Her shining, from-the-earth voice that sounds so warm on record has no trouble grabbing hold of a body-ached, late-afternoon festival crowd. By the time she was done it seemed most people were wondering why everyone else has a hard time playing things straight, probably because they don’t have what Neko has. And what she has is delectably abstract.

Speaking of which… Sigh.

The crowd for Animal Collective was enormous. It seems that for a lot of people, Friday was a $45 Animal Collective concert with a lot of openers – these kids, either through misinformation or blinders-on brute-force, still don’t seem to understand that Animal Collective kinda suck live. James Murphy, when asked why he didn’t play the new stuff early on in the tour, said “I remember being a kid taking the train two hours just to hear ‘This Charming Man’ only to get ‘Panic,’” so here were a bunch of kids who waded through planes trains and automobiles to hear Panda Bear and company jam their way through a series of loosely connected psych-squalls, robot-farts, and the occasional, almost cursory melody. This is what it’s like to see Animal Collective; you probably won’t sing along, and only the most dedicated of fans kept their heads away from phones through the entire set. I’ve come to terms that I’ll never see the band that birthed Sung Tongs in 2004 simply because I wasn’t going to their shows in 2003.

And then, out of nowhere, they played “Brothersport” and immediately a wave of “fucking finally” euphoria rushed over the crowd like some great big justifiable twitter-hashtag release. We danced, we jumped, and we praised the powers for playing something we knew – all which was quickly replaced by a profoundly annoying smudge-song that involved Mr. Lennox repeating the word ‘mercury’ in an artless, seasick belch. Animal Collective has such a rich catalog of indisputed ANTHEMS for a certain demographic of kids, they have the power to incite a thorough riot in a festival, but they just don’t. It’s curious to wonder why, certainly seeing a sea of adorers repeat the words to ‘My Girls’ or ‘Peacebone’ would be gratifying on some level,but apparently such an appreciated performance is below them. They will continue to sabotage prayers of rapture, just like how they’ll continue to sell the records that will eventually contain these live-previews fully fleshed out.

And so that was the end of day one. Day two was longer, 3 hours to be exact, and it was the moment where I felt like I was in the real meat of the festival. Some hard decisions came up, those lovely festival fatigue-pangs started appearing more frequently, and the heat slowly became a prominent factor.

In fact, there was probably no act more unlucky during the weekend than Ms. Julianna Barwick. The regal, ambient/vocal-tapestry auteur already makes music incredibly unkind for a festival setting – and when she stood all alone on the green stage with her overdubbed voice and an occasional smile you had to feel a little bad for her. The last time I saw Barwick I was sitting on a pew amongst the pitch-dark shadows of a church in the heart of Austin. The relaxed audience could let the beatific glory of her craft wash over them – as it was meant to – I think it was around the second time a train’s rumble pierced through her mix that I realized that this new, more general setting wasn’t exactly ideal. Standing and sweating with a Julianna that didn’t look too comfortable in the first place is just not a positive experience for all associated parties. She’s certainly got a task ahead of her adapting her inarguably gorgeous craft for daytime festival sets – I’m sure that tour money looks inviting.

Across the field from Julianna was Woods, a band whose consistency speaks for them. 3 solid LPs in an equal number of years, diversifying their spooky, psych-folk roots ever so slightly with each installation – and Woods look like a bunch of dudes that like writing songs.They’ve been tagged as scene-icons because of their famous label, notorious friends, and a few I-was-there stories about loft shows, but the vaguely-hip, freshly-dressed figures of the band are the kind you could imagine ordering a latte from. They served a healthy dose of songs drawing generously from their most talked-about releases to a dense crowd for such an early show, I guess that makes sense, Woods are a band that you keep as a dependable route for most scenarios. I don’t think they’re anyone’s favorite band, but they always get a mention – and bonus points to Jeremy Earl for proving his pinched warble is his legitimate singing voice, some people are just born that way I guess.

Pretty much every time Cold Cave play an outdoor festival-slot with a hot sun and journalists standing by eager to commentate, every article mentions the fact that, yes, they wear black skinnies, leather jackets and uncomfortable-looking shoes despite the heat. People write about this sort of thing like it’s an act of fist-shaking defiance in the face of logical norm, but I think it goes deeper than that. Cold Cave dresses as they do because that’s what Cold Cave are, that’s how they exist – the hushed, scene-spread legend of Wesley Eisold stops just short of him sleeping in a coffin, I don’t think he’s capable of being anybody else at this point. Halfway through his set Eisold remarked that he couldn’t “remember” the last time he left his apartment “this early.” Dude, its 3 in the afternoon. Sure you could say that’s the marking of an act that’s become a caricature of itself, but it’s certainly fun to watch. EIsold’s second in command synth-man Ian Dominick Fernrow might as well be the biggest Cold Cave fan in the world, watching him abandon his post only to stomp around to the bass-hits and mouth lyrics he didn’t write with an even heavier propulsion than Eisold could was among the most entertaining moments of the festival. Sure the mythos behind Cold Cave might paint them aloof, but don’t be fooled – this is definitely music for jumping.

Speaking of music for jumping, No Age drew a ridiculously huge crowd. Some context, I spent a my mid-to-late teens in southern California, anyone who calls the region home and is even remotely connected to some vague DIY-leaning demographic has at least one cred-building story about seeing No Age play a basement with Mika Miko, or something along those lines – and when they tour they always stick to that sort of underground circuit, giving the false impression that they’re just as niche as ever. This, as was made bluntly clear to me on Saturday, is no longer the case. I suppose I should’ve seen it coming, given how big they’ve gotten over their critically-fawned record trajectory, but damn was it a little uncanny seeing a raucous L.A.-bred duo being treated like global gods. It is not a bad thing in the slightest, there’s a lot of joy in watching that giddy, too-young-to-be-judged exuberance spiral out on such a massive scale – and the chronically-down duo of Dean Spunt and Randy Randall seemed just as affectionately embracing as ever, they closed with a Black Flag cover for Christ’s sake. If this is what it looks like when 21st century zine-punk crosses from local to universal adoration, I can be pretty happy with that.

Afterwards I briefly watched Gang Gang Dance play a few songs, as expected too many mechanics, not much of a hook – still not for me, especially on a stage. Wild Nothing fared better in the summer breeze, and considering the last time I saw Jack Tatum’s famously homemade indie-pop live it was funneled to me in an echoed, hollow sprawl, this was quite the improvement. The textures seemed brighter, more reflective, better capturing the crisp resonance of Gemini – even if I only managed to catch the closer ‘Summer Holiday.’

In another instance of brilliantly-subversive scheduling, the band that followed all that yellow-bellying was the shit-kicking OFF! Needless to say it was pretty easy navigating to the front as the Wild Nothing superfans rushed for more beatific ground. Given Keith Morris’ divinity within certain circles, and the fact that they were pretty much the only pit-worthy group of the festival, (well, okay, besides Odd Future) the crowd that came was a healthy mix of youngsters decked in patches of bands they’ve never seen and an elder-tier of former rascals who probably have a few stories of watching a Circle Jerks practice in 1982. I was in front of a group of wavy-haired, pastel-covered, bead-laden hippies who weren’t sure who OFF! was but really wanted a good spot for The Radio Dept. afterwards (again with the weird scheduling!) as soon as the band began their blitz I watched as those kids unwillingly get sucked into a pit and subsequently disappear.

Awesome.

I was talking to a fellow writer in the press-tent about how he didn’t understand why OFF! had the critic’s on their side so unanimously, considering how their craft is so retro and so of-an-era that it can stand next to the icons of underground hardcore and blend right in. His problem was that the music wasn’t looking forward enough, but honestly I think he got it backwards – we love OFF! because they’re an act that categorically refuses to update itself. They were formed for the sole purpose of playing early-‘80s punk by a quartet of silver-haired legends who grew up playing early-‘80s punk, and seeing Keith Morris spit acid, squinch up his face, jump up and down, and scream “FUCK PEOPLE!” (before qualifying that the sort of people he’s talking about are the folks who talk on their cell phone while driving) was a dream come true for plenty of Chicagoan punk kids born too late to see a lot of their favorite bands. “We’re bringing a different flavor to the party tonight” he said towards the beginning of his set – true, he brought a fucking time machine.

The Dismemberment Plan is not a band to keep at arms-length. Their trailblazing brand of woozy, beat-inflicted indie rock has provoked a lot of serious think-pieces from a lot of great writers. The fact that they’re reuniting and playing a rare festival-set at a place like Pitchfork, a website started by a group of people who ostensibly hold 1999’s Emergency & I near to their hearts, is a perfect homecoming. Touring a decade after a breakup always gets people jaded when considering the obvious lucrative factors (remember when that Pixies reunion was exciting?) but something about D Plan is different. Maybe it’s because they never really got their due at the height of their powers, or they seem much more self-aware than the bulk of reunion joints – but it’s because once the band stuttered into the seasick “What Do You Want Me To Say?” every grizzled man or woman who used the band as a drinking partner through their 20s comprehensively lost their shit. That, my friends, is how a reunion is supposed to feel – I’m not in my thirties, in fact I’m barely in my 20s, the lyrics of “The Ice of Boston” aren’t relatable on a personal level, but I still felt swept up in that communal, long-lost joy. Travis Morrison’s wry, self-deprecating wit was well in place, the urban-hell guitar tones radiated like it never left – and unsurprisingly, they all look a fair amount happier in the years since their dejected heyday. During the closer Travis started singing the beyond-goofy chorus to Robyn’s “Dancehall Queen” – which somehow made a lot of sense given the Plan’s odd little place in indie rock’s often self-serious canon.

So then there was DJ Shadow. A bit of a strange booking, but I guess the man’s history of greatness more than makes up for any modern missteps. He’s touring with an ambitious gimmick; he climbs into a white orb that doesn’t look unlike a supersized golf ball, which serves as a three-dimensional projection space for a variety of silly effects, like superimposed baseball seams. This is all well and good, erm, if he was actually performing at night, the setting sun all but swallowed up the imagery, and honestly, watching a few roadies trying to make sense of the confounding set-up in the minutes before the performance kind of drained the magic out. Halfway through the set Shadow spun the orb around revealing himself standing over his gear. “You guys can’t see anything right?” realizing the futility of the situation, everybody nodded. “Yeah I’m just gonna leave it open, but trust me, it would’ve been sick.” I don’t doubt it, it seemed like a cool idea and if anyone in the DJ game deserves a carnival-ish spectacle its Shadow. As for the music he played everything from Endtroducing… material to a Lil Wayne remix – forever eclectic, I guess some things never change. Oh yeah, except that he wasn’t using vinyl. Sure that’s a purist remark but come on man, you represent the purists.

The last act of the night was the charming and inoffensive Fleet Foxes. A few months ago I saw the band in an Austin amphitheater, and here, in an idyllic sun-kissed park, I came to the same conclusion. Fleet Foxes are undeniably beautiful; their harmonies are untouched in modern music and despite the occasional mixing hiccup they always replicate that loveliness live.However, it is pretty much impossible to think of what possible direction the Fleet Foxes motif can go from here. Watching them perform is an act of standing in awe of how just-like-Fleet Foxes they sound. You cannot jump, you cannot fist-pump, you can occasionally sing along but that’s about it. They certainly seem like earnest dudes who appreciate acclaim, but I’m not sure where that same initial reverence can come from anymore. I’m clearly in the minority but watching the critics greet the band like a culture is a little confusing, especially when similarly-decent folk acts are dusted under the rug. They’re a good capstone to a night of indie-rock chart-potential, but I think with every show they give more and more people will wind up with my results. I watched a few songs, grew weary, and headed back to my bed – it seemed a lot of people felt the same way.

So Day 3 began on a train, I was sitting across from an utterly adorable little girl and her pensive father. The dad looked hip in that out-of-the-game way. Cargo shorts and flip-flops, but a secluded ponytail and a pair of chic-leaning glasses tipped his hand. He let me use some of the sunscreen he was coating his daughter with, and then, sure enough, a few minutes later off the train I saw them wandering towards the blue stage – folding-chairs in hand. It was one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen in my life. One of those moments where I hope to turn out like that kind of parent – cool in that “I’ve got a life, I don’t need to wear skinny jeans anymore” kind of cool.

If nothing else, How To Dress Well won the award for most charming act of the weekend. I’ve never seen Tom Krell in the flesh, I’ve heard rumours of his geekiness but I was not expected the lanky, bespectacled, stringy-haired, mayonnaise-white figure singingfull-hearted soul into a microphone. The guy couldn’t look any less of an R&B artist, his obvious obsession with R. Kelly and Aaliyah seem born out of a thorough outsider’s perspective, and I’m sure plenty of his acquaintances have either laughed at his craft or tried to talk him out of such a mismatched image before the blogs got a hold of him. Thank god he was never discouraged. He looked so happy to be finally taken seriously, doing the look-down, moody-faced croon he probably always wanted to do in front of people who loved his songs and were able to sing along. He introduced a new song that he wrote “for my mom” and people didn’t giggle, a few actually swooned. The HTDW project has now reached a place where Mr. Krell can apparently afford a string quartet to give his formerly lo-fi productions the stuff of gussied-up R&B – if that sounds like a mistake, I can assure you that Krell’s songwriting is in a place where it doesn’t need silly, if intriguing, aesthetic choices to make it interesting. The whole show made for a happy short story, a true underdog tale, one that’s looking more and more like an entire movement.

Not to offer myself cred or anything, but I’ve probably seen Odd Future quite bit more than the average fan. The perks of living in Austin I suppose. At this point the howling evil-eyed rambunctiousness has worn a little thing on me, and in high-90s heat amongst a highly-concentrated group of white kids chanting the OFWGKTA slogans in one of the most blatant images of un-self-awareness I’ve ever seen, it was pretty hard to stay motivated to keep my place. Then the spectacle began and the OF kids started jumping around and screaming and getting drowned out by the bass – all trademarks of their personal hell-raising bent. But this time I wasn’t enthused on a visceral level or engaged on a character study. I was just bored, for the first-timers it was the show-of-the-weekend, and that’s good, enjoy the feeling while it lasts. Though it was fun hearing that Pitchfork diss on “Yonkers” screamed so loud.

This was a little depressing. Shabazz Palaces are responsible for one of the most inventive records of the year in Black Up which is wisely being talked about like an instant classic. One of the best things about it is its mystery, it lives in the darkened, dystopian corners of the world, glinting with a cosmopolitan, and deeply nocturnal suave. It’s an incredibly independent sound, and it was clearly never meant to be on a stage, especially in the daylight. Ishmael Butler did the best he could; blitzing out his polyrhythmic beats with head-nod deftness, but hearing those tightly-packed lyrical-runs reverberated out with minimal subtlety was pretty disheartening. I suppose I didn’t expect it to work, but I definitely had hope for some fraction of the brilliance on a stage – the music was there but the atmosphere was missing in a pretty stark way.

I spent a few songs flirting with Deerhunter. The band (or maybe just Bradford Cox) has had some pretty hostile things to say about performing live recently, and it seemed logical that the experience of playing a truncated late-afternoon festival set would catch most of his scorn, maybe even more so because it was Pitchfork. But despite Deerhunter’s best efforts at being distant they never can help but sound good. They may storm off stage or brutally shut down an over-reaching fan. But they also play Deerhunter songs, and they play them incredibly well. Considering their longevity and constant shows, it was feasible that this was everyone’s third or fourth time seeing the band. As it stands they stay about the same; aural, treble-driven smears, lush, bouncing guitar sounds, and Bradford’s schizophrenic shit-talk. Is there anything more played-out than disaffected hipsters acting faux-patriotic in order to further distance themselves from the incredibly divergent Palin-lovers ? Come on Cox, you can do better than that. One thing of note, they opened with “Desire Lines,” giving Lockett Pundt center-stage first. I’m sure that means nothing in the long-run, but still, interesting.

Next up was Toro y Moi. I don’t have much to say about Toro y Moi. He played Underneath The Pine material with the added umph of a bassist, drummer, and a guitarist, looking like an actual band instead of a weirdo North Carolinian bedroom project. It blended together but it made it easy to loosen hips, you know, kind of like the Underneath The Pine material. I watched a trio of Asians exchange a plastic bag of cocaine. Moving on.

When I sat down waiting for TV on the Radio, me and a few friends were interrupted by a group of overzealous Cut Copy fans who seemed to be in some sort of drunk-savant headspace. They danced, they wore kind-of uncanny flesh-coloured sunglasses, they jumped up and down, and one of them told me if I didn’t get up and dance he would kill himself later that night. Later I saw him collapse and give a thumbs-up to everyone who was looking. My friend Bela described this sort of thing as “The Cut Copy Effect,” the power of an ultra-bouncy electro-pop group over a selection of yuppies who’ve had one too many Long Island Iced Teas. It was fun to watch, even if I got some water spilled on me. Seriously though, nothing against Cut Copy, I like their music but I’ve just seen them too many times in recent memory to merit an excursion towards their end of the park. Not when a decent TVOTR spot is on the line.

And TV on the Radio wasn’t bad. Strangely it was my first time seeing the band given how they’re like, festival warriors. They worked through some sound issues and played the songs all the kids wanted to hear. You got a sense that they’re a band which everyone has their specific song. That means a lot of exits after ‘Staring At The Sun,’ ‘Dancing Choose’ and ‘Wolf Like Me.’ But it was nice remembering why they carried such a load of hype before they were a known quantity.

In a sense they kind of represent my only real complaint with the Pitchfork Music Festival. While the headliners Animal Collective, Fleet Foxes and TV on the Radio obviously serve a specific and very Pitchforkian demographic, I felt myself yearning for a bigger payoff. Say what you like about corporate, numbers-crunching productions like Lollapalooza, the looming presence of triple-A acts make the slow descent into nighttime that much more exciting. Knowing a band like TV on the Radio is nice, but it won’t give anyone butterflies. Regardless my first experience with Pitchfork fest has made a strong case for it to be a yearly pilgrimage. It’s not often you see that much buzz compacted in a single weekend.