red lights


basement tapes	concert reviews	cd reviews	interviews	ticket swap	music news

Pitchfork's fifth music festival a hit & miss event

Pitchfork Music Festival 2010
Union Park
Chicago, IL
July 16 - 18, 2010

Modest Mouse (BB)

St. Vincent (BB)

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (TB)

Review by Tony Bonyata
Photos by Barry Brecheisen & Tony Bonyata

Saturday July 17th:
Last weekend the popular Chicago-based online music magazine Pitchfork kicked off its fifth annual Pitchfork Music Festival at Union Park in Chicago's Near West Side. Whether this increasingly popular three-day music event was a rousing success really depends on whether you were the promoters (who scored big, selling out all three days) or the audience (who had to endure unbearable heat, huge crowds, long lines and, arguably, the festival's weakest line-up to date).

Previous line-ups have boasted the likes of Sonic Youth, Spoon, Fleet Foxes, The Hold Steady, Jesus Lizard, Vampire Weekend, Iron & Wine, The New Pornographers and even coercing Yoko Ono out of seclusion for a special headlining set in 2007. This year's line-up, which included the reunited indie-godfathers Pavement, LCD Soundsystem, Modest Mouse and healthy number of other up-and-coming acts, may not have been the fest's strongest, but there were still certainly a number of highlights that stood out.

While I would've preferred to attend on the last day of the fest (without question the strongest bill of this year's fest with Pavement, St, Vincent, Surfer Blood, Beach House and Girls performing), my schedule only allowed for Saturday's show, which was spiked with both good and... well, not so good.

On the upside, the New Jersey indie/punk outfit Titus Andronicus pumped up the already heated crowd with an energetic set of guitar heavy rock, while The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion blasted into a ferocious performance spiked with raw punk and scuzzed-up rockabilly. Spencer, clad in tight pleather pants, howled and flounced to the floor with all of the possessed passion of Southern preacher, while his sinewy trio managed to whip the crowd into a sweat-soaked frenzy. Another standout that followed was Wolf Parade's fantastic set that pulled from the Montreal rock band's three great albums, Apologies to the Queen Mary, At Mount Zoomer, and their newly released Expo 86 effort. Their quirky blend of art-rock, indie and post-punk also made for a pleasing segue into WHY?'s engaging mix of oddball indie rock and hip-hop.

Unfortunately, some of the other hip-hop featured throughout the day didn't fair as well. Dam-Funk's much-delayed set of synth funk, soul and hip-hop failed to inspire, despite taking place on the shadiest and coolest of the fest's three stages. Likewise for Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon, whose equally tardy set, was plagued by technical malfunctions. Despite the hefty singer's obvious passion - free-style rapping his way around the technical difficulties - his uninspired resuscitations of Wu Tang favorites such as "C.R.E.A.M." and "Can It Be All So Simple," instead of performing more his own solo material, seemed like the easy road to take.

Later on the Brooklyn-based rock quartet Bear In Heaven ran through numbers from their recent Beast Rest Forth Mouth album, and while their set of electro, psychedelically-laced indie pop was enjoyable enough, one couldn't help but imagine how much better this band and their music would work inside a small club. Animal Collective's founder Panda Bear (aka Noah Lennox) faired even worse, delivering a droning set of spacey ambient interludes that left this once energetic field full of hipsters politely bored and obviously spent.

Pitchfork Music Festival 2009 review - Chicago, IL July 2009
Pitchfork Music Festival 2007 review - Chicago, IL July 2007