Pitchfork Music Festival 2009: Day 2 [Union Park; Chicago, IL]

[DAY 1 - DAY 2 - DAY 3]

Saturday is the first day of the festival that all three stages are active. In addition to the two main stages, Aluminum and Connector, there is a Balance stage at the other end of the ground, where the niche acts and up-and-comers play. All things considered, I felt pretty good that morning. A little tired and my voice was still rough, but otherwise I was in tip-top shape. Temperatures were rumored to drop into the 50s that night, so I brought a flannel shirt to throw on over my Stooges tee, but I ended up wearing it tied around my waist like a Catholic schoolgirl's skirt the entire day. Saturday, I traded my girlfriend (for whom a nine-hour rock festival would be tantamount to serving a stint in a Turkish prison) for a couple of friends, and together we ventured defiantly into the park, ready for whatever triumphs or disappointments the day had in store for us.

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Cymbals Eat Guitars

This much-blogged-about New York five piece had the unenviable task of opening up the festivities on the C stage Saturday. Singer and songwriter Joseph D'Augustino may have rechristened himself “Joseph Ferocious,” but bless his little heart, the poor kid looked terrified as the band took the stage. He mostly averted his gaze from the audience, and his few attempts at stage banter came off garbled and unintelligible. You really just wanted to give him a hug and say, “Hey buddy, chin up. We think you're doing great.” Well, all of us except for the Tribune's Greg Kot, who ungenerously compared D'Augustino to a “deer in the headlights.” Still the band's blend of Weezer-esque song dynamics, Stephen Malkmus yips, and Modest Mouse-like digressions came together beautifully, in spite of some early sonic overlap with the Balance Stage that muddled the quieter valleys in their superb album opener “And the Hazy Sea.” He must have been picking up on the crowd's good will, because by the end of their set, the band seemed visibly more at ease, just in time to unleash a sterling rendition of fan-favorite “Wind Phoenix.”

And on the subject of Greg Kot, I spotted another journalist in the crowd, who may or may not have been the Trib's lead music scribe. With his notepad in hand and a flannel tied around his waist, he gave me the unsettling feeling that I was seeing a vision of myself 20 years into the future. Trippy. Here's the setlist:

1. And the Hazy Sea
2. Some Trees (Meritt Moon)
3. Cold Spring
4. Indiana
5. Tongue in the Vestibule (new song)
6. Share
7. Living North
8. Wind Phoenix (Proper Name)

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- The Antlers

Aside from The Jesus Lizard, The Antlers' Chicago debut was the event I was most eager for. Their third full-length, Hospice, a brilliant mixture of heartwrenching narrative songwriting and carefully constructed ambient soundscapes, is the front-runner for my favorite album of 2009. Tucked away in the B stage ghetto, Peter Silberman and his touring band (which for this show consisted of only a drummer and a keyboardist, Silberman himself manning guitar) delivered an intimate, unforgettable performance that, in just six songs, blew most of the bigger-name acts clear out of the water.

The Antlers ratcheted up the drama for each song, bathing their melodies in wave upon wave of ear-splitting feedback that swirled like a maelstrom around Silberman's angelic voice. Somber anthems like “Bear” or “Two,” already so moving in their recorded form, positively bled on stage. Silberman, a singer of remarkable range, picked all the right times to throw reserve to the wind and sang some of his most effective lines in a desperate wail. I felt privileged to attend this performance, to see such a brilliant up-and-coming artist playing top-notch material while it's all still so fresh and new. They wound down with “Epilogue,” transformed from an acoustic coda on the record into a slow build-up to a thundering noise-jam. It was exactly the right note to end on. Buy their album; go see this band. These guys are one of the few fresh faces in indie rock that aren't wanking off to their own record collection. Setlist:

1. Kettering
2. Shiva
3. Atrophy
4. Bear
5. Two
6. Epilogue

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- The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

After the soulful beauty and stomach-churning honesty of The Antlers' set, indie darlings The Pains of Being Pure at Heart couldn't help but feel a little plastic. Their brand of catchy but vapid pop is admittedly enjoyable, but gains nothing from being brought over to a live setting. They rendered bubblegum teen-sex anthems like “Young Adult Friction” and “Come Saturday” faithfully enough to draw a sizeable crowd, but I can't help but think the backlash is going to break these guys in half faster than you can say “sophomore slump.”

Setlist:

1. That one song that sounds like all of their other songs, that sound like a way more accessible version of any given track on Psychocandy, except with way less feedback.

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- Ponytail

I approached Ponytail with high expectations and left with them intact. Much has already been written about Molly Siegel's spastic stage presence. The band comes together like an odd mixture of riot grrrl punk and Bis-like childhood regression, mixed with a healthy dose of art-damaged song dynamics and sheer primitivism. Siegal's facial expression fluctuated between a vacant smile and gaping, slack-jawed stare so that she alternately resembled a saint in ecstasy, a preacher speaking in tongues, and a child with Down Syndrome. Bandmate Dustin Wong joined in her frenetic yips and yells while holding up his end of the dual guitar attack with Ken Seeno. Tribal drumming and surf guitar rub against each other like tectonic plates, sending seismic shocks through the audience. “There's nothing wrong with moshing, guys! Just form a circle,” Siegal called out. It didn't quite work (see my notes on The Jesus Lizard for why), but quite a few rumps were shaken to such gems as “Late for School” and “Celebrate the Body Electric.”

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- DOOM

After dancing up a storm to Ponytail's set, I was damn well ready for a break, so we camped out in front of the A stage where DOOM was getting ready to perform. This was part of my companion's strategy to get in the front rows for The National, in the hopes of maybe having a beer dumped on him by Matt Berninger. When DOOM emerged, he was clad in his signature chrome mask and a tattered cameo-outfit. He was joined on stage by his DJ and a very portly co-emcee. Doom whipped through a bevy of cuts from his new record Born Like This and held in reserve such crowd favorites as... You know what? I can't do this. I'm going to go ahead and call shenanigans. DOOM has been dogged by rumors of sending proxies out to live performances to lip-sync in his stead. “Lip-sync” here is a generous word. With that mask on his face and the microphone permanently glued to his lips, whoever that was on stage didn't even have to know the lyrics well enough to pretend to mouth along. Not once did “DOOM” address the crowd during his whole hour-long set, leaving his crony to babble on about respecting one another and Klingons, or something. Even if it was the actual emcee up there, he did nothing to engage his audience, and there was not a single spontaneous or improvisational moment. The whole set just sagged.

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- The National

Wasting no time, we jumped into the breach and staked our spot as the DOOM audience cleared. From the Aluminum stage, I could hear Beirut starting their set. I'd kind of wanted to check them out, but my feet were killing me and there was not a force on earth that could get me to forsake that small patch of lawn that my ass had claimed as its own.

I am not really a fan of The National. I felt the attention that their 2007 breakthrough Boxer garnered was largely undeserved and that their songs are morose, commercial-sounding appropriations of 90s Britpop. Had I not been reviewing the festival and had I not been there with a man who wets himself a little whenever The National is mentioned, I would have taken off long before they took the stage. Still, I would be derelict my duty as a journalist if I didn't admit that these guys seriously rocked the house.

Berninger took the stage after dark, looking like the hippest college professor you've ever seen: black tie, dark tweed sport jacket with elbow patches, and — like most college professors — he was hammered by 8:30 at night. My friends have since tried to convince me that he was merely reeling from the energy he drew from the crowd, but unless clapping off-time to the music and staggering around the stage looking for his beer during the instrumental bridges was part of his carefully constructed “stage presence,” I'm going to stick with my theory. Berninger leaned on the mic stand while crooning, and pounded his fists together absentmindedly when waiting for his chance to sing -- but the guy didn't botch a note, and he still looked and sounded more alive than some of the Friday night headliners.

Berninger was joined on stage by Bryce and Aaron Dessener on guitar and bass, respectively, drummer Bryan Devendorf, an additional guitar player, a two-man brass section, and a dirty hippie-looking guy who plays a mean violin and doubles as a keyboardist. A big lineup, but they fit together like a machine, and the mid-range never sounded murky or indistinct. This is due in no small part to Devendorf, whose laser-precision drumming kept the band anchored through all their cacophonous wanderings.

Rather than faithfully reproducing their studio cuts, The National honed in on the anthemic structures behind the songs and hammered that for all it was worth. Even sleepy little numbers like “Fake Empire” became fist-pumping rock cataclysms. “This could come with a jam, or no jam,” Berninger announced to the crowd. “Tonight we decided jam. Fuck it.” That sense of abandon carried over into their set to marvelous effect. The strongest moments were the ones where Berninger allowed some of the cracks in his uber-cool, world-weary façade to show through. The indisputable high-point came at the climax of “Abel,” which found Berninger shrieking “My mind's not right” with such intensity that the mic stand slipped out from under him and he collapsed, still screaming, onto the stage.

And so, I'm going to end this little recap of day 2 with a prediction. Next year, The National are going to be playing Lollapalooza, and the year after, it's nothing but arena shows. That's one you could take to the bank, kiddies. Setlist:

1. Runaway
2. Start a War
3. Mistaken for Strangers
4. Brainy
5. Secret Meeting
6. Baby We'll Be Fine
7. Slow Show
8. Vanderlylle Cry Baby
9. Squalor Victoria
10. Abel
11. All the Wine
12. Apartment Story
13. Ada
14. Green Gloves
15. Fake Empire
16. Blood Buzz
17. Mr. November
18. About Today (encore)

[DAY 1 - DAY 2 - DAY 3]

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