The Post-Rockist

Sunday at Pitchfork. The Post-Rockist recollects….

1:00 p.m. Times New Viking (C)

Todd: Every time I play TNV’s Rip It Off for someone, I always hear the same complaint: “It’s too loud for my ears. They’re signed to Matador, why can’t they take advantage of more modern production techniques and add flutes and piccolos and dance beats to make it easier to listen to? I’m going to go read the AARP newsletter now.” Guess what? The way they sound on the record is exactly how they sound live. The Viking kids put on a really fun, noisy show with lots of references to being teenagers and doing drugs. Two of the greatest joys of youth.

The best part: when the drummer/vocalist brought his vocal mic directly into contact with the cymbal he was banging to create a fantastic racket on the loudspeakers. The sound guy rushed out because he thought something had fallen only to be shrugged off like the chump that he was.

After the set, everyone I talked to said the same thing: “That was a lot better than I had expected. You could really hear the pop melodies under all the distortion.”

Scotter: Went out for drinks with friends Saturday night, ate Chicago-style pizza at 3 a.m., fell into a deep, cheeze-enduced coma, and woke up about 15 minutes before Times New Viking went on. But I could hear them from my pull-out bed on Bryn Mawr Avenue and thought they were great.

1:40 p.m. Mahjongg (B)

Todd: I thought I was going to go see High Places, but the whole schedule for Stage B was out of whack on Sunday. I don’t know much about Mahjongg. Uhm, I guess they used lots of processors and synths to create lots of bleeps and bloops, used lots of interesting percussion to create some electro-tribal polyrhythms, wore plastic Girl Talk shades (like every other person in the park), and occasionally sang with Gary Numan-esque voices.

After the set I ran into Alison from Toe Taps and Spastic Claps. She obviously thought I was supercool for recognizing her from teh internetz. St. Louisans stick together, what can I say?

Scotter: Right around the same time, I just got out of the shower.

2:00 p.m. Boris (C)

Todd: I was perusing the DIY craft tent when Boris took the stage, and immediately I felt a stark change in the atmosphere. It became perceptibly darker outside. I stumbled at the cash register as I was attempting to purchase a custom iPod cozy for my S.O., as what sounded like furious ghost demons came screaming through the aisles chasing after me. I ran outside and caught what I could of the set. I stood back, slack-jawed and petrified, as they pounded at their instruments, like they were making stone sculptures out of lightning.

I had avoided Boris for a while because I had always read about them in terms of off-putting adjective combinations, such as “drone sludge” or “shoegaze metal,” but the thing about Boris (as well as a lot of other “out there” bands from Japan) is how they twine together incredibly disparate musical styles and spit them back out in forms that are hard to explain with our traditional Western media referents.

I did see a bass guitar without a headstock, which is admittedly kind of lame, but since the bass only constituted one neck of a two-necked beast I think the question of lameness becomes moot. The gloved drummer, however, was unquestionably great. I couldn’t get over how he would whip out these complex rhythms with uber-heaviness.

Scotter: God damn, the “L” is slow.

2:25 p.m. High Places (B)

Todd: So this was High Places. Another two-person group with loads of processors and electronic drum pads. It was pleasant, but not particularly captivating. At their catchiest, they sounded like the Blow at their least poppy. Maybe it was just a poor mix, but I don’t know what’s up with all these mumblecore vocalists.

2:50 p.m. HEALTH (B)

Todd: Errrr…..kkkkrrrrap. Sorry, hype or no, three alt-bros screaming into distorted microphones and then boyishly jumping onto your distorted guitars on the floor is not my idea of a good time.

Scotter: I was getting off the “L” as HEALTH was finishing. Good timing, from what I’ve heard. Got to Union Park just as Apples in Stereo started playing, having to wait in line for 15 minutes and watching a golf cart roll by with a camera crew filming Atlas Sound’s Bradford Cox filming people at the festival.

3:00 p.m. The Apples in Stereo (A)

Todd: Thank God the Apples were playing. I was going to skip this set because King Khan was supposed to go on at 3:15, and because I’ve seen the Rob Schneider and co. several times before (including the very first festival this site covered), but you know what, the Apples in Stereo never fail to deliver the goods. The New Magnetic Wonder songs from last year sounded dynamo, with highlights including the sing-along portion of the highly appropriate “Sun is Out” and learning the story behind my 13th favorite song of ‘07, “Skyway” (”I wrote this song in a dream,” said Schneider. “Well, not technically in a dream. I wrote it after I woke up from the dream.”)

Scotter: Never seen or heard Apples in Stereo except on Colbert, but they put on a pretty fun show, with the second goofiest keyboard player of the festival after the Hold Steady guy with the mustache. So this is what an Elephant 6 band sounds like when they’re happy? Not bad.

4:15 p.m. King Khan & the Shrines (B)

Scotter: Soulful garage rock plus horns! Who knew that would make such a killer combo? Add the rascally antics of King Khan and you get one of the best performances I’ve seen all year.

To be honest, Pitchfork should’ve evened the line-up better. Les Savy Fav and King Khan at the same time means that half of the paying ticket holders missed out on one or another of the best performances of the festival. That was just not fair. Apparently, Les Savy Fav was amazing, but I was hooked on King Khan from the moment I arrived.

With a frisky female backup dancer and a great band having a hella ‘valot of fun on-stage, King Khan just killed it. Killed it! The guy is definitely a weirdo, but the best kind of weirdo. A self-proclaimed “gospel song” included a scene where the King described a religious sexual experience where he literally enters his lover’s body completely into her youknowwhat–head, hands, body, legs, and feet, everything–and is “born again” after “flopping out” of her itgoeswithoutsaying. A harrowing sexual-religious experience for sure and due ’cause for a little testifyin’. But even fully inside of her, as he pointed out, he took off his shoes, because “Indians always take off their shoes whenever they do anything religious.” And after all that, all she can say is “Hey, where’s that watch I bought you for Christmas?”

Other weirdo bits of wisdom from King Khan:

“You can’t wipe your ass with money. You’ll get an infection.”

“Ass. Titties. Ass. Titties.”

“We’re bringing finger-banging back in 2008″

If Jake and Elwood fused into one Indian man with a psychotic sexual imagination, you’d have King Khan.

Todd: King Khan is going to be a household name after this event. I was half-tempted to czech out Les Savy Fav because they supposedly put on a Must See show, but I would only be going for the spectacle. With King Khan, I’d get spectacle and kick-ass songs. I had been hyping up the stripped-down King Khan & BBQ Show to my friends ever since I bought What’s for Dinner?, but when I heard he was going to bring his balls-out soul revival group the Shrines with him, I knew this was an occasion not to be missed. It’s like mixing Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels with the Ike & Tina Turner Soul Revue, and chucking in a bottle of three-alarm hot sauce. Second best show of the weekend, bar none.

6:00 p.m. M. Ward (C)

Scotter: Waiting for a good spot to see Spiritualized, we watched M. Ward from afar. It wasn’t the same experience as watching The Hold Steady from the Jarvis stage the previous day. What made it worse (or better) was that Ghostface and Raekwon were tearing it down with thumpin’ bass from the B stage and M. Ward’s soft, dreamy folk-pop was no match. I heard afterward that people were screaming for him to play his excellent cover of Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” which apparently seemed to piss him off.

Todd: I think I said something faux-meaningful as we were sitting there about how M. Ward’s far-away voice was meant to be heard from a distance. I was just rationalizing, obviously, but there’s a certain warmth and comfort to his music that’s hard to capture when you’re cramped in a field with 17,000 other sweaty people chattering in the background. I’m sure it was nice if you were up front, but I wanted to get up front for Spiritualized.

Scotter: Girls seem to like Fleet Foxes more than M. Ward. Men noticed that Zooey Deschanel was nowhere in sight and lost interest, I think.

7:00 p.m. Spiritualized (A)

Todd: I’m calling it right now: the J. Spaceman moniker needs to be retired. I’ve taken many an astral journey through the center of my mind with J. Spaceman as my unwavering guide, but these days Jason Pierce seems more concerned with the here and now and honest-to-god songs than experiences of the ethereal (more on that here).

This was the first time Pierce struck me as just a frontman to a rock & roll band, and not a sonic pharmacist from on high. The band was more bare bones than I’ve seen in the past, with two gospel singers being the only accessory besides guitar, bass, drums, and keyboard. But even so, noise has always been Pierce’s secret weapon, and this set was no exception. They opened with a blistering version of “You Lie You Cheat” off Songs in A&E, which built into a violent noise freakout, which segued beautifully into a subdued “Shine a Light.” While the set was heavy on newer material, with “Soul on Fire” and “She Kissed Me (It Felt Like a Hit)” being two highlights, when they started chugging away at the Ladies & Gentlemen classic “Come Together” the crowd started to go crazy.

Scotter: My first experience of being Spiritualized, and it was pretty okay. I mean, the Buddha didn’t appear to me, and Jesus didn’t turn my backwashed-laced Aquafina into wine, but I felt somewhat uplifted, less materialistically-grounded, feeling the body/mind dualism at work and all. It was loud, but that may have been because we had stationed ourself directly in front of the stage-right loudspeakers.

Spirtualized did pull one pretty innovative trick with the high-powered, high-wattaged festival sound system. Toward the end of the set, the band set into a steady jam full of fuzz and distortion, but seemed to be settling on a simple rhythm pattern–just eighth notes. Once establishing the pattern and lulling the audience into attention stagnation, the loudspeakers suddenly cut out. But the band didn’t even flinch. They just continued playing. I could barely hear their amps from just 10 yards away from the stage, which goes to show that the sound on stage is minimal compared to what the audience is usually hearing. We were all kind of looking at the sound guys, expecting them to freak out, but they were just as collected and cool as the band, as if nothing had changed.

After about 30 seconds of this, the loudspeakers cranked back on, on beat and on measure, jolting every single person in the crowd.

That can’t be very good for the care of the loudspeakers, but its awesomeness factor was well worth it.

Todd: The song was “Take Me To the Other Side,” an old Spacemen 3 stand-by that Pierce has been closing his set with for years. It was pretty intense.

I feel I should point out that I’ve never seen Pierce so fired up before. The last time I saw him he sat through the entire show looking sickly and tired. On Sunday the veins in his neck were throbbing from singing so hard, and not once but twice he angrily knocked over his mic stand with his guitar. I couldn’t believe my eyes when he started thrusting his guitar through the amp at the end before hurling it at the drum set. Hell, he even allowed a drum solo. Absolute insanity.

8:00 p.m. Dinosaur Jr. (C)

Todd: It’s great that this nostalgia act was here for the old-timers, Scotter, but I seem to recall the two of us sitting under a tree with a beer in each hand during this set.

Scotter: With 34 beer tickets down and 6 to go before time ran out, it was the best choice.

9:00 p.m. The King Bradford Reatard Ponys (or, King Cox?) (B)

Scotter: As the sun began to set in Pitchforkmusicland and the close of the festival dusking upon us, it was time to end the night with some electrified dancing with Cut Copy at the B Stage. The crowd was absolutely packed–the most people I’ve seen at that stage all weekend.

But we were confronted by announcement from King Khan that Cut Copy was held up at the O’Hareport, but on their way, and that he and Bradford Cox and the drummer from the Ponys would entertain us with a “jam session.” This caused more than half the crowd to groan out loud and clench their fists in the air in angst. Oh, Fortuna! Crestfallen and miserable, these people gave up way too easily on a band that most of them (or so I overheard) had paid the $30 ticket to see, and made their sojourn to the C Stage to see Spoon.

Todd: Suckers. Spoon is like the Toyota of indie rock — reliable, well-crafted, and completely uninspiring. I wanted an element of danger in my rock & roll, so I stayed put. Cox started out with a Bo Diddley riff, and King Khan rolled with it, making up a song called “Jellyroll” to the tune of “Hey Bo Diddley,” and the crowd started singing along to the hook. Another testement to the greatness of the Diddley Daddy, I think. They screwed around with a couple of other ideas, that weren’t always great but at least entertaining. Eventually they played the King Khan & BBQ Show tune “Too Much in Love,” with Khan taking the low parts and Cox singing the high notes. Jay Reatard came out for one song, basically to scream a quick punk song and tackle King Khan. He came out later, only to moon the audience and attempt to shove a flower bouquet up his rump. I’d like to see Britt Daniels try that.

Crowd = slightly entertained, tired, sweaty, and anxious

9:30 p.m. Cut Copy (B)

Scotter: Finally, at 9:40 in the p.m., Cut Copy arrived, quickly set up their gear, and started into their set with “Out There on the Ice.” From the very first notes, the crowd was immediately into it, and due to the wait and to the weak in spirit who left earlier, we got pretty near the front, swapping sweat with a bunch of strangers, shakin’ the hardware, jumping around and up and down and everyway, getting beer and water sprayed all over us, and trying to take some pics for this site in the midst of all that, which, as you can see, didn’t come out really well. But I think you get the idea of how frantic and awesome it was.

But after just four songs, Pitchfork shut down the show–city ordinances or something. They ended with “Hearts on Fire” and weren’t allowed to encore even though the festival’s sage staff let us cheer and hoot and holler for nearly 10 minutes before turning on the stage lights and tearing down the equipment.

Todd: I was too busy dancing ecstatically with everyone else in the crowd to worry about the details. Fantastic cap to a fantastic weekend.

Scotter: I would have liked to have heard “So Haunted,” but agreed. Even with only 4 songs and less than a half hour of music, everybody in the crowd was able transfer the pent-up, static energy from waiting so long into kinetic release.

Scotter: So that was the Post-Rockist’s Pitchfork Vacation. Thanks for clicking back and forth between this post and your work database or email everytime your boss walked by. And don’t just take our words for it, czech these sites too:

Riverfront Times: “Gawking at Pitchfork: The Fashion of Pitchfork Music Festival”
Webvomit: Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Cream Team - Recap
You Ain’t No Picasso (Just click around. They’re dedicating one post for every band they saw.)
Beep: A recap of sorts
Stereogum: Especially on “The Supreme Genius of King Khan”

And there are lots more and surely more to come from the interwebs. You know how to use Google, right?

Thanks for reading.

Gesundheit,

The Post-Rockist