Words and Photos by Andrew Parks

Summer festivals are always scatter-brained affairs, but I’m still not sure what to make of Pitchfork’s sixth annual soiree. In many ways, it felt like the first time I covered Coachella: 2005, the year Bright Eyes, a newly-reunited Black Star and a bunch of spandex-wearing grasshoppers (The Locust) brought the weekend to a something-for-everyone close on three separate stages.

In Pitchfork’s case, any given moment provided such diametric options as the following: bathing in the morose synth-pop of Darkstar or relishing the ravaged psychedelic riffs of the Fresh & Onlys; braving the growing mosh pit at Kylesa or absorbing the washed-out drones of Deerhunter; and my personal favorite one-two punch, chasing the everybody-dance-now exultations of Cut Copy with the 21st century punk rock of HEALTH.

Meanwhile, everything that didn’t involve music was overwhelmingly positive compared to Pitchfork’s more experienced competitors, from the laid-back lines to Union Park’s actual layout (stages that are perfectly spaced; copious amounts of free water and sunscreen; food booths that are fairly priced and — generally speaking — not simply alcohol-absorbing calorie bombs). The only catch? It’s kinda hard to sift through crates in a pop-up record fair or sit on a stationary Chicago bus with air conditioning (also known as a “cooling station”) when you’re bouncing between three stages and 31 sets (you trying making all 45!).

I’m certainly not complaining, but I am about to share what stood out, from the woofer-wrecking blue-eyed soul of James Blake to the one Animal Collective song their fans actually recognized…

The Pied Pipers of Dance Party USA: Cut Copy
Melbourne’s finest have always been a killer live band, but I’ve never seen them as confident as they were near the close of Pitchfork’s final day. It was as if they could sense how exhausted the entire crowd was and took it upon themselves to revive us all with a neon-tinged tonic of guitar-guided, rhythm-centric dance tunes. With LCD Soundsystem now retired from the road, it looks like Cut Copy have assumed the mantle of forcing us all to uncross our arms and embody the phrase, “Come on, vogue.” For better or for worse, certainly.

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The Set That Sounded Like a Shot In the Arm: HEALTH
All of the tension-building “I wonder what Tyler’s gonna do!?” talk leading up to Odd Future’s mid-afternoon set made the anticipation for it far more exciting than the hip-hop collective’s one-dimensional music: a crowd-riling combo of blustery rhymes and cold-pressed beats that stops being provocative when you realize it’s really the work of immature kids who’ve capitalized on the pressing need for music to say something — anything — that feels raw and real.

On the other side of the L.A. underground spectrum was HEALTH, a quartet that fuses fractured rhythms and epileptic noise with blissful melodies and an overt sense of losing one’s proverbial shit while in the company of others. No other band leaped off the deep end in a partially drained pool quite like these guys. Don’t believe me, though; believe the arm that de facto frontman Jake Duzsik busted open a couple songs in.

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Best Use of a Sea Foam-Colored Wig: Twin Sister
Ever wonder what it’d be like to watch a tattooed elf front one of Brooklyn’s most promising indie rock bands? Go see a Twin Sister show.

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Metal We Can All Relate To: Kylesa
Aside from the aforementioned HEALTH, very few artists at the Pitchfork Festival could be classified as “brutal,”  “crushing,” or “music-that’d-make-your-mom-cover-her-ears-and-wonder-what’s-wrong-with-you.” Georgia’s crustiest peaches were one exception to the weekend’s overriding passive but pleasant rule (a.k.a. the P4K Principle), delivering a course on how to convert a field of skinny indie kids to the dark side. Which makes perfect sense in the scheme of things — Kylesa’s latest album, Spiral Shadow, is as close extreme music gets to writing a Built to Spill record. Extra points go to guitarist/singer Phillip Cope for somehow incorporating a thermin into their piston-powered mix.

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If Only 1 P.M. Really Meant 1 A.M.: Darkstar
Or 11 at the very least, which is what I witnessed the next day at the trio’s first headlining gig in New York. Unlike the paranoid android bent of their North LP and the K-hole lapses in their lumbering Chicago set, Darkstar in a dimly lit club amounts to a slow descent into the blackened heart of decidedly British music — a rather wonderful world of  steam-pressed beats, lethargic BPM rates, and the kind of vocals you expect to hear from Thom Yorke when he’s trying to be down with producers like Four Tet and Flying Lotus. No wonder why the group just got signed to Warp.

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A Groove-Locked Return To Form: Battles
If you’re like me and didn’t quite get the glistening post-everything vibe of Gloss Drop, Battles’ first Tyondai-less record, you absolutely have to see their live show. Now pared down to a power trio, they’re like a marching band stomping on the ashes of a man-made apocalypse.

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Sloppiness As an Artistic Statement: Guided By Voices
While I still don’t know what a “Tractor Rape Train” entails — frankly, I don’t want to know — GBV’s crypt-cracking rendition of that indie rock standard was reason enough to celebrate the band’s recent reunion and forgive Robert Pollard’s blood alcohol level.

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An Excuse To Hump the Nearest Subwoofer: James Blake
I’m still on the fence about how James Blake went from being one of the UK’s most promising dance producers to the country’s greatest chance at cracking the F&F (Frappucino & Feist) market. But the heavy bass lines in songs like “The Wilhelm Scream?” That’s a religious experience waiting to happen right there.

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“Finally!”: The collective, albeit brief sigh of Animal Collective fans
You know, there comes a time in an band’s career where they’ve gotta decide if they’re going to write and perform the purest music possible — songs they want to play — or simply give their growing fanbase what they want. Animal Collective chose the former path a while ago, always opting to rehearse unreleased material in public over replicating familiar singles like “My Girls” and “Fireworks.” And that’s fine; welcome, really, as I absolutely hate hearing pitch-perfect renditions of a record I could hear at home for free. That said, when these unlikely indie stars cut through the tension with a track we all know (see: “Did You See the Words?” on Friday night), the result is downright magical. If they did that for a whole hour, heads would most likely explode.

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Dude, What’s With the Incense?: Woods
If there was ever any doubt about whether Woods are hippies at heart, tape manipulator G. Lucas Crane squashed it by cleansing the evil spirits Neko Case apparently left behind the night before with freshly lit sticks of incense. Music wise, the Upstate-based space cadets set the afternoon off right with honey-dipped hints of Neil Young and — yes, really — the Grateful Dead.

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Talk About Doing Whatever the Hell You Want: Ariel Pink
How Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti band are able to keep up with his seemingly nonsensical actions as a “frontman” — carrying around a mixer for no particular reason, screaming into a headset that could have been loaned from Britney Spears — is anyone’s guess. The guy’s idea of putting on a show is like karaoke in front of a live studio audience, and yet, he’s captivating in a train wreck sort of way.  That is until he takes what he’s doing seriously and plays relatively straight versions of standout songs like “Round and Round” and “Bright Lit Blue Skies.” Then he reveals what he’s really like under all the art-damaged posturing: a total pop auteur.

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Wait, He’s Working With a String Quartet Now?: How To Dress Well
Tom Krell has a reputation for being a godawful live performer, the kind of guy who spends an hour sound-checking a laptop and his microphone. At least that’s the way things used to be. Now he’s suddenly performing with a full-on string quartet that helps him translate his phantasmagoric R&B songs in a way that doesn’t feel like watching a lanky hipster sing off-key R. Kelly covers in his bedroom. He’s still not amazing by any means, but not-exactly-amazing is obviously better than so bad you want to hit the guy.

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The Stage Dive Heard ‘Round the World: Tyler, the Creator
As I mentioned above, Odd Future’s set showed that their youth-in-revolt sound is better suited to a small club than a festival stage. That said, I can appreciate their fearless leader’s dedication to giving the kids what they want — namely him stage-diving with a cast-sheathed broken leg.

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Chillwave? What’s That?: Toro Y Moi
Here’s the thing about Chaz Bundick: like his close friend Washed Out, he’s a consummate entertainer that knows how to turn his sepia-toned pop songs into a B-roll episode of Dancing With the Stars. That was true when it was simply him and a laptop, and it’s even clearer now that he’s fronting a full band that’s got as much to do with classic funk and disco than anything that could be classified as “chill.”

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And You Thought You Were Hot: Cold Cave
Lest you think that Cold Cave frontman Wesley Eisold and his synth-slinging cohort Dominick Fernow (see also: Prurient) aren’t devoted to their own special brand of abject darkness, the duo was wearing nothing but black and leather in 90-degree heat. Oh yeah — they also finally figured out how to transform Eisold’s bedroom project beginnings into a real deal band, one that’d appeal to Depeche Mode fans and those of us who fall asleep listening to Wolf Eyes.

(Photo: Sam Kieldsen)

“You are seeing the classic line-up,” Robert Pollard chided playfully, “You’re not seeing the bad line-up. That’s when my brother was in the band.” And on Saturday night a classic line-up of the prolific Guided By Voices gave a blissful and uninhibited performance as part of this year’s Northside Festival.  The 35+ song set (I lost track after the third encore) heavily relied on the GBV’s ’92-’95 beloved releases (Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes were equally covered and Propeller was a close second).  The band was tight and matched the crowd in exuberance as they ceaselessly churned out a no-filler performance – “Watch Me Jumpstart,” “I Am A Scientist,” “A Salty Salute,” “Game of Pricks” were all on the setlist.

The band’s contagious energy left not a scowling foot-tapper in sight. Polo-clad bros and rock photographers pumped their fists and sang “c’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon the cluuuub is open” in unbridled unity; concert-goers giddily grinned at each other and drank a thousand beers. The Ohioans’ on-stage acrobatics were nothing short of engaging: Bob Pollard slammed a bottle of Jose Cuervo all night, shimmied seductively, and scissor kicked when particularly delighted.  Guitarist Mitch Mitchell bopped back and forth and smoked with an unparalleled zeal while bassist Greg Demos worked himself into a sweaty frenzy, emphatically wind-milling most of his bass lines.

In tandem with the classics, the night’s hard-hitting moments were the somber selections from the band’s discography. “Always Crush Me” was starkly poetic and “Unleashed! Large-Hearted Boy” was earnest and moody.  As the sun set, King Shit & the Golden boys slurred into the most moving moments of the night – a stirring, stripped rendition of “Don’t Stop Now” followed by the expansively summery “Smothered in Hugs.” After profusely thanking Brooklyn, the night wound down with a swaying “Weedking,” leaving the reluctant crowd alone but beaming in the afterglow.

On its surface, a music festival dedicated to indie rock held in Brooklyn seems, speaking generously, redundant. Because the borough boasts a great number of venues – both sanctioned and otherwise – and because it’s also become the home for creative types with an unconventional view on “office hours,” rock shows of all style are hardly in short supply. To put it another way: you could call a series of shows taking place mostly on or around Bedford Avenue the Northside Festival, or you could call it a Tuesday night.

So it’s all the more remarkable that this year’s Festival felt not only relevant but exciting, a fact owing largely to its meticulous curation and an almost dogmatic dedication to showcasing a particular approach to pop music. At a time when anyone can have a professional-grade recording studio on their laptop, the decision to bury sterling hooks beneath piles of hiss and distortion is more of an aesthetic decision than a budgetary one. There’s a kind of combativeness implicit in this approach; the bulk of the bands playing the festival seemed to be intentionally limiting their audience to those who didn’t require their songs to be spit-shined or gussied up. This approached proved surprisingly all-encompassing, taking in the dreamy, if occasionally listless, indiepop of Seapony, the bash-and-bruise power punk of Reports and the droning blankwave of Carlos Giffoni. The loudest bands tended to fare best. With their serrated guitars and throat-shredding shrieks, Lost Tribe seemed to be at times channeling the Birthday Party, delivering a set high both menace and power. The buzzed-about Danish group Iceage, in town for their first U.S. performance, delivered a brutish 20-minute set built on their dead-eyed, hammering take on hardcore. On Saturday Guided by Voices – the patron saints of painstakingly scuffed-up power pop – delivered a boozy two-hour set with a heavy focus on the albums they made from 1993 to 1996 – albums that sketched a template many of the other bands playing the festival religiously followed. [Yelena will have a more extensive review of this performance later this afternoon.]

Concluding the festival on Sunday night was a performance by Deervana – the Rhode Island band Deer Tick playing a full set of Nirvana covers. In a way, this was appropriate: Nirvana was the last band to ride the kind of aesthetic ideals valued by many of the bands playing the festival to massive commercial success. Deervana’s presence also allowed for some welcome contradiction. Fewer things are scorned more regularly or viciously than cover bands, but because Deer Tick also write and perform their own songs – and good ones, at that – they manage to slyly shimmy off the hook of kitsch. Their performance as Deervana was so exhilarating that at times it was hard to believe they were merely acting a part. Vocalist John McCauley’s voice is an eerie ringer for Kurt Cobain’s, and they attacked the more bilious portions of the Nirvana catalog – particularly “Scentless Apprentice” and “In Bloom” — with stunning ferocity. The crowd responded with a mixture of ecstasy and anarchy, taking visible, physical joy in note-perfect performances of songs many of them never expected they’d ever hear live. If it felt a bit cloying at times, who cares? The army of voices gloriously belting out the chorus of “Lithium” proved that even the most stubborn aesthetes are not above the occasional guilty pleasure.

So Bonnaroo starts tomorrow, four days of baking in the sun, traipsing barefoot through fetid pools of mud and garbage, and trying to figure out if it’s way too hot out for you to eat a (surprisingly affordable) fried alligator sandwich.

I’ve been to Bonnaroo before, but I stayed in a hotel and rented a car to drive to and from the festival — you know, like a human being. It has its pros! It has its cons! I, for one, will never forget the goggle-eyed and clearly dehydrated teenager who stumbled up to me at about 2 in the morning after the Flaming Lips set to ask me if I had any acid (My response: “Are you sure that’s the best choice for you right now?”) Still, though, I can’t deny that there were some genuinely memorable moments — freaking out to LCD Soundsystem at 3am; watching the National slowly win over a huge crowd; getting unbelievably excited by a (who’d a thunk it?) great, classics-heavy Weezer set.

This year, the lineup is as diverse as ever, so we’ve put together a guide designed to tell you who to see and who to run back to your hotel and shower during. If you are one of the lunatics who are camping, I hope you are camping in a kiddie pool that you replenish with fresh water every day.

Read our picks for this year’s Bonnaroo here.

By now, you’ve had some time to absorb the glory of Fleet Foxes second album, Helplessness Blues, and are probably more than ready to hear how the band handles its grandeur live. Well, our friends at NPR Music have just the thing — tonight at 9:30 pm EST, they’ll be broadcasting a live stream of the group’s show from the Stubb’s in Austin. If you want to recreate the experience fully, sit outside, grab a barbecue sandwich and an ice cold Tecate, close your eyes and soak in the Pecknold.

Polly Harvey looked like a ghost on stage at New York’s Terminal 5 Tuesday night, her tiny body lost inside a billowing white gown, shock of black hair sprouting a host of haphazardly-arranged raven’s feathers, her hands, when they weren’t cradling an autoharp, positioned stiffly at her sides. At times, she sounded like one, too: drawing predominately from her masterful recent record Let England Shake Harvey, supported by a spare band that included longtime sidemen John Parish and Warren Ellis, sang of murdered soldiers and deformed children and wronged lovers lying ice-cold and face-up in the water. It felt more like a séance than a rock concert.

Sustained eeriness suits Harvey. She spent the early part of her career famously lashing out at enemies both internal and external in songs that, at times, seemed written from the edge of sanity. On England, she directs that ire toward both her homeland and the world at large, calculating the cost of war with a deadly, controlled coldness. It’s not for nothing that when a well-intentioned but slightly misguided audience member yelled out “End the occupation of Afghanistan!” early in the show, another one yelled back at him “Lick my legs,” a line from Harvey’s “Rid of Me.” Both conflicts spring from the same uneasy source.

Tuesday’s show may have been quiet, but it was potent and unnerving. Harvey’s voice, when pushed far into the upper register, takes on an unnatural and unsettling timbre, icy and jabbing on show opener “Let England Shake,” sinister and desperate on “The Pocket Knife,” and on “Written on the Forehead” spiraling as if dizzy and disoriented. Throughout, the songs remained spectral and spooky, Harvey’s voice winding its weird way through the band’s lean, mercilessly tense arrangements.

But what the show underscored more than anything else was the conceptual nature of Harvey’s work. At times, it felt as controlled and scripted as a theater piece: Harvey spoke not a word to the audience, and the band moved from song to song so purposefully and effortlessly that the show could have been just one night in a six-month engagement. That dedication to method is in keeping with Harvey’s history. It’s worth noting that, for her first few records, PJ Harvey was not only her own name, but also the name of her band — a trick that slyly undermined the notion that her songs were in any way personal. The milieu in which she was working — brittle, blues-derived punk rock centering on Harvey’s searing voice — was chosen because it suited her subject matter. As time passed, she became restless, tearing down PJ Harvey whole cloth and rebuilding with each new record and working within a specific and limited roster of elements. The handful of older songs she played on Tuesday seemed deliberately tailored — both sonically and lyrically — to suit her latest construct. All of them were written from the perspective of people who were weak or vulnerable or wronged — the aggrieved single mother of “C’mon Billy,” the heartsick protagonists of “Down By the Water,” and “Angelene” — and who may or may not have met with violent ends. They’re not very different from the slain soldiers limping up the center of Let England Shake, they’re just victims of different wars. For all of them, the promise of release is elusive. “I’ve heard there’s joy untold,” Harvey sang near the end of “Angelene,” “lays open like a road in front of me.” In Harvey’s current narrative, paradise is just a rumor, whispered down the lane. All that is real is disturbing.

(Photo: Tamara Porras)

There was only one place to see economics professors, proper skinheads and Jersey’s teen punx crowd-surfing in unity on Saturday night. The Dead Milkmen show at the Warsaw was brimming with grinning fans, all of them eagerly expecting the return of punk’s prodigal satirists. This was the band’s second New York gig since their 2008 reunion, this time in support of a new album – The King in Yellow (available for digital download on the band’s site).

The Milkmen came out jangly, funky and tighter than ever. They ripped through fan favorites from Beelzebuba (1988) and Big Lizard In My Back Yard (1985), launching with a triple threat: “V.F.W.”, “Nutrition” and the band’s homage to bipolar mania, “I Walk The Thinnest Line.” Lead singer Rodney Anonymous, decked out in a cowboy hat and hand-crafted goggles, frantically ran between the crowd and the keyboard and ranted about VNV Nation and Rolling Stone Magazine.  Joe Jack Talcum, the Milkmen’s wryer vocalist and lead-guitarist, hung back and shrieked so hard his eyes crossed.

And, yes, they did play “Bitchin’ Camaro” and “Punk Rock Girl,” for the tender-hearted brats. And, yes, every homely couple making out during “Punk Rock Girl” got kicked in the head.  The night’s highlight, however, came out of left field. The Milkmen were in the heat of their anguish anthem (and personal favorite) “Life is Shit” when they tore into a deft and furious cover of Sonic Youth’s “Death Valley ’69,” abandoning their signature snotty, staccato rhythm for a moment of moody fuzz and dissonant vocals.

The reception of the band’s new material was difficult to gauge.  It was familiar but too topical – one of the new tracks is an outdated lament about Norah Jones. The crowd’s reaction was lukewarm, albeit friendly. They swayed politely and smiled, patiently waiting for “Smokin’ Banana Peels” so their limbs and fists could erupt again.

The performances from our SXSW Day Party continue today — here’s Grass Widow performing the excellent “Lulu’s Lips”!

Those Darlins are a quartet of Tennesseans who write rowdy, jangly, country-tinged songs about getting drunk and eating a whole chicken and staying up until “stupid late-o’clock,” with song titles like “Be Your Bro,” “Snaggle Tooth Mama” and “Fatty Needs a Fix.”

At Bowery Ballroom last Friday, they showed off their new look and sound with a set heavy on tracks from their sophomore LP Screws Get Loose (out today on the band’s own Oh Wow Dang label). The new tunes are a bit more polished, with fancier outfits to match (guitarist Jessi wore a gold-sequined one-piece with patterned tights). Thankfully, the surface changes have absolutely no effect whatsoever on their attitude: They’re still one of the best acts to watch, and even the songs that are a bit calmer on record are quicker and dirtier on stage. The group is currently on tour with Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears (who put out their awesome Scandalous LP last week); so check out their MySpace page to see if they’re coming to a city near you in the next couple of months.

One of both the strange upsides and unfortunate downsides of South by Southwest is that it seems to take place in a vacuum — for a week straight, the world is reduced to the intersection of 6th Street and Red River in Austin, and it’s easy to pretend there is little happening outside it. Occasionally, though, reality intervenes: This year’s festival happened in the shadow of global catastrophe — the tsunami and subsequent nuclear instability in Japan, outbreaks of violence in Yemen and, finally, the military intervention in Libya, all of which goes a long way to make a music festival in Austin — no matter the scope — seem insignificant.

Continue reading SXSW 2011: Days 3 and 4 Report