Monday, July 23, 2012

Pitchfork Music Festival 2012

My 4th year going to this awesome festival.  I wish I could say consecutive, but I did skip a year, dammit.  I say awesome because it's just the right size, because I need to research most of the performers, and it's Chicago!  This year we found a "quaint" bed & breakfast in Boys Town and stayed Thursday through Monday.  Very casual with timing, which was really nice.  We leisurely made our way to the festival each day, but there near the start for each of them.

Pitchfork Music Festival 2012

Pitchfork Music Festival 2012

Friday we started out with Olivia Tremor Control, A$AP Rocky, Big K.R.I.T..  The rain backed up the schedule by an hour, but stages seemed to vary, so it was hard to keep up with who was playing when.  I was glad we caught Big K.R.I.T. because I'm enjoying his southern Rap style.  Dirty Projectors weren't bad, but they had NO stage presence, and didn't quite make up for that in other ways.  We swung by the Blue stage to see Purity Ring who sounded amazing, but only swung by to catch a tune of Feist before leaving.

Pitchfork Music Festival 2012

Saturday was the big day.  We made sure to be there in time for our own Cloud Nothings - which ended up being the show of the festival.  The rain came down at the end of their set and killed power, to which they remained energized and performed acoustically to a crowd who never gave up.  Moments like that make Festivals.  Read a better account over at I Rock Cleveland. From there we caught some Atlas Sound (meh.) and then Cults - who Matt was quite excited for.  Something fell flat with them.  Only caught a bit more of Youth Lagoon (yet again) and just camped out at the Blue Stage for a while.  We stayed through Nicholas Jaar, then back out for Wild Flag, back to blue for Schoolboy Q and back out for Sleigh Bells (HOB was better).  Back to blue for the Chromatics (sounded great!) but only for a second because I didn't want to miss Hot Chip and was planning on the Chromatics after-party (which ended up being sold out) :-(.  Hot chip was a PARTY.  This night ended (oddly) with GRIMES back at the Blue stage, but wasn't compelling enough to stay to the end.

Pitchfork Music Festival 2012

Sunday we started early with an excellent A Lull and then to Unknown Mortal Orchestra.  We took a break for posters, then was back to catch Ty Segall on the same stage - with some excellent crowd surfing. We then bounced from Real Estate to Kendrick Lamar, but were in the back and missed the Gaga debacle.  We then just hung out in the main area for AraabMuzik (fun), Beach House (good) but decided to bail on Vampire Weekend.  Probably a mistake, but I've seen them before (at Pitchfork!), and it was a long weekend.

Pitchfork Music Festival 2012

Overall - I already can't wait for next year.

No comments:

Post a Comment