P4K 2K7

This weekend I went to Chicago to visit my sister and bring some good old-fashioned East Coast elitism for the second annual hipster geek-off known as the Pitchfork Music Festival. If I were a true music snob and a better amateur journalist, I would have gone to all three days and given a more complete report, but with my current work schedule, all I could manage was the last day.














Here's the rundown. . .

2:15 (Menomena)

We make it in slightly later than I had hoped, and we all realize that we forgot to pull any cash out, so we hit up the mile-long ATM line. I hear Menomena in the distance, so I ditch Claire, Evan, and Joe (who seem strangely less concerned than I am to hear this band) to get in on some of the action. The band is in full form and it doesn't seem like I've missed much. They play through most of the tracks and Friend & Foe with surprising ease, rapidly jumping from one instrument to another and occasionally falling back on their laptop to reproduce the bands brand of densely-layered sound collage.














3:00 (Junior Boys)

I rejoin my party, who have finally made it to the front of the line at the ATM. We then proceed to wade into the crowd for Canadian electro-pop minimalists, Junior Boys. The band takes the stage with singer/guitarist/bass player Jeremy Greenspan taking point as his partner-in-crime Johnny Black takes the side of the stage, hiding behind a beard, sunglasses, and a full array of drum machines and keyboards that all indicate that he's much too fucking cool to be here. They also bring in some jobber on the drums to give a greater sense of "liveness" to the set and give Black's drum machines a break. Claire remarks that Greenspan, who is clad in a white polo shirt and jeans, and looks like he's probably going to try and catch a Cubs game after the set, seems much too pedestrian to be on this stage. I concur. The group effortlessly glides through their set, maintaining a hypnotic beat with gentle washes of noise and cold, distant vocals that recall Low-Life era New Order or a slightly less homoerotic Pet Shop Boys, and make me wish I was sipping martinis in a poorly lit Soho lounge now instead of having the sun beat down on me in a beer-soaked park in Central Chicago.






























4:00 (Sea and Cake)

We head over to the other main stage to see The Sea and Cake, who I've only vaguely listened to, but who are from Chicago, so I feel obligated to see. After the cool, laid-back vibe of the Junior Boys, I need something with some energy. The Sea and Cake, sadly, do not come through. The band is generally classified as post-rock, which, as a genre, is really the kind of music that you can only listen to in college, when you're still stoned or naive enough to think that music should be more intelligent that it is affecting. So as much as I appreciate the band's experimental rhythm and chord structures, I can't help but being a little bored. So, after a few songs, we all head to the other side of the park for a breather and some shade.














4:30 (Four-Square)

In the portion of the street that has been sectioned off to contain the festival, some hipster kids are throwing down on a pickup game of four-square, so we sit down on a shady patch of grass and watch on with equal parts amusement and nostalgia. The game amasses a sizable following and the kids put down some tape, pull out a second ball, and expand their operation to allow for two games at once. If it hasn't happened already, I fully expect to see a four-square tournament at the next McCarren Pool event alongside the usual half-ironic hipster past-times of slip-n-slide and dodgeball. Evan's hangover from the previous night's drinking seems to be kicking in now and he passes out on the grass, so, like the good friend I am, I leave it to Claire and Joe to make sure he wakes up for Stephen Malkmus, while I head off to see some of Jamie Lidell's set, which I can hear starting in the distance.

























































5:15 (Jaime Lidell)

I've listened to the Canadian faux-soul singer/beatmaker's most recent album and found it quite enjoyable, but it definitely doesn't do justice to Lidell's live show. I expect him to bring at least some kind of band, but am happy to see him flying solo, clad in some sort of East-Asian robe, a head-dress made of metallic gold streamers, and thick, black-rimmed glasses. So I watch on, as he whips up some insane beats and loops vocal harmonies live on stage, while singing with the soul of a man of many more years and a considerably darker complexion.














5:45 (Flatstock Poster Convention)

I reconnect with my party, but before we get going, I make it a point to check out the area where they have the Flatstock poster convention going on, where I get to check out a ton of amazing posters to a bunch of great shows that I didn't attend. I really wished I wasn't broke, so I could have bought more, but I was quite satisfied with the kick-ass Lily Allen poster I bought.














6:00 (Stephen Malkmus)

Slacker-troubadour Stephen Malkmus (sans Jicks) takes the stage, and, in true slacker form, he seems a bit underprepared. Claire and Joe find his meandering song structures and lack of accompaniment boring, and head to the other stage to see old-school hip-hop revivalists the Cool Kids (who were, reportedly, very cool). Me and Evan find Malkmus's laid back demeanor and occasional slip-ups amusing and endearing, so we continue watching. He plays mostly what I assume is his solo material, since I don't recognize it, but as soon he kicks into the guitar intro to "Spit on a Stranger" I become giddy like a school girl. He's eventually joined by former Pavement pseudo-member Bob Nastanovich on drums, who does a lot to fill out the songs (despite the fact that they ostensibly didn't rehearse beforehand). The acoustic version of "Trigger Cut/Wounded Kite" is quite enjoyable, and Malkmus singing both the call and response parts on "In the Mouth of a Desert" has to be one of my personal highlights of the day.





























7:00 (Of Montreal)

Of Montreal takes the stage, in what seems to be the most eagerly anticipated performance of the day. Since I saw them two months back, I pretty much know what to expect. Kevin Barnes is decked out in full glam regalia. Guitarist A.C. Forrester is wearing his usual ensemble of a silver robe, frayed pink angel wings, and 3D glasses, and might be my personal hero. The on-stage theatrics are (as always) indescribably weird, but pretty amazing as such, and the guys in wearing helmets and shoulder pads, throwing golden footballs into the audience are pleasant surprise. The audience, who seem to be mostly unfamiliar with Barnes's onstage antics, appear a bit shocked when he leaves the stage for a moment and comes out in a leather hat/bustier combo that would make the members of the Village People blush (showing considerable restraint, he does manage to leave his thong on for the duration of the show). They try out some new material that's decent, but essentially sounds like b-sides off Heimdalsgate, and the audience is treated to an unexpected encore of the band doing the Kinks' "All Day and All of the Night".



































































8:00 (New Pornographers)

In case it isn't obvious at this point, the nation of Canada is extremely well-represented today by bands that either come from north of the border or want to pretend that they do (since I apparently only see shows of Cannuck bands anymore). Closing out the festival's Canadian bloc, the New Pornographers take the stage and represent for good, old-fashioned, saccharine pop music, providing some comfort, and an anchor in this sea of eccentric art rockers. The band keeps it upbeat and anthemic, playing primarily tunes off Twin Cinema, as well as a few from the heretofore unreleased Challengers. The band sounds excellent, though I'm a bit disappointed to find that Neko Case couldn't make it. The girl they have bringing up the female vocals is quite adorable and sings well, but "Mass Romantic" just isn't the same without that signature Neko twang. Predictably, they close with "The Bleeding Heart Show" and send chills down the collective spine of the audience (and gives me the inexplicable urge to go back to school).














9:00 (Klaxons)

We are now faced with a bit of a conundrum. De La Soul or Klaxons? I suppose De La Soul are technically the headliners, but since Claire and Evan both have strong anglophile musical leanings, and me and Evan have both seen De La Soul before, we decide that the Klaxons is the better bet, and I do not regret that decision. They open with a few weak songs, but after they warm up (and down a few beers), these Urban Outfitters poster-boys rock the house. Following a day of intellectually-stimulating, excessively-tasteful art music, it felt good to see a group of bratty, drunken kids from across the pond bringing some loud, hissing dance punk with obnoxious rock-star posturing to match (even if most of their lyrics seem to involve one or more inane references to a postmodern literary figure). The chain-link fences on either side and Chicago street lights in the background only added to the ambiance, and provided an excellent conclusion to the day's festivities.















Cheers to the folks at Pitchfork for keeping it cheap, putting on a great show, and making music geekdom enjoyable and accessible for the masses. I just hope I can go for the full weekend next year.

Still OK. . .

Before I leave tomorrow for Chicago to attend the music geek circle jerk known as the Pitchfork Music Festival, I'd like to wax nostalgic for a bit, since it's recently come to my attention that this month marks the 10th anniversary of the release of what is probably the most significant album for nerds of my generation, and arguably the last great rock album. While music critics have certainly written enough on OK Computer to fill volumes and consistently vault it to the top of numerous "best of" lists, I think it's probably worth going back and reevaluating it with some hindsight and a slightly more seasoned ear than I had when I first listened to it in eighth grade.

Historically speaking, 1997 was a pop cultural no man's land. Whatever energy the rise of indie rock and grunge had in the eighties and early nineties had long since sputtered out and mainstream hip-hop had become nothing short of a complete farce (or a heartbreaking tragedy, depending on who you ask). The pop culture void had not yet been filled by boy bands, pop punk, emo, and rap-metal, leaving room for all sorts of oddities, from Hanson to the Spice Girls to that bizarre two-week period when 1940s big band music was apparently hip. And yet I still remained a slave to modern rock radio. So (though it pains me to admit it) my favorite albums at the time were probably Everclear's Sparkle and Fade, and the self-titled albums by 311 and Collective Soul. Fortunately, "The Edge," our local modern rock station (and apparently the universal name for alterna-rock stations across the country), still had something resembling a spine, and played OK Computer's first single, "Paranoid Android" in light rotation (a fairly bold move for a structureless song with sporadic time signature changes, clocking in at well over six minutes). That Christmas, with "Karma Police" out as the somewhat more accessible follow-up single, I convinced my mom to get me the album for Christmas. Of course I didn't much know what the lyrics meant. I wasn't exactly sure what yuppies were, or why I was supposed to hate them, but I knew that the people making this music were much smarter than me and that I couldn't get it out of my head, which I seemed to believe entitled me to a smug sense of self-superiority that I apparently still carry with me.

Looking back on it now, I certainly don't believe OK Computer to be the flawless masterpiece I once did. The lyrics are often more whiny than they are ethereal, and the album's ironic send-ups of bourgeois conformity seem naive in their simplicity. Though it remains one of my all-time favorite songs, the lyrics of "Paranoid Android" read like the angsty adolescent poetry of an over-privileged child that's too smart for his own good, and Thom Yorke would probably cringe at the number of times I've listened to "No Surprises" (sans-irony) as a form of musical Zoloft to wind down or help me fall asleep. Casting my twentysomething hipster gaze on this album, it seems that the best songs are actually it's most abstract and difficult to pin down. The crescendo at the end of "Exit Music (For a Film)" still gives me the chills, and "Let Down," which I used to dismiss for the simple fact that it sounds like a conventional rock song, I can now accept for being brilliant as such.

Perhaps the greatest testament to this album is the breadth of bands that claim influence (or, in some cases, deny influence, despite the obvious similarity). Mainstream British rock acts from Muse to Travis to Coldplay are forever indebted to the Thom Yorke falsetto for making whining sound cool, while at the same time, ardent indie music critics will consistently include this album in their canon of all-time great albums, despite the fact that it was released on Capitol Records and played on both mainstream radio and MTV. The indie fascists at Pitchforkmedia still voted it the best album of the 1990s, and last week Stereogum celebrated the album's decennial by enlisting some of their favorite bands you've never heard of to do covers of each of the album's twelve songs.

I'm glad to know that, if nothing else, OK Computer will go down in history as one of those things, like Andy Warhol and Quentin Tarentino, that all college students of a certain age and disposition will discover and worship for a while, then move on to whatever flavor-of-the-week indie band CMJ is plugging at the time.

O Canada

After years of musical atrocities committed against the United States, the nation of Canada is finally trying to make amends. Though it will certainly take decades for America to recover from the damage done by many years of enduring hit singles from Avril Livigne, Good Charlotte and Nickelback, there is hope for reconciliation. Celine Dion has been exiled to the deserts of Nevada, and, just this past weekend in Brooklyn, in observance of Canada Day, the Canadian Consulate put on a program of some of the best indie rock that Canada has to offer.

Unfortunately I had misjudged how long it would take to get to Prospect Park, so I had to kick myself for coming in at the end of Malajube's set (though I have no doubt that, had this not been an outdoor concert, they would certainly have blown the roof off that sucker). They're one of those bands that should really be much more popular in America than they are, but due to a combination of an almost unpronouncable name, an inability to speak English, and an inherent weirdness that seems to only exist north of the border (you'll notice in this picture that the lead singer is wearing the head-section of a monkey costume), they'll probably never achieve the popularity of their Anglophone peers. This is especially unfortunate, since they're easily one of the most energetic live bands I've ever seen. I guess I should just be happy I can see them without going through the bullshit I had to to get Arcade Fire tickets.















For those of you who don't know, Canada Day is like the Canadian version the 4th of July (which happens to fall on the 1st of July), except that, while we cowboy Americans celebrate the day we fought the British into submission and secured our full independence, the Canadians celebrates the day they asked the British Parliament really nicely and convinced them to grant Canada partial sovereignty. So, like most things Canadian, it's pretty much just a lamer, more wholesome version of it's American counterpart, which is about what I was expecting of the other two bands on this bill, but was happy to find was not the case.















I read an Esquire article a few months back claiming that Sam Roberts is possibly the "greatest rock'n'roll front-man working today." Like all good music criticism, this was a bit of an overstatement, though not entirely unfounded. The Sam Roberts band basically sounds like a more macho, less intelligent version of Wilco. I would have preferred to see them playing a smoke-filled bar in the deep south with a chicken wire-lined stage than at a Starbucks-sponsored outdoor concert in Brooklyn (the whole thing really just felt like I was watching a taping of Austin City Limits), though they definitely rocked.















Then finally, a square-looking old guy from the Canadian Consulate came out and gave a long spiel that nobody really paid attention to, and introduced the Stills. It seems as though the goal of whoever billed this show was to make each act seem progressively more familiar to the audience twentysomething hipsters and aging Park Slope parents that want to pretend that they're still twentysomething hipsters, going from full French-Canadian freak-out, to faux-Americana, to post-punk revivalism. And with their shaggy haircuts and jeans tight enough to ensure that no member of the band will be having children in the next decade, the band couldn't have been more at home. As soon as they went into "Still In Love Song" it was like instant nostalgia for hanging out at East Village dive bars circa two years ago. This was probably more like a homecoming than anything for the band who, to the best of my knowledge, were never popular in Canada until they came to New York and became the next Interpol (who, as far as I'm concerned, are still actually the next Strokes). Though, I must say, for a group of Canadians acting like New Yorkers that want to be British, they put on an excellent show.