Day 3: Sunday, July 15th****All my pictures****
The third and final day of Pitchfork's Festival kicked off with a bang, with the shockingly-confident Deerhunter striding out on stage. At first, I had thought they had bought into their own hype. Then they started playing.
The wondrous, shoe-gaze-esk roll of thunder erupted from the speakers in such a way I had never heard before. They were loud, but beautiful, setting up a semi-ambient tone for the show that everyone went nuts for. Maybe everyone else was like us and had traveled miles and miles on planes, trains, and automobiles for the chance to see some music, and a little tired, were awoken and excited for the day by the cadaverously-skinny Bradford Cox. The strident-confidence previously mentioned added to the performance in that I wasn't sure if Mr. Cox was human when he walked out on stage, and, without further adieu, jumped right into his music. He said "Thanks" after the roaring applause about 2 songs in, confirming he wasn't an alien, but still, a strange, wonderful, talented man...
And then, towards the finale, Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear himself walked to the side of the stage to play alongside the band. He got very little attention, as I'm sure he hoped to. I love you Ed.
Forget anything I've ever said about Deerhunter being "hyped". Pitchfork wasn't kidding, they are incredible. Cheers to them, and cheers to Deerhunter for starting off the day so brilliantly.
After that, we carried on over to The Pony's. This was the first band of the day to be hindered severely by irritating sound problems, but not the last. Though, this was definitely the most frustrating of the day, as The Pony's played so well. Chunks of songs would come through only their amps and the main speakers taking a break. Grr...
But, still a very enjoyable performance nonetheless. We moved back to the previous stage to catch Menomena.
I feel like I'm the only one who's a new fan of Menomena. Everyone else I ask seems to have liked them forevor. I didn't really catch up with them until their recent album. I felt a bit left out as I hadn't heard most of their shit before that day, but they made a fan of me. They were weird, funky, and most of all fun, so I'm sure I wouldn't have enjoyed it any more had I heard every last track they'd ever recorded. The band resembles Grizzly Bear in a way that instruments get tossed around for each song and each member pulls their weight perfectly. No man slacked off, and they all put on a great performance.
Later in the day, we saw a bit of Stephen Malkmus, who failed to disappoint. Though not particularly grabbing, all that I had heard about his voice was given weight in person: It IS beautiful.
We ran over to the gathering crowd and waited anxiously for Of Montreal. Some funny banners were brought out on stage showing a Mexican wrestler and a boxer receiving a K.O. and a mouthful of loose teeth and blood, and then a large wrestling themed banner with the bands name written across. Goofy, but we loved it.
Of Montreal put on quite a show. Complete with crab-kings being suspended in the air by the new-kid in the band and a Darth Vadar, a juice-distributing gold-painted seductress, a 5 balloon-headed character, and some sort of... masked S&M monkey-man? That's what I picked it up as... whatever. Kevin Barnes made plenty of costume changes on stage, and eventually ended up slowly removing his dominatrix uniform. A guitarist was dressed as a boa-packing angel with mascara eyes. Oh yah, they played music too!
They played most of their newer favorite stuff, mostly the electronically-guided material rather then their 60's pop tunes of earlier albums. Not entirely disappointing though, as it probably would have slowed down the half-hour of intensity.
Immediately after, we saw The New Pornographers. A.C. Newman was present, but Neko Case had to be replaced by A.C.'s niece, who did a pretty dead-ringer Neko-voice. It was a very enjoyable show too, playing plenty of favorites, and A.C. being a hilarious lead. They got some serious chuckles and made the crowd happy. A great way to end a great festival.
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