Art Brut singer Eddie Argos surveyed the sweating, smiling, flailing crowd in the sweltering late-afternoon heat of Union Park last weekend and was pleased.
“I’d tell you to all go home and form a band,” said the singer who wrote an anthem called “Formed a Band,” “but that might be too many bands.”
Argos and Art Brut were right to be impressed by the sheer numbers that had turned out to see them and 40 other performers over the weekend at the first Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park. Despite oppressive heat, the Near West Side park found itself the center of the indie-rock universe Saturday and Sunday, with more than 36,000 fans attending from around the world.
This was not a typical rock festival, covered in corporate logos and requiring half-a-month’s rent for admission. This was a sold-out $20-a-day bargain-basement special, with bands handpicked by the Chicago-based Internet music e-zine Pitchfork. The e-zine editors (and their partner, Mike Reed) are not hardened concert promoters. They’re idealists. Editor in chief Ryan Schreiber looked as zealously enthralled with the music as many of the young fans he writes for, scurrying from stage to stage to snap pictures of his favorite bands with a small digital camera. But the festival was well-staffed and well-run, with enough shade and water to keep the fans from bottoming out in the heat.
Few casualties were reported. Two concertgoers were treated for heat exhaustion Sunday, Reed said. One performer, a member of the band Bonde Do Role, broke an arm while stage-diving and was taken to a hospital.
Argos, meanwhile, was without his trademark pencil-thin mustache, but have no fear — several fans had pasted on their own replicas. “Yes, I’ve seen [my mustache] running around,” Argos said with droll exasperation backstage. Oh, those irony-loving indie rock kids.
But for the moment, at least, Art Brut is the best band in the world. This may be news to the rest of the planet, where dinosaurs such as U2 and the Rolling Stones still roam. But, on Saturday, Argos’ Everyman humor hit home, from the funniest song ever about sexual dysfunction (“Rusted Guns of Milan”) to one of the funniest songs this year about the first flush of romance (“Good Weekend”), all played with machine-gun fervor by a band that knows how to swing behind a nasty guitar riff or three.
Just as potent was the Brit quartet the Futureheads, who played like their house was burning down. With three-part harmonies zooming over furiously strummed guitars and impossibly fast drumming, the Futureheads buzzed as if something more was at stake than trying to appear cool and aloof in the heat. Even their rapid-fire banter suggested that they just couldn’t wait to jump into the next song.
The festival didn’t just cater to the new. It also brought some long-underappreciated bands the audience they have long deserved. These included Brazilian legends Os Mutantes, who closed the festival and their first North American tour Sunday night. Boston postpunkers Mission of Burma likely played before more fans Sunday than they had in their entire first incarnation, 1979-83. The favor was returned with a set as scorching as the weather; Clint Conley’s power-tool bass, Roger Miller’s caustic guitar and Peter Prescott’s unrelenting drums demonstrated that Burma Mach II is every bit the equal of the ’80s version.
Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman was greeted as a conquering hero, as much for his breezily orchestrated songs and active Internet presence as for the fact that his backing band consisted of six maidens in white. They made for a pristine presentation, as Lekman sang, “where the people are pleasant, where the music never ends.” In contrast, neo-folkie Devendra Banhart reveled in shambling, barefoot jug-band hippie-isms. Yes, it appears that after long being outcasts, the jam band kids have finally been invited to the indie-rock party. Far more focused was the intense wordplay of tag-teaming Aesop Rock and Mr. Lif, who punctuated each other’s dense rhymes with battle-tested enthusiasm. The National delivered one of the more profoundly disturbing and moving sets of the weekend, with guitar-stoked epiphanies perfect for hanging out in defiled catherdrals. “I’m so sorry for everything,” Matt Berninger intoned, as if repenting for sins he hadn’t even committed yet. It was riveting theater, even in the daylight.
A third stage expected to attract hundreds drew far more fans for a mix of hip-hop, electronic music and new-wave jazz. Hip-hoppers Spank Rock whipped a packed house into a dance frenzy, with fans joining the band onstage for a chaotic finale. Similarly over the top was Brazilian coed band CSS. With carnivalesque keyboards and a stage-diving singer in leopardskin tights, what’s not to like?
The Chicago Underground Duo (Rob Mazurek, Chad Taylor), offered a blueprint for the music’s future, with their mix of cornet, drums, vibes, thumb piano and electronics.
The joyously syncopated strut of 8 Bold Souls was particularly well received. Trumpeter Robert Griffin played call and response with two trumpets in his mouth, sometimes simultaneously. Trombonist Isiah Jackson found the funk inside the chords of “Shortin’ Bread.” Founder and saxophonist Ed Wilkerson grinned backstage. “A lot of people at this festival are looking for something different. I think they found it in there.”
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