Pitchfork Fest 2013

This year's Pitchfork Music Festival will take place July 19-21 in Chicago's Union Park. In addition to the previously announced headliners R. Kelly, Björk, and Belle and Sebastian, we're excited to announce several additions to the lineup.

Joanna Newsom, the Breeders play Last Splash, Swans, El-P, Killer Mike, TNGHT, Chairlift, Sky Ferreira, ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Rustie, Mac DeMarco, Foxygen, Angel Olsen, Trash Talk, and Tree will all join us in Union Park. There are still more than two dozen artists to be announced in the coming weeks.

http://pitchfork.com/news/49764-joanna-newsom-breeders-swans-tnght-rustie-el-p-killer-mike-to-play-pitchfork-music-festival-2013/

breeders playing last splash is the only real draw for me at this point

do people still care about ...and you will know us by the trail of dead?

They just released one of their better albums in a long time last year, actually. Even before seeing your question though I was going to post, "so we've gone back full circle on Trail of Dead and they are Pitchfork approved again?".

it's cool that tree is playing

Killer Mike would be a draw for me

Tree, El-P, Mike, and Mac Demarco would be cool. Swans I guess, but so the wrong venue I would think.

How good is Newsom in a festival setting?

Was already excited about the headliners, but I think Newsom, Chairlift, and Ferreira could all put on good shows, too. (I've enjoyed performances by the first two in the past, though both were in small venues.) Don't care much for Swans, but subjecting myself to the sonic assault might be worthwhile. And, as a fan of Glass Swords, Rustie piques my curiosity, too, though P4K Fest often isn't the best setting for electronic dance stuff.

Oh hey, there will be some more-interesting-than-usual Goose Island brews this year, including a Belgian wheat brewed in collaboration with El-P and Killer Mike: http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/food/stew/chi-goose-island-pitchfork,0,5325019.story

Same weekend as Phish and Pearl Jam! Wonder who that will draw off the fest ...

I'm planning to be there all weekend, btw.

i'm there fri and sat

Set times were just announced:
http://pitchfork.com/news/51238-pitchfork-music-festival-set-times-revealed/

There's a ton of bands I don't really care about, so it's annoying that there are times when two acts I *do* want to see are playing simultaneously. On Saturday, it's Rustie vs. Belle & Sebastian; on Sunday, it's Chairlift vs. Toro y Moi.

all the stages at pfork are close enough though that you can really pinball back and forth if you want to see both acts

I'll be there.

all the stages at pfork are close enough though that you can really pinball back and forth if you want to see both acts

Oh, for sure -- though it's not always easy to find a good spot in the crowd if you arrive in the middle of a set. Especially on the Blue Stage.

oh hey tickets are approximately 400% cheaper than I was expecting. may be there saturday/sunday if I can swing logistics

400% cheaper than I was expecting.

Really? I'm always bemoaning the fact that they go up every year, but I guess it's still cheaper than most other big festivals.

Here were the prices for an all-weekend pass (two days in 2005-06, three days since):

2005: $22
2006: $30
2007: $45
2008: $65
2009: $75
2010: $90
2011: $110
2012: $110
2013: $120

I'm planning to be there all weekend, btw.

― Murder in the Rue McClanahan (jaymc), Thursday, June 20, 2013 12:58 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

me too
there will be UNO

It's almost tiiiiiiime. Who else is going?

damn not me but have fun

will do, markers
i always have fun

no one else is going?

I'll be there. Holler at me via Twitter or something if you want to grab a drink/hang out.

would be great to meet some of y'all

Me!

http://www.chicagoreader.com/binary/0545/1374021893-b-side-071813.jpg

There was a similar cover last year, right? Love DeRo in the top left fanning himself on the bench.

Yeah, "Where's DeRo?"

I'll be there with wife and one kid on Friday, at least for a bit. Will be there a little longer on Saturday, with the whole family, maybe through the Breeders. Not planning on Sunday right now, but maybe. Don't want to see any of the headliners, particularly. Burnt out on Bjork and B&S live, bored of R. Kelly - I think I've seen each of them three or four times - but I bet Bjork has a cool stage, at least.

FYI, out of towners. It is currently as hot as hell and humid as the ocean. They are predicting weather-clearing thunderstorms Friday night, which will bring about a milder Saturday and maybe Sunday as well. But to further force some planning on you, the thunderstorms this summer have been intense to say the least.

I just checked weather.com and, yeah, Friday's storms look fierce. But Sat night is cool (mid sixties).

The last few storms, at least where I am, brought flooding and 70 mph gusts.

Thanks, Josh. I'm coming from Edmonton, where's it's been 22-26 and rainy over the last week.

i'm in tonight from angel olsen through bjork
already mentally trying to embrace the rain and it's not even 9am
maybe it will be a good night for howling banshees (and wire)

Seen Wire several times. Seen Newsom three times, Seen Bjork four or five. On the fence whether it's worth the potential hassle of extreme heat followed by thunderstorms. :(

Also, Newsom and Bjork is an almost perverse double-shot, bless 'em. They should duet. Wonder what Bjork's hot-weather wear looks like?

Or, a Zeena Parkins/Newsom duet!

i've seen all of these people (including you!) 0 times so what do i have to lose aside from some humidity

rustie is a child y/n?

He's 30.

Nothing on their YouTube channel yet. Will they show it, like last year?

yesterday was ok, but today tooooootally ruled
saw julia holter, parquet courts, little bit of merchandise (was kinda zzz), swans, breeders (who warmed up with "shocker in gloom town"), low (who ended with rihanna's "stay"!!!!!), a little andy stott and then danced my feet raw in the rain with belle & sebastian and it was 100% bananas awesome fun.
good day! i even had decent food and met nice people.

i guess the jury's out on tomorrow until i figure out if i will ever be able to move my legs again.

You didn't see Savages? That's what I was bummed to miss. I'm in Philly :(

I did! They were great! I wasn't up close for them though -- I mostly heard from a little further away than the rest. The singer seems like a very intense person. I think "Fuckers" was my favorite. I didn't know much about them before, but I'm more interested now that I've seen them.

them = Savages (not fuckers)

who ended with rihanna's "stay"!!!!!

omg can't believe I missed that; I cut out to see Solange

Ok so now that it's all over, Friday was completely snoozy in retrospect. I saw so many great performances in the last two days that I don't really miss not-meeting any of y'all* (though n/a and jaymc and je55e and i hung out of course.) i made several completely new friends, including a young man who called himself Burger. I also met someone who analyzes data and creates the graphics for the census materials that go out to educators, among other people, (which I have received) to make sure people understand the purpose of the census. Apparently if you want information/data analysis about demographics, all you have to do is call the census office?! What? I also met a mathematics professor and we dished about teaching, which was fun.

No one puked on me, R Kelly was fantastic, YLT played my favorite YLT song, and Killer Mike shouted out to Ameena Matthews which was super cool and I took every opportunity to ask the people I was talking to if they knew who she was and no one did. I then proceeded to talk their ears off about it and that was met with varying degrees of interest.

Now I'm at home and discovering that I really hurt my neck when that gross kid and security guy splashed into me during the El-P set. You can clean off the mud, but the pain lasts a while apparently. hooray for pfork 2013. zzzzzzz

*alfred i am 80% sure that i saw you waiting for an ashland bus around 2:15 this afternoon? if you saw someone staring at you from a white car, that was me :)

Gaga was there, hangin'.

I think.

lol that was me, actually, waiting for a taxi and impatient to get to Killer Mike (whom I saw anyway). Notes:

The sound problems helped MIA, who concentrated on sloganeering and fabulous beats.

Awful: Sky Ferreira, Lil B

Boring: Savages

Good: Breeders, Waxahatchee, Wire, Ryan Hemsworth, R Kells, Phosphorescent (a surprise), Solange

Excellent: Chairlift, Killer Mike, Parquet Courts

Parquet Courts

Anecdotally the biggest beneficiary of the weekend.

Based on Sky Ferreira's performance, I'm excited to hear the album she's working on. (I already like a couple of her singles.) But her youth and inexperience showed a little too much in that performance.

And I missed "Blue Line Swinger" for it! Bah.

btw I'd a loved to meet up with some of you but phone service was mediocre to terrible for me; a couple times I shut it off to conserve battery.

i skipped sunday, highlights for me were pissed jeans, bjork, parquet courts, and breeders. woods and mac demarco were the most positive surprises.

it was weird how quiet joanna newsom was, usually you can hear the musician on one main stage while you're standing at the other main stage but i couldn't hear her at all. i know she's quiet but it seemed quieter than it should have been, even when she was playing piano. i wonder what was going on there.

did anyone get there early enough on sunday to see tree? i saw on instagram that he played with a live drummer.

Oh phone service was terrible! I gave up yesterday even though somehow I managed to send jaymc 2 crucial texts -- good thing I wasn't trying to do anything else. I didn't even take any pictures, was so busy dancing and having fun. I said it about 500x yesterday, but I had a surprisingly good time all weekend. Also, Killer Mike is my new favorite person.

Blue Line Swinger was amazing, and I'm rill sorry you missed it for silly Sky Ferreira, who I think is totally putting on that boohoo baby act. Sadly, YLT/BLS was transcendent.

i missed tree -- wanted to see him but couldn't make it there in time. i did see him walking around though! i also saw a kid in a tree tshirt.

I saw Newsom from the side of the stage and yeah she was pretty quiet

I saw her too and it was duuuuuuuuull and quiet. Not sure if that's what was asked of her, but some people appeared to enjoy it. I was not one of them. Friday was kinda bleh for me, but that's ok. I feel like I got my $ worth (even though that list of prices upthread makes me a bit wistful).

Bjork was good if a bit tentative in the "hits" portion of her set. Loved that she did "Sun in My Mouth."

Excellent: Chairlift, Killer Mike, Parquet Courts

How was the sound for you at Chairlift? From where I was, it was excruciating. If your set is going to be 70% prerecorded, you at least need to get the mix right.

They had some sound issues for the first couple of songs, but it seemed to worked itself out after? I was fairly close to the stage, on the left side.

Also, Joanna Newsom sounded fine, volume-wise, but again: I was near the front. I liked the performance well enough, but I can't imagine anyone who wasn't already into her would've been converted by it.

Chairlift frontperson wore a lovely lime-green pantsuit.

Every year I hope they'll open up that area around the blue stage so the crowd doesn't get so bottle necked. I guess it's not gonna happen.

i like the woodsy intimacy of it -- it was perfect for low and julia holter imo. i think they just underestimated the interest in some of the acts that were booked back there.

Chairlift outgrew it imo

oh dear

The very mundanity of Kelly’s performance leads to my second, sadder conclusion about his presence at Pitchfork: That the formerly Chicago-, now Brooklyn-based brains and businessmen behind the festival and the Webzine, Ryan Schreiber and Chris Kaskie, just don’t think that the music we embrace means anything at all in the real world. It’s just a cool, digitally stored backing track for your oh-so-hip and groovy lifestyle at home, and every bit the ideal tool in concert for marketing and money-making that we see at the festival’s larger corporate cousin, Lollapalooza.

Why talk about ruined lives? It just brings the party down. But this lack of soul or conscience wasn’t always the case at Pitchfork.

Perhaps it’s just the nature of the Old Country Buffet smorgasbord model that as a festival becomes increasingly successful, well-established, and ever more commercialized, the ethos upon which it was founded becomes increasingly obscure. The greater meaning, if ever there was one, slips further and further away. Any role that the fest had in both reflecting and stimulating a musical community inevitably erodes. And everything is reduced to mere entertainment.

http://www.wbez.org/blogs/jim-derogatis/2013-07/pitchfork-2013-here-we-are-now-entertain-us-108129

what? that's horseshit.

I'd actually love to see more analysis of how we got to the cultural moment in which R. Kelly is headlining Pitchfork Fest -- like, there are interesting stories about the evolution of Pitchfork's brand, the values of the "indie community," etc. -- but DeRo's only interested in out-of-touch axe-grinding.

if i understand things correctly, someone delivered a tape of kelly abusing a child to dero's house. so i think he's got a right.

aw, I wish I'd gone to this! I was just kind of outdoor-ed out and not quite budget-ready for two weekends straight of travel

if i understand things correctly, someone delivered a tape of kelly abusing a child to dero's house. so i think he's got a right.

no one saying he hasn't got a right, but his prose and thinking are a lot of wrong

yeah, i won't complain, but nor do i want to read what he has to say about it anymore

agree
i don't really care what he (or anyone really) has to say about it anymore

"Only an idiot could deny that this year’s festival belonged to Savages."

Oh, well, hm.

Also I mean it's great that someone is critiquing misogyny but Jesus Christ there's a ton of indie bands out there that are just as bad. Why single out the rap and R&B performers? Why nothing on Solange or Sky Ferreira—is it because they're not operating in a guitar-bass-drums vein?

The small slights and "accidental" results of all-male hegemony that transpire in indie damaging to its culture as a whole, too. Good luck trying to get people who are convinced they're doing something revolutionary by liking Savages or White Lung (and pointing out that HEY LOOK WOMEN!! OMG!!) to notice that.

Savages is like the neo-rockist trifecta: female, play instruments, sound like bands from back when music was "better."

I had friends who kept talking up Savages, for a couple weeks in advance. "We really want to see Savages," etc. So during Savages set I follow them out into the crowd to watch and they just keep walking, toward some other stage, right past and away from Savages. I call them back and ask, have you even heard Savages? "Well, just a few seconds," they admitted.

as usual, maura is otm. there's always something subtly disrespectful about someone going out of their way to tell me how much they respect me and these other people don't -- it's just suspect behavior, in general. it's like when someone talks about how much they love their partner loudly and frequently -- there's nothing wrong with what they're saying, but what would make someone feel the need to say that so much and so often?

i was disappointed in gira when he said "how about those lady savages?" from the red stage after they (savages) had played on the green stage.

Really?

Dude straight up admits he doesn't like going outside. Why would anyone pay attention to him?

No matter how you cut it, those performances and the other highlights cited above all would have been much better experienced at Metro, Lincoln Hall, the Riviera Theater, or, really, pretty much anyplace else

I lasted through two minutes and fourteen seconds of Savages.

Wire were okay.

people who are convinced they're doing something revolutionary by liking Savages or White Lung

not convinced that this is a hugely significant group, but maybe i just don't know the right (wrong) people.

and, yeah, i think pitchfork and its crowd still favor gtr-bass-drums indie rock over most other approaches. that's always been their home turf.

I'm talking specifically about the linked review here, contenderizer. Did you not read it?

the derogatis piece? yeah, i read it yesterday. there's something condescending about his word choices in describing savages and white lung ("moxie", "smart and passionate women"), but i didn't get the sense that he was claiming any feminst-revolutionary cred in liking them.

sliding scale i guess. it is a pretty louse piece though. no argument there.

that review is hilarious--"at a 3-day festival, i liked some acts and didn't like some acts. therefore, music no longer has meaning to people who enjoyed themselves."

"rap and r&b performers were ironically invited to the rock & roll party, therefore..."

judging from the pictures every third act was a white kid with a laptop--why isn't he complaining abt that?

i guess ultimately i was there and i am able to form my own opinion about what i saw, so i don't really care what he thought. like, at all.
he is having a really boring conversation that if it were happening irl i would change the subject.

I spotted him during the Kelly set, a scowl so dark it looked etched with a Sharpie, scribbling furiously into his notepad.

^ better said than anything in his tantrum

god almighty who cares what this guy thinks? that's kinda what i want to know.

yeah you guys are giving dero way more time and thought than he deserves

i thought savages sounded "good" in that they sounded pretty much exactly like their album but also they were kind of boring because they sounded exactly like their album. good intensity though.

did anyone see glass candy? i was just perusing the reader's pictures and i regretted missing their set, but it was just IMPOSSIBLE to navigate at that point.

oh god "irony"

So were there a lot of young people there or is the festival skewing toward people in their 30s+? All the kids I've run into lately don't seem to really enjoy many things "ironically" so this might be an old person affliction.

also may I just say that this addendum to that DeRo piece is amazing:
I regret that error. Also, I could swear Wire played "On Returning," but an even bigger Wire fan than me, Aadam Jacob, says it was "Map Ref. 41°N 93°W. "

HOW CAN YOU LIKE WIRE AT ALL AND MISIDENTIFY MAP REF

I saw more toddlers and elementary school kids with their parents than ever, ready to be indoctrinated with irony

re map ref - that's pathetic

there were a TON of young people there, like a salmon stream of them
i had an interesting conversation with a fellow people watcher about them, actually -- they (youngs) seem really into a few things: infantilism (hula hooping, the coloring tent, sky ferreira crying), giving the finger (a girl literally danced at me with two birds flashed and i failed to know how to respond) and weed. SO MUCH WEED. it was incredible.

the youth do seem to love weed, even more than my cohort did at that age

isn't dude in a wire cover band!?!?

weed is the only drug

i'ma go color

i saw a lot of young people, a lot of normal-aged people, and a lot of old people. there were a lot of people there.

do people do molly at pitchfork y/n

I saw more toddlers and elementary school kids with their parents than ever, ready to be indoctrinated with irony

By kids were there and totally unironically pretty much hated being there except for getting to hang with their elementary school pals and get free ice cream. They were most fascinated learning that Solange is Beyonce's sister. "Is she famous?" one asked. I didn't know how to answer that.

Oh hey there is video of Low's Rihanna cover:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSWl46YI3wk

backing track for your oh-so-hip and groovy lifestyle at home, and every bit the ideal tool in concert for marketing and money-making

could you not have said this literally 40 years ago during the peak of the Eagles, etc?

There’s no difference; it’s all just show biz. Pay your money, get your kicks, enjoy the tunes, or just wait until the next set starts in 20 minutes.

is he talking about the Beatles at the Star Club in Hamberg?

I was going to say, that's just a description of any venue that has multiple bands on a night or any music festival.

Look at these fucking hipsters:
http://www.claytonhauck.com/blog/2013/pitchfork/9.jpg

is there a good place to look for crowd pics (aside from google obvs)? i saw someone official looking with a big-lensed camera and it was pointed right at me and i'm juuuust vain enough to think that it will show up somewhere.

I saw slideshows at Pitchfork, Time Out Chicago, and Chicago Magazine.

Photo I posted was from this gallery, though I didn't see you in any of them.

yeah i guess you would have told me if you had seen me :-/
nm

vanity checked

Lots of style here:
http://www.tresawesome.com/search/label/Pitchfork%20Music%20Festival%202013

and
http://www.chicagostreetstyle.com/

I usually root around on flickr and the like

i'm 100% sure it was not a style photo, i just remember turning my head and seeing someone pointing a huge camera at me and trying to pretend like i didn't notice.

http://www.spin.com/sites/all/files/styles/style620_413/public/130722-Pitchfork-Fest-1.jpg

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/img/tg/chicago/music/pitchfork-day-3-july-21_ah/9-yolatengo/yo-la-tengo-15.jpg

the 'pee on me' guy is under a tree so obv way too far away from the stage for r kelly to see him, let alone pee on him

good to know those types are still making their signs and going to music festivals

his bitch is an ant on the ground! that's kinda cute.

x-post

yeah also it wasn't light out when r. kelly was playing, so

This year's Reader cover

http://www.chicagoreader.com/binary/bb78/ReaderP4K-2014.jpg

I thought there was a 2014 fest thread but I guess not?