Every festival during the summer is obligated to some sort of inclement weather, generally either scorching heat or rain. The first day of Pitchfork 2013 unfortunately suffered from an overabundance of both to almost comical, God-rebuking degrees. There’s nothing more disheartening than walking down the road toward Union Park and reading a bank sign’s proud declaration that it’s 104 outside.
Still, the festival started off strong despite the sweltering temperatures. We arrived just around 4:30 p.m. and caught the majority of Mac DeMarco’s set. I don’t know what I was expecting from DeMarco (in a recent viral-ish cover his band did of “Undone – The Sweater Song” he said he chose the song because it was “chill” and because his band could “learn it in the van ride here.” He also had his recent Terrace set shut down because of tomfoolery), but it certainly wasn’t what I got. The band was considerably more manic than all of DeMarco’s recorded music and DeMarco himself was the perfect front man, running around stage, making constant glib jokes, playing baffling covers in a throaty hair metal impersonations and calling his girlfriend on stage to hoist her onto his shoulders for the last chorus of “Still Together.”
“We can hang out this afternoon,” Demarco told the audience with a smile on his face, and from the photos that cropped up later on Facebook and Instagram it looks like he held true to that. He was the perfect act to walk in on; nobody could have made us feel more welcome.
Next up was Woods, whose early albums’ lo-fi freak folkiness was an absolute ear-opener for me way back when. I watched them from across the field while waiting for Dismemberment Plan two years ago and missed their aftershow with Kurt Vile (despite having tickets) because of car confusion, so 16-year-old me was beyond excited. The band opened with the endlessly catch “Suffering Season” and then chugged through cuts largely from their last few albums, including an exceptionally psychedelic extended jam on “Bend Beyond.” The heat and poor mixing drove us away, though—the harmonica on “Cali in a Cup” was so shrill it hurt my ears—and set off for Mikal Cronin, the first of many trips to the considerably smaller (and shadier) Blue Stage.
Mikal Cronin was a recent discovery of mine, a garage auteur I’d ignored despite glowing praise from virtually everywhere as well as ties to the Ty Segall Band, a ringing endorsement if there ever was one. His set was downright electric and—backed by two guys on guitar and bass who looked exactly like him and a very small Asian drummer—appropriately massive. Within minutes of the show starting a bunch of rowdy fans began to slam dance, kicking up a massive dust storm over the stage. A few of the participants readjusted their bandanas over the faces accordingly and then jumped back into the fray. It was madness.
About half of Cronin’s set was made up of tracks from his debut and the other from the slightly superior MCII, but everything was incendiary, especially single “Change” with its extended outro and future stadium crusher “Shout it Out.” Needless to say, we left for the Green Stage completely satisfied but ready for something gentler.
Joanna Newsom’s set was sort of a mixed bag. I’d seen her once before at the Riverside in Milwaukee right after Have One on Me came out and it was stunning. She played with a comprehensive backing band of extremely talented multi-instrumentalists, and their onstage presence and report was basically perfect.
This time around, Newsom seemed visibly shaken by the size of the crowd in front of her. She lambasted herself for hitting wrong notes (something I was more than willing to accept, especially being close enough to see just how many notes she was plucking) and at one point paused to grunt “C’MON” after screwing up a chunk of “Cosmia,” only to launch perfectly back into the delicate song. The audience didn’t seem to care (which might have made it worse, to be fair) and every song she played was met with cheers and applause. At one point the applause went on so long she had to pause and laugh into her hands, saying “thank you!” over and over again, blushing like there was no tomorrow.
Newsom debuted several new songs as well, hinting that she had plenty more where those came from. I wish I had recorded them so I could go back and make more objective comments, but barring that let me just say I was pretty taken with what I heard. “The Diver’s Wife” in particular was gorgeous, and also the longest cut of the bunch. After Ys and Have One on Me I’m more than happy to settle for a shorter, more compact take on Joanna Newsom in the vein of The Milk Eyed Mender and the new songs seemed to promise just that.
After she mentioned she had one song left to play, the audience begged for at least two more. “I don’t have enough time for that!” she insisted, before pausing and asking someone off to the side, “Do I?” She closed with a compromise between limitation and satisfaction, playing the 10 minute Ys centerpiece “Sawdust and Diamonds.” It was a great set, but if it had gone on any longer it might have overstayed its welcome. As beautiful as her music is, just Newsom and her harp is a bit strenuous to listen to for over an hour—thankfully, she ended at the perfect time, and everyone gushed the rest of the weekend about their hour with Joanna Newsom.
Headlining Friday night, Bjork threatened to be the absolute highlight of the Pitchfork Music Festival. Her choir arrived on stage before her, as did an ominous four-pronged message discouraging (demanding?) the audience from recording any of the set. Eventually those same screens switched to display first pulsating patterns of light and then the cosmos themselves as Bjork walked on stage. She wore a silver, tinfoil looking dress and a headdress of optical fibers, sprouting from her face like an alien dandelion. Backed by her choir and a hushed synth drone, she began to croon the mythic “Cosmogony” off Biophilia.
Sans “Bachelorette,” her set list was almost the exact same it had been at Bonnaroo a few weeks earlier, but seeing her setup it was easy to understand why. Between her drummer, her producer, the choir, the light show and the giant tesla coil that provided the crackling bass for “Thunderbolt” and the riotous “Army of Me,” I’m sure there wasn’t much room for improvisation; her set was tight, nuanced and had surely been practiced obsessively into perfection, and it absolutely showed.
Despite the occasional visual failure (likely caused by an overabundance of electrical stress from, I don’t know, the massive tesla coil?), the show was equal parts tender and pummeling, every bit as beautiful as it was aggressive. Bjork’s vocals, especially her occasional throaty growl, have grown on me exponentially in the weeks leading to this show, and live her voice is as close to flawless as could be. The Homogenic cuts especially sounded great, considering they first premiered 14 years ago, and “Joga” and “Hunter” were unsparing highlights.
Unfortunately, in what proved to be one of the most talked about events of the entire weekend, her set was cut a good 25 minutes short by oncoming storms. (“It's calm. I don't know. This wouldn't be much in Iceland, I can tell you that much” she said before leaving, her only statement to the crowd except for frequent, heavily accented “Thank you’s.”) Set lists from other recent shows suggest she would have closed with “Hyper-Ballad,” “Pluto,” “Nattura” and “Declare Independence,” a massive closing quartet to balance out all the delicacy during the front half.
Maybe it was all for the best though, as 20 minutes after exiting the festival one of the biggest storms I’d ever seen began to rain down on the fleeing attendees, shutting down parts of the Chicago Transit Authority and leaving several people (you can probably guess who) stranded on the Chicago streets fairy lost and very wet for an extremely long two hours. But that’s a story for another time.
Best set of the day: Either Joanna Newsom or Mikal Cronin. If I had known Mac DeMarco’s material better or if Bjork had finished her set they would’ve made it into a very difficult four-way split.
Worst set of the day: Woods—but more circumstantially than through any real fault of their own.
