Pitchfork Music Festival: Day 2

We arrived just in time for Califone, who was running a little late. They played 4 or 5 songs and they were pretty good. They had a horn section with them which was cool, but it seemed a little underwhelming. We went in close for Grizzly Bear and listened to Voxtrot from afar. I have to say that I don’t really like Voxtrot that much, I think they are over-hyped by the internets. Grizzly Bear, on the other hand, lives up to all the hype. Despite Chris Taylor having some issues with his ridiculously complex equipment setup, they put on the day’s best show. If you have not listened to Yellow House yet, do it now fool! I tried to catch the end of Beach House but only caught the last 30 seconds of “Master Of None”. By far this was the worst schedule conflict of the fest, especially for the bands themselves as Grizzly Bear and Beach House are both fans of each other. Next up we went to see Battles. They were very impressive. The former Helmet drummer John Stanier was rock solid and had a cymbal up really high so he had to reach up to hit it. It was gimmicky but really cool. The rest of the band used lots of looping computer programs to put together their songs piece by piece.

We skipped Iron And Wine to check out the festival grounds, which were expanded from Friday’s setup. They had a huge poster shopping area with almost 50 tents each selling handbills. After that we checked out Atlanta’s Mastodon. Their typical badass performance had a mixed reception from the pitchfork kids. Most of the people farther away were complaining and those that stayed up close were rocking out. There was even a mosh pit. Because it was so crazy up front for Mastodon, I was able to get front row and center for Cat Power afterwards on the stage as most of the other Chan Marshall fans weren’t so much into the Mastodon scene. It pays to like all kinds of music. I listened to Clipse from the front of the other stage and they were what I expected, decent for a live hip-hop show but nothing to get excited about. Cat Power came on with the Dirty Delta Blues Band. In this performance, Cat Power would not touch a guitar or piano. Instead, she would be leaning over the crowd singing songs from The Greatest, covers, and songs I didn’t recognize. I am not a big fan of the nu-Cat Power that is sober, doesn’t freakout, and does country/blues music and this was farther in that direction than the three times I saw her last year. It was still great to see her, especially as close as we were, but i don’t think I’m going to see her again live until she either starts playing old stuff again or does some new stuff that is not so conservative and, well, ordinary. We wanted to check out Girl Talk but the tiny staging area was packed out beyond belief and the sound system over there was not powerful enough to hear farther back. If I had one complaint about Pitchfork Fest so far it was the sound system problems, of which there were many, and the sound checks drowning out quiet parts of bands performing on the adjacent stages. We skipped Yoko Ono and went into the city to drink into oblivion. Here’s some pics from the day:

Friday Free-Style

In case you haven’t noticed, our blogging has been a little brisk lately as we are enjoying the summer. But don’t dismay as we have a bunch of cool stuff cooking in the lab for you.

We’ll start today off by getting krunk with Kanye West:

Pitchfork Fest has sold out and released set times. While you are enjoying Corndogarama, we will be covering this in Chicago.

John Vanderslice will be at The Earl on September 20th.

Weezer is about to record another album.

In case you don’t, Beach House are awesome, and they be talking.

The Cure are working on the new album still and will be at The Gwinnett Center September 15th.

Band Of Horses are just finishing up their new album.

The Led Zeppelin reunion rumour mill is on again.

Rage Against The Machine will be headlining this year’s Vegoose Festival in Las Vegas. The full line-up will be announced in mid-July.

Here’s Ryan Adams on Letterman:

Here’s an old The Rapture video:

Here’s a Battles video:

Some Cat Power for you:

A Califone video:

Some Girl Talk:

Some The Ponys:

And finally, some Of Montreal:

Friday Free-Style

We start today with a video of The Smashing Pumpkins comeback show:

I never covered the Pitchfork Fest additions of Mastodon, Junior Boys, Voxtrot, Cadence Weapon, Brightblack Morning Light, The Field, Cool Kids, and William Parker Quartet. Now with the combination of a night with legendary artists performing some of the best albums ever written and two days of the people making the very best albums of the last 2 years, I think musically this is by far the best festival of the year. On top of that, it is only 50 bucks for three days so it is also the greatest bargain of the year. I often have my quips with Pitchfork’s opinions but they sure nailed this line-up. Here it is in case you forgot:

Friday, July 13:

Sonic Youth perform Daydream Nation
GZA/Genius performs Liquid Swords
Slint perform Spiderland

Saturday, July 14:

Yoko Ono
Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues (w/ members of Dirty Three, the Delta 72, and Blues Explosion)
Clipse
Mastodon
Iron and Wine
Battles
Grizzly Bear
Voxtrot
Califone
The Twilight Sad
Girl Talk
Dan Deacon
Oxford Collapse
Professor Murder
Fujiya & Miyagi
Beach House
William Parker Quartet
Ken Vandermark’s Powerhouse Sound

Sunday, July 15:

De La Soul
The New Pornographers
Of Montreal
Stephen Malkmus
Jamie Lidell
The Sea and Cake
Junior Boys
Menomena
The Ponys
Deerhunter
Klaxons
The Field
Cadence Weapon
The Cool Kids
Craig Taborn’s Junk Magic
Nomo
Brightblack Morning Light
Fred Lonberg-Holm’s Lightbox Orchestra

Anybody you don’t recognize on that list, you should look into immediately. More info on Pitchfork Fest here. We will be there and you should too.

The hometown fest that is still the most fun of the decade, Bonnaroo, has announced its cinema tent schedule.

The New Pornographers have a new track floating around the internets: My Rights Versus Yours

Ween releases a new EP, The Friends EP, on June 8th.

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead are looking for a drummer to sub-in for their European tour.

Creative Loafing did a cover story on Atlanta blogs this week and profiled our friends over at Cable And Tweed. Props for repping the B’s in da A.

It’s been a busy week for me and I don’t have that much news for you, so I’ll hit you with a bunch of vids:

Here’s a Cat Power on Jolls Holland:

Here’s a Califone video:

Here’s an Iron And Wine video:

Ween live:

Here’s the new Voxtrot video:

Here’s Arcade Fire covering a Clinic song:

And I leave you with a De La Soul video that will get you through your day:

Sugarkane’s Top 50 Albums of 2006

2006 was a great year for me, and the main reasons are mostly related to music. I decided to do this list in December because i wanted to learn about as much music as possible, and what I thought would take a few days ended up taking almost 2 months, but it was extremely educational for me and i feel very good about this list. There were so many albums that I would like to give props to and cutting it down to 50 was hard. On a technical note, I went by U.S. release date with the exception of Laura’s Radio Swan Is Down (It was released in Australia over a year ago and has no U.S. release date). Feel free to blast it:

Click here to read the entire post…