St. Louis Music Blog

As a wrap-up to Pitchfork Music Festival, held July 18-20 in Chicago, we've posted a photo slide show that takes a light-hearted look at the fashion of Pitchfork, a "hipster mecca" as well as one of the top indie music fests of the the summer.

For set reviews and more photos the bands that played, click here.

Slide Show

More after the jump.

(This man is comfortable with his sexuality.)
A friend sent along a link to all of the Craigslist missed connections from Pitchfork. (She found the link here.) Many are quite hilarious, ranging from Onion-esque to downright hipster stereotypes. A selection:

Best Imitation of a Decemberists song: "your friends called you caleb"
"you were pretty close to the front for animal collective. you're tall, attractive, thin, have beautiful eyes, and you were fanning the crowd with your shirt. i like the left side of your collar bone."

Best Caricature of a Hipster, Part I: "owl belt buckle both days"
"you had a big owl belt buckle and a godspeed! tattoo. during a hawk and a hacksaw, i heard you say, "it's raining and we're all going to look like sh-t, so let's just dance"
i didn't dance, but you made me smile."

Here’s what closed Pitchfork Music Festival 2008 in Chicago: Austin indie megastars Spoon.

I can’t write a full review because we had to hightail it back down I-55 in order to make it home before dawn, but Spoon opened with a trio of oldies but goodies: ''Small Stakes,'' ''My Mathematical Mind,'' and ''Stay Don’t Go.''

''My Mathematical Mind,'' was, as it always is, mind-blowing.

Can any STL folks out there who stayed for the whole set to fill me on what I missed?

Photos of Spoon are after the jump.

I caught up with Andrew Rieger, frontman for the Athens, Georgia based art-pop quartet Elf Power after their afternoon set Saturday at Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, Illinois.

Rieger discussed everything from working with the Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann to Georgia's indie rock scene (they were an original part of the Elephant Six arts collective, which also included Of Montreal and Neutral Milk Hotel).

Keegan Hamilton: First things first, why the twelve-string guitar?
Andrew Rieger: I think I started playing the twelve-string in 2005. It's just anytime you pick up a new instrument, there's something slightly different that inspires you to write differently. I'd been playing the same acoustic guitar for so many years, then I bought a twelve-string acoustic and it inspired me to write differently. That's where it all started, that was about three years ago and I've been with it ever since.

From Dinosaur Jr.'s performance on Sunday night at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, Illinois.

J. Mascis.

More photos after the jump.

Before today I had never seen the New York City art punks Les Savy Fav before. I'd only heard stories, crazy, strange stories of a level of hedonism rivaled only by Roman orgies.

They were all true.

Rather than attempt to eloquently describe everything that exhibitionist lead singer (and part time hair stylist and masseuse) Tim Harrington did I'll simply give a bullet point play-by-play. No need to embellish.

Prior to yesterday, the only other time I'd ever seen M Ward was when he was touring in support of the fantastic 2003 album The Transfiguration of Vincent and opening for Bright Eyes. It was just him and an acoustic guitar then and I was blown away by his stripped down cover of Bowie's ''Let's Dance.''

The number of people literally crammed into a corner of Union Park to see Ghostface Killah and Raekwon Sunday afternoon would make a fire marshal shudder. Figuratively, the Wu Tang members were spitting fire.

I literally had no idea what to expect from The Dodos. All I knew going into their Sunday set at Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago was that the band is from San Francisco. That's it. They could have been a stoner death metal band of gypsies and I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised.

Fortunately they were nothing of the sort.

I've always had mixed feelings about Animal Collective. Some of their songs are downright brilliant, mixing complex and bizarre deconstructed structures with the most catchy and basic of pop melodies. Other times I think they sound like the most pretentious band on the planet, taking noise rock to it's unlistenable worst.

Animal Collective's headlining set Saturday night at Pitchfork Music Festival didn't do much to get me off the fence about them.

Yesterday, Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav was offering up cheap buzz cuts for the hipster heathens at Pitchfork. Today it was massages.

A topless Harrington, which, as always, was a sight to behold, set up a table in the shade just a few hundred feet from the main stage. He then climbed on top of his victim, er, customer, and proceeded to get freaky with his fingers.

"I'll bet that feels good" he purred into her ear, "Have you ever had your toes popped?" Pictures of the, um, action, after the jump.

- Keegan Hamilton

Most of the time I don't like metal, and I definitely can't tell the difference between its plethora of sub-genres (doom? sludge? death? grind? black?). But Boris, a Japanese trio that played the Pitchfork Music Festival at 2 p.m. Saturday, is for more than metalheads.

Los Angeles noise quartet HEALTH put on a pulsating, sweaty set Sunday afternoon at Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago.

After a soggy day two, we're back for a scorching day three at P4K 2K8. The forecast is calling for a high of 94 and humidity of approximately 168 percent. The weather will do wonders for hangovers of everyone who imbibed too much Sparks drafts last night.

Some Pitchfork bands seem out of place on the mammoth festival stage, better suited for a dingy club. Other bands fit it perfectly on the grand stage. There are very few bands whose songs, attitude, and delivery would suit both a bar, basement, party or festival stage.

The Hold Steady proved they were one of those bands. Four albums into its collective career, the members of the band were right at home Saturday on Pitchfork's Aluminum Stage.

Tim Harrington, singer of Brooklyn-based Les Savy Fav offered haircuts (pretty ugly head-shavings, really) for a paltry $2 at Pitchfork Music Festival on Saturday.

Harrington said bluntly that his band is broke, he is broke and he was looking to make a little cash. The publicity of the stunt (a publicity stunt?) drew a large audience to Harrington's corner of the Pitchfork world.

Harrington gave out about 15 trims, totaling $30 for an afternoon's work. Here's to the brave souls who offered up their mane to help Les Savy Fav keep on keepin' on.

Photos after the jump.

The sun wasn't out during Fleet Foxes' 3 p.m. set at Pitchfork Music Festival, but they still managed to warm my heart.

Awww.

Though their self-titled album is probably my favorite release of the year thus far, I wanted to reserve final judgment until I'd seen a live performance. Today was complete vindication.

When I saw !!! (pronounced "chk chk chk") a year or so ago in Seattle, it was in a tiny, dark club with no barrier between the stage and the crowd. The audience was dancing like mad from the front to the back. I was in the front. Nic Offer's crotch was directly in my face and I thought he was going to give me a black eye with his Elvis-style pelvic thrusts.

Jarvis Cocker is kind of the resident elder statesman at this year's Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago.

A co-worker recently gave me a copy of Titus Andronicus' The Airing of Grievances, and enthusiastically described it as, "a cross between Bruce Springsteen and the Pogues being played from the bottom of a well."

When I popped it into my CD player I wasn't a huge fan-- too lo-fi and too much screaming for my taste.

Still, the songs had promise-- they were intense, anthemic and had some serious weight behind the lyrics. Enough to make me excited to see them live. That happened today at 1 p.m. the second act of the second day of Pitchfork Music Festival.

I was thoroughly impressed with their set today at Pitchfork. Singer Patrick Stickles was a man possessed. Sporting a Batman t-shirt (timely, eh?) and a big bushy beard, he was all over the wide festival stage, climbing scaffolding and screaming his lungs out.

As a native Seattlite (recently transplanted to St. Louis) I've felt quite at home thus far in Chicago.

Not only am I at a music festival (it seems like Seattle has about one every other week nowadays), but it's raining -- and a nice soggy Pacific Northwest drizzle at that. Adding to the familiar feel is the fact that KEXP, the best radio station, like, ever, is broadcasting live two tents down from where I'm typing this. I went over and caught up with KEXP's John Richards and found out just how much the music matters in the Windy City.

KEXP's Cheryl Waters and John Richards

Ezra Koenig, singer and guitar player for Vampire Weekend, didn't only hit all the high notes during the New York band's set at Pitchfork Music Festival on Saturday, he livened them up and stretched them out.

Meanwhile, bass player Chris Baio shimmied and bended his knees, while playing the higher notes his instrument could muster. During the band's 5 p.m. set, the crowd predictably ate up everything the Vamp Weekend gave them. A solid set full of songs from its self-titled debut that was released in January on XL Recordings, this band is about to grow beyond the walls of Pitchfork's indie kingdom.

We talked with Tad Kubler, lead guitarist for The Hold Steady, before the band's set at Pitchfork Music Festival on Saturday, July 19, 2008. Kubler talks about being monumentally tanked during the band's 2005 Pitchfork set, its current tour and the meaning behind the "Stay Positive," the title of the band's new record.

Twenty years ago Public Enemy released It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back. Back then it was a powerful, controversial, in-yo-face, hard-hitting affront to the establishment. When they performed the album in its entirety last night at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, it was only a few of those things.

Slideshow

Ahhh...Pitchfork Music Festival 2008: Hipsters, humidity and more hipsters. We are here. We are live. We are sweaty.

Mission of Burma is rocking out as I type this. Unless a well of enthusiasm sprung up in the last five minutes, their dance-inspiring punk jams are being met with little more than approving head nods from the audience. Mission's performance of its classic 1982 album, Vs. sounds as urgent and emotional as it did when the LP was released. A solid debut for this fest, even if the audience reaction is more observant (curious? awe-struck?) than empowered and excited.

The crowd is filling in more and more but I've been struck by how sparse the attendance is thus far.

Union Park is about a third of the way full. Maybe it's the fact that it's been raining off and on all day and it's about has hot and sticky as a two rats fucking a wool sock. We'll see if the crowd gets larger for Public Enemy's performance in about an hour.

For now, a few pictures, to whet your appetite for what's going down in the Chi over the next three days.

Photos after the jump.

The schedule for the Pitchfork Music Festival (which takes place from July 18 to 20 in Chicago's Union Park) has been updated.

And this may be as good of a time as any to let you know that we'll be there, blogging live with set reviews, festival news and photos (look for the Fashion of Pitchfork slide show).

Copied from the fest's official Web site, here is the schedule: