Leor Galil: Saturday was all about joy. The sight of RP Boo smiling as he busted out a fierce mix of footwork tracks while attendees on the ground danced hard enough to kick up dirt in the air; the reunited Digable Planets slipping into their classic 90s cuts like they’d just perfected them yesterday; a quasi-symphonic version of Circuit Des Yeux slowly building a melody that seemed to reach for the heavens. Hell, Super Furry Animals made the unpleasant experience of using a porta-potty feel, well, slightly more pleasant when I heard them rip through “Golden Retriever” as I relieved myself within earshot.
The set I’d been looking forward to the most was Girl Band, and I was not disappointed. They played like they’d just discovered how to rip a hole into another dimension with a pipe wrench.
A friend who’d seen a bit of Brian Wilson’s set described it as “a snooze” and “like Ravinia.” So I found a place to sit down and wrote this. Sorry, Sufjan. J.R. Nelson: After so many years, I’ve learned to chalk it up to coincidence rather than some theoretical Jungian collective unconscious-enabled Pitchfork scheduling overlord: it seems like the artists in my yearly top-tier of “must see” festival acts always play on the same day, and I’d long plotted out Saturday’s late-afternoon/early-evening sets from Savages, Blood Orange, and Jlin as appointment viewing.
Along with Girl Band, the Aussies in Royal Headache complemented the early portion of the bill thanks to the presence of Shogun, the temperamental, often-irked front man, who stalks the stage and blurts out lines in between songs like, “I need more drums, I need more shit on everything.” The rest of the band is ornamental, barely even moving as Shogun—donning a beaten, oversized polo and gnarled jeans—rolls through surprisingly hook-loaded, chugging pop songs that defy the band’s projected aura in front of a crowd. Which always makes them worth watching.
Brianna Wellen: Man, Brian Wilson is a huge bummer. I was so excited to have a beach-rock jam, but instead I got a Beach Boys cover band with an animatronic version of a very sad-looking Brian Wilson. The greatest part of the whole set was John Cusack jumping on stage to sing “Sloop John B.” (Lloyd Dobler forever!) I became increasingly more excited for Sufjan Stevens as Wilson scowled on, remembering fondly a Sufjan record that a high-school crush burned for me. But this Sufjan was not the Sufjan of old. Pitchfork’s Sufjan was not sad and sleepy but covered in disco balls and balloons. It was completely unexpected, and welcome after the Wilson disaster.
The rest of the day? I dunno. I watched one of the world’s most enduring songwriters perform in full one of the greatest records ever recorded, saw some of the city’s best dancers rip it up on stage with RP Boo, and took this insane selfie with Carly Rae Jepsen:
