And so the much-ballyhooed draft Chicago Cultural Plan finally arrived Monday morning, and what does it say about this blog’s primary concern, music in the Windy City? Drum roll, please…
Actually, cancel that drum roll. What the slick, profusely illustrated, approximately $300,000 draft plan says about the rich cultural community we care about most in this space is little to nothing.
King Krule (Archy Marshall) elicited a few Bieber-caliber shrieks when he first appeared onstage for sound check. Truth be told, The London-based singer-songwriter’s probably the closest thing Pitchfork fest had to offer in the way of a teenybopper heartthrob. Krule’s young, he has an accent, and many of his lyrics involve super-sensitive appeals to an unnamed, generalized “gurl.”
Poor Kendrick Lamar: The thing that everyone was going to be talking about as soon as she arrived backstage was Lady Gaga, not the artist in question performing. To make matters worse, Gaga didn't even join him for his set but grooved on the side, smoking a cigarette.
At least she seemed to be enjoying herself; I didn't find Lamar any different than your typical untalented rapper, hiding behind samples and beats that have already been made famous by another. Whether it was the constant horn blast, his calls for "Any beautiful ladies in Chicago right now?", or boring use of less-than-family-friendly-language in "A.D.H.D", it was all sort of the usual thing.
Picking things up again, Providence, Rhode Island native Abraham Orellana, better known as AraabMuzik, brought the dubstep in a big way as things wound down on the main stages, turning a full field in one giant swirling and bouncing mass as he hands moved in a blur over his MPC and assorted other machines. His grooves were hypnotic and irresistible, but when he delivered the day’s second much-buzzed cameo—by Chicago gangsta rapper Chief Keef—things fizzled. Keef is all bluster, with little to distinguish his verbal spew or justify his bragging other than his oft-noted criminal record.
From there, it was sleepy time once again as Beach House took the field as the festival’s penultimate act.
As expected, prolific San Francisco garage rocker Ty Segall took the main stage in mid-afternoon and immediately claimed it as his own with a furious sound and a confident presence that belied his young age or the fact that he’s spent much of his time in the musical spotlight before late recording alone in his bedroom.
Touring in support of the brilliant Slaughterhouse and fronting a tight quartet he calls the Ty Segall Band, he leaned heavily on the songs he wrote for that album with the new group, mixing indelible pop melodies and raucous clangor and stretching some tunes out into expansive but never really indulgent jams that amply justified his description of this music as “evil space rock.” Oh, and he also made the rare concession this weekend to the absurdity of the festival setting by leading a chant of “Oi, oi, oi,” followed by a kick-butt cover of AC/DC’s immortal “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.”
Guitars continued their domination of the Blue stage with Thee Oh Sees delivering a scorching set. While a San Francisco band playing Nuggests-style garage rock doesn't sound like a surefire hit at a fest like this, Thee Oh Sees made everyone in earshot believers in short order.
A huge crowd of young fans whipped into a mosh pit, something I'm fairly certain never happened at a Thirteenth Floor Elevators show. The most striking thing about Thee Oh Sees set was how full of energy and vitality it was. Psychedelic garage rock has a pretty standard musical template, which Thee Oh Sees didn't deviate from too much. But there was nothing conventional or predictable about the performance.
This was the best music I heard all weekend and it looks like members of Wild Flag and White Mystery agreed with me - they were watching intently from the wings.
Sunday morning, haggard from two long days of Pitchfork-ing, I had a choice to make: eat a good meal or get to the festival on time. As delicious as the Big Star tacos they're selling in the VIP section are, I opted for nutrition over punctuality, taking a literal lull instead of seeing a band called A Lull open the Blue stage. Fortunately our photographer Robert Loerzel was there, so at least we can share what they looked like.
Day Three in Union Park starts under bright blue skies and already brutal heat in a painfully slow and sleepy mode that I fear may be the story of the day, with several notable exceptions.
Taiwanese Canadian musician Alex Zhang Hungtai kicks things off on the main stages with Dirty Beaches appearing in this setting as a synthesizer and guitar duo. The first 15 minutes or so of his 40-minute set consist of a painfully static ambient drone, not only entirely inappropriate at a festival, but the sort of thing that the pioneering Krautrock band Harmonia did a million times better in 1974.
