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• Pitchfork Music Festival 2009: Day one

I have a strained personal relationship with Pitchfork. While I can’t deny the impressive hold it has on the current “Internet” (for lack of better term) music scene, it generally doesn’t cover my favorite artists and I’m pretty sure 4 of my Desert Island Top 5 Albums don’t have a shot in Hell of ever being reviewed. Regardless, you have to hand it to the web site/entity as they have created an impressive beast—and again, I do mean that in the nicest way.

I have to be honest and say that I spent a majority of Tortoise’s set spacing out. I wouldn’t say that the ambient-y, post-rock instrumentals bored me by any means, but I think I needed to adjust to the “being alone at a festival” aspect. You have to feel for the first band in a four-act evening of hour-plus sets. At this point, it was 5:00 p.m. and people were either still in the process of arriving or checking out the various vinyl/merchandise/library/craft-related booths and thus, Tortoise’s crowd was noticeably the smallest of the evening. Small (and that’s speaking in festival sizes, so it was still in the hundreds region) as the crowd may have been, there was a definite enthusiasm for the Chicago-based group and upon revisiting an album on the train home, I wish I would have paid closer attention.

As Yo La Tengo took to the stage, the anticipation for the full weekend of music seemed to liven quite a bit. This year, Friday evening at the Festival was called "Write the Night" and saw paying fans choosing the artist set-lists, and with that, the crowd was rather pleased with its overall selection for Yo La Tengo. Taking a number of the tracks into double-digit long jam sessions, the epic solos and effortless improvisations were only a warm up for some seriously extended numbers later in the evening from Built to Spill.

Q: “What’s brown and rhymes with Snoop?”

A: Dr. Dre

David Yow may be my new hero after witnessing the lead singer of Jesus Lizard tear through the fan-picked set (adding an encore of two songs), flick off everything in sight, tell terrible jokes and generally travel above and beyond any expectations I had for the act. Going into the evening, the Jesus Lizard were my most anticipated act and having now seen the band as 40 and 50-somethings, I cannot even imagine the band’s antics in their heyday of the late 80s, early 90s. Perhaps it was just where I was standing, but the group seemed to be the first to really awaken the audience and was a uniting factor for those around me, despite a noticeable age different. I’ve often wondered how the raw energy of Goat and Liar would translate to a live setting, and now that I have my answer, (amazingly), I feel pretty damn at ease.

For the record, I think There's Nothing Wrong With Love is a nearly flawless record. The second full-length album from indie rockers Built to Spill is filled with a combination of 2-minute pop songs and (slightly longer) rock tracks. With that being said, halfway through the bearded, baseball-capped act's set I was questionable about how I felt about the fan selections. As much as I love the group, the construction of the set-list saw the first hour of the group's performance filled with varying 4-minute plus tracks from albums spanning their career. It wouldn't have hurt to have thrown a quick "Car" or "Twin Falls" earlier in the the set to break up the epic tracks (as much as they were great). For one of my personal favorites, I think I would have preferred to see them in their own setting, playing a set of their own choices.

PS. Thax Douglas isn’t dead.

Check back tomorrow for coverage of Saturday's line-up.