The 10 Best Moments of The 2013 Pitchfork Music Festival

Pitchfork Music Festival 2013 Review

Complex Original

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This past weekend brought us Chicago’s annual Pitchfork Music Festival. It's been going on for nine years now (if 2005 can be considered its soft launch, then known as "Intonation") and its organizers have gotten it down to a science. They still haven’t found the volume knob on the mixing console—even tinnitus sufferers don’t need earplugs at Pitchfork—but the rest of it is a well-oiled machine. Performances start when scheduled, down to the minute; sound generated from three close-together stages barely bleeds into each other; and food, utilities, and creature comforts are in abundance. All of this leaves attendees free to navigate their own path through over 40 acts spread over three days. So here we to present The 10 Best Moments of The 2013 Pitchfork Music Festival.

Written by Daniel Margolis

10. METZ

Performance Date: Saturday
Set Time: 4:45 PM

The vibe at Pitchfork's third stage, located in the southwest corner of Union Park, is always a bit more anything-goes—and METZ fit right in there. Ripping through their self-titled 2012 debut on Sub Pop, three shirtless guys from Toronto had the crowd kicking up a lot of dust as they played one hammering blast of rock after another. They bring to mind '90s heavyweights like the Jesus Lizard and the Nation of Ulysses, but strip away the former's disjointedness and the latter's pretentions to arrive at something even better.

9. Wire

Performance Date: Friday
Set Time: 6:25 AM

English post-punk quartet Wire hit Pitchfork on Friday seemingly intent on proving that there's more to them than their legendary 1977 debut Pink Flag. But in the realm of a veteran band doing its new material live, this went above and beyond. Wire only performed material from its new album Change Becomes Us; occasionally departing from this to play songs newer than that, i.e. written last week. Regardless, they sounded great: Colin Newman's voice is remarkably well preserved and he conducted the proceedings from a mounted iPod while playing an enviable pair of pastel blue guitars. He didn't bother to speak to the audience at all, leaving that to bassist Graham Lewis, who repeatedly stated how much the band is enjoying its current tour (the U.S. leg of which ended with this show) and how grateful they were to be there—though apparently not grateful enough to give us some "Three Girl Rhumba."

8. Killer Mike and El-P

Performance Date: Sunday
Set Time: 2:30 PM

Atlanta rapper and OutKast affiliate Killer Mike and quasi-underground NYC rapper El-P have been enjoying an affiliation for the last year, first with Killer Mike's El-P-produced 2012 solo album R.A.P. Music and now with their collaborative project Run The Jewels, which is only available as a free download. When it was first announced, the pairing seemed unlikely, but it has proven to be one of hip-hop's best cross-regional moves since Ice Cube hooked up with the Bomb Squad.

So it made perfect sense that Killer Mike and El-P played back-to-back sets at Pitchfork on Sunday. Mike kicked things off at 2:30 p.m., his voice as booming as the bass blasting from the stage as he performed mostly material from R.A.P. Music. But his set was marred by boring speeches between songs, which saw him pontificating about his family, politics and philosophy of life, killing any momentum he built up when he bothered to rap. El-P's set, which began just five minutes after Mike's ended, was much better by comparison. Drawing mainly from his last two albums, he paused only to inject elements of humor between songs. He then left the stage and reemerged with Mike to do most of Run The Jewels.

7. Bjork

Performance Date: Friday
Set Time: 8:30 PM

The big closer of the festival's first night, Bjork took the stage surrounded by a singing, dancing choir, sporting a gold dress and a hat that looked like a disco ball cut in half and fused to her head. Performing in front of a pipe organ and flanked by a drummer and keyboardist, the singer delivered a set that drew heavily from her 2011 album Biophilia but also reached as far back as 1993's Debut, hitting all points in between. Her voice was as full and beautiful as ever, particularly on singles like "Joga," "Pagan Poetry" and "Hidden Place." The set really came alive with her 1995 hit "Army Of Me," during which a single bolt of lightning shot across the sky above the stage. It fit the moment perfectly, but also shut down the festival itself. One song later, Bjork announced, "They're telling me the Weather Channel says I have to stop," adding that such weather wouldn't be considered a threat in Iceland. She was forced to cut her set short with 13 minutes to go, drawing boos from the crowd, which would soon be soaked by a torrential rainstorm. (This also played havoc with concerts by Pearl Jam and Phish elsewhere in Chicago).

6. Solange

Performance Date: Saturday
Set Time: 7:25 PM

Earlier in the week, right around the corner from Union Park at the United Center, her older sister played a concert that it was next to impossible to get a ticket for. So it was nice to get to see this much more accessible member of the Knowles clan. As frustrated as she must be by the comparison, it has to be said; seeing Solange live was like getting treated to a mini-Beyonce. She's not as big throated as her sister, but there were moments when a certain look at the crowd or lilt to her voice made the family resemblance clear. Beyond that, she was a wonder, confidently leading a four piece band and two backup singers through an irresistible set that drew from her handful of releases—particularly 2012's True EP, which boasts the hit "Losing You"—all the while demonstrating her frankly intimidating skills as a dancer. She did reach for some unearned moments. Stunts like walking off stage while the band jams and again, later, to force her bass player to milk the crowd for applause so she'd play an encore don't fit so well into a 40 minute set in the middle of the festival. So it was clear that we were watching a diva in training.

5. Lil B

Performance Date: Sunday
Set Time: 5:15 PM

Pitchfork was primed for Berkeley rapper Lil B, aka the Based God, the only rapper bold enough to call an album I'm Gay. He weirdly flips the self-aggrandizing nature of hip-hop; stressing how much he loves everyone but still managing to big-up himself in the process. (At one point between songs during his set, he announced, "Even if you hate me I still love you," then cackled wickedly.) For some time now, hip-hop has been phasing out the requirement that it be performed in front of two turntables spinning vinyl records. Lil B went one big step further, performing in front of nothing but a big, black curtain (only there to hide M.I.A.'s already-set-up stage props), with not so much as a hype man to back him up. He didn't need it, whipping the crowd into a frenzy with one infectious rap track after another, such that even so much as him changing his hat would draw hysteria. As a rapper he's not much, but you don't really need to rap all that much to make wildly effective party music.

4. Swans

Performance Date: Saturday
Set Time: 5:15 PM

Swans are that rare post-punk band that have kept their career going for decades. They've done this rather than, say, disappearing forever after contributing four songs to Brian Eno's 1978 No New York comp, as some of their peers did. In the process they've evolved no wave to a scary, expansive state, so going into their set at Pitchfork, there was the concern that seeing them at 5:00 p.m. outside would deteriorate their mystique. And right off the bat it was weird. They began with the unreleased "To Be Kind," which sees singer Michael Gira delivering a long, sung monologue that finally concludes "there are millions and millions of stars in your eyes." He stepped away from his microphone to sing that line repeatedly, such that only the closest audience members in a massive field could hear him. During this, he was backed by two drummers, a guitarist and bassist, all of whom stood silent save for a seated man in a suit plucking out an eerie pattern on two distorted pedal steel guitars. This was a master class in building tension, which was finally released by swelling, crashing chords from the band. Swans' material is so epic that every song (and they only did a handful of them) feels like a set in itself.

3. The Breeders

Performance Date: Saturday
Set Time: 6:15 PM

Now that the Pixies reunion is old news, Kim Deal having exited the band, it's time for the Breeders' victory lap. That's taken the form of LSXX, a deluxe reissue of their most successful album, 1993's Last Splash (your chance to pay $30 for a CD that you could find 10 copies of in every dollar bin in the '90s) and an accompanying tour playing the entire record. This checked in at Pitchfork around 6:00 p.m. on Saturday; establishing Last Splash's status as a classic album, which is as baffling as its initial MTV Buzz Clip ascendance was in the first place.

The band opened with "Shocker In Gloomtown," a Guided By Voices cover featured on the Breeders' 1994 Head To Toe EP. Deal explained they were just doing this to warm up. From there they powered through Last Splash. All four musicians were in fine form, particularly Jim Macpherson, spurring the band into a gallop on the drums. Meanwhile, the Deal sisters and bassist Josephine Wiggs goofed around and made mistakes here and there; all part of the charm of a band whose records have always sounded like recorded rehearsals. They had jokes, too. When Wiggs retreated behind an amp during a part when she wasn't playing, Kelley called her out: "What the fuck, Josephine? Savages didn't hide from the sun!" When the band agreed to do "Oh!" off 1990's Pod by request, Deal said it was "for the ladies," then added, "I've never said that before." In her dry English accent, Wiggs intoned, "I highly doubt that."

2. M.I.A

Performance Date: Sunday
Set Time: 7:25 PM

M.I.A.'s fourth album has been held from release for months; reportedly because her record company finds it "too positive." God knows what that means or even if it's true, but it certainly didn't stop her from playing this festival-wrecking set in which her she debuted some of this new material. Not that she needed it. M.I.A. was able to draw from her first three albums to create a relentless blend of high energy, genre-blending dance music. She performed in front of an ornate stage that highlighted the name of the delayed album in question, Matangi, while backed by a crew of dancers and a standing drummer. This came in handy on explosively percussive numbers like "Boyz" and "Born Free." She closed with her massive smash, "Paper Planes," and then "Bad Girls," which will presumably be on Matangi if it's ever released.

1. R. Kelly

Performance Date: Sunday
Set Time: 8:30 PM

R. Kelly was a somewhat unconventional booking for Pitchfork. But as he took the stage at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, it all made perfect sense. The crowd was bursting with love for the singer as he came out surrounded by a clapping gospel choir that eventually knelt as he stood to make his grand entrance. For the next hour and some minutes (though after 70 minutes he tried to claim he'd been performing for two hours), he fed the crowd non-stop hits from the palm of his hand. Most ended after a minute or two, which might have been annoying from a lesser performer. But it seemed only logical in this context. He has so many beloved songs, if he's going to do them all, he has to pick up the pace. He even snatched back his contributed hooks from a lot of rap hits; singing just his part before moving on.

Some of the best moments of the set came when Kelly simply improvised—giving more credance to Aziz Ansari's description of him as "a brilliant R&B singer/crazy person." His now-customary "grown-ass man" monologue took an unexpected detour when he began singing, "Can I get a towel, to wipe my face/'Cause I be sweatin' like a motherfucker." Then he got playful, telling the crowd, "I can write a song about anything," and getting them to sing his of-the-moment towel song back to him. Closing with "I Believe I Can Fly," he sang the verses and then turned the mic toward the audience and stood there in awe as all of Union Park belted out the chorus (and as hundreds of dove-shaped white balloons were released into the sky). All in all, the set proved that Kelly was a great fit for Pitchfork and that his craft transcends genre divisions.