July 19, 2005
Indie Bands That Made the Grade in Webland By KELEFA SANNEH
CHICAGO, July 18 - "I'm the only one in this park that has a parasol," said Brendan Canning, co-leader the shambling, glimmering Canadian band Broken Social Scene. "What's wrong with you people?"
Mr. Canning was onstage in Union Park, on Chicago's West Side, for the Intonation Music Festival. About 15,000 indie-rock fans showed up on Saturday and Sunday, and if the concerts looked a bit like some music Web site come to life, well, that's precisely what they were.
Intonation was curated by the editors of Pitchfork Media, a site (online at pitchforkmedia.com, and updated daily) run by and for indie-rock obsessives. It remains a shoestring operation, with a full-time staff of four, and the festival reflected that; a two-day pass cost $22, which is $2 more than Pitchfork pays some freelancers for album reviews. And yet those reviews - which include a grade between 0.0 and 10.0 - can be surprisingly influential.
(Full disclosure: the world of pop criticism is small and cranky, and plenty of critics have probably found themselves mentioned in Pitchfork reviews, including one who rather enjoyed being compared to a dog who "might need to be put down." No hard feelings.)
A high Pitchfork grade can focus attention on a relatively unknown indie band, which is what happened with Broken Social Scene. Its second album, "You Forgot It in People" (Arts & Crafts), earned a 9.2; Pitchfork's editor, Ryan Schreiber, called it "exactly the kind of pop record that stands the test of time," throwing in an "oh my God" for good measure. By the end of 2003 Broken Social Scene was an indie-rock brand name.
But let's not get too carried away with the idea of Pitchfork as a launching pad. The two stages at Union Park weren't filled with bands that seemed destined to blast into the stratosphere, or even the troposphere. Instead, the stages were filled with bands that are already about as popular as they will ever be. The weekend - full of people wandering around clutching vinyl records and silk-screened tote bags - felt a bit like a throwback to the mid-1990's, when fans and fanzines supported a community of musicians too weird for the mainstream.
This cheerful and laid-back crowd demonstrated its enormous musical appetite, as well as its seeming indifference to the summer heat. People watched and bobbed as Kieran Hebden, who records as Four Tet (his new album got a 7.4), coaxed atomized, overlapping beats out of his computer. And there was a big cheer for the playful Bay Area band Deerhoof ("sing-songy noise pop": 7.9), which gave the weekend's most engrossing performance. The singer and bassist, Satomi Matsuzaki, pointed and posed along with the music, disguising rigorous compositions as lighthearted games; she led a thrilling version of "Milk Man," which sounds like a gentle psychedelic rock song carefully cut up and rearranged.
Saturday's lineup had a handful of bands more interested in rhythmic exploration than songwriting. The Go! Team (8.7) somehow thrilled the audience with a supremely irritating set; imagine a British indie-pop version of the Black-Eyed Peas. And the hip-hop-inspired producer Prefuse 73 (a reviewer claimed his latest album lacked an "emotional core," 6.
led a rather wan live band. Saturday's headliner was more reliable: the long-running local jazz-rock act Tortoise took the stage for a series of restrained, angular grooves, even though the band's most recent album scored only a 5.2, perhaps the lowest score for any Intonation band.
By contrast, Sunday's lineup had more songwriters. The New Jersey band the Wrens ("shockingly relevant," 9.5) earned perhaps the weekend's biggest ovation with a set full of loud odes to melancholy. And the Decemberists ("well-crafted story-songs, most of which sound more literary than theatrical," 8.3) performed a sing-along set to close the festival on Sunday night.
Online, Pitchfork doesn't come across as a Chicago Web site, not least because contributors are scattered across the country. (Many met for the first time this weekend.) But the festival made an effort to include local groups like Tortoise and Andrew Bird ("a heart full of awe-inspiring song," 8.3), a singer, songwriter, violinist and whistler who charmed the hometown crowd. And the Hold Steady ("epic and huge and molten and beautiful," 8.7), a great Brooklyn-based band led by the Minneapolis expatriate Craig Finn, played a raucous set full of twisted Midwestern pride. "I guess the heavy stuff ain't at its heaviest/ By the time it gets out to suburban Minneapolis," Mr. Finn snarled, and the Minnesotans in the crowd roared.
In the park as online, Pitchfork seemed to have trouble figuring out how to incorporate genres beyond indie-rock. Dance music and hip-hop still seem tangential to the Pitchfork mission, and you could see some of that awkwardness in the D.J. tent on Saturday, when the rapper Jean Grae (7.9) and the iconoclastic indie-country singer Will Oldham (8.4 for his "Superwolf" project) collaborated on a D.J. set; the crowd thinned noticeably around the time Mr. Oldham played "Whiskey Lullaby." Sunday's dance party was more successful: Diplo (7.5) spun a furious, thrilling mix of Brazilian hip-hop and dancefloor remixes, and he kept going until the speakers gave out.
By weekend's end, it was clear that Intonation had succeeded on its own terms. But it was hard not to think about what was missing, namely the swagger and ambition and hunger of musicians ready to take over the world, or at least the country. Many of these acts seemed happy to stay right where they were, making music for fans who accept them as they are. Any park where Deerhoof is a crowd favorite can't possibly be a bad place. Still, two days is a long time to spend there, let alone a whole career.
Or to make a long review short: 7.3.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/arts/music/19pitc.html?
