The first night of last weekend’s Pitchfork Music Festival was dedicated to that most archetypal indie-rock pastime, the worship of the influential album. Slint played Spiderland, GZA did Liquid Swords, and Sonic Youth performed Daydream Nation–or, as I heard it referred to moments before the set, “Oh. My. God. Daydream Nation.” The presence of a Wu-Tang veteran alongside two canonical alt-rock acts was welcome evidence that indie rock has lowered its drawbridge to admit something besides dudes with guitars. Pitchfork Media exerts a near total hegemony over the business of indie tastemaking, and the festival lineup is a decent snapshot of what the site’s staffers endorse. This year they were pushing all kinds of stuff, not just the by-the-book indie rock everybody assumes they love.
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I showed up Saturday afternoon in time to catch powerhouse free-jazz bassist William Parker on the side stage with his quartet. At first I thought the crowd–which never would’ve fit into any venue in town that’d book Parker–was waiting around to catch Beach House, who were playing next, or just looking for something to drown out Voxtrot. I still don’t believe that so many people at Pitchfork were bona fide Parker fans–the same quartet played the Empty Bottle this spring to an audience that didn’t even fill the club. But even assuming the crowd was loaded with jazz newbies, they were cool with having their boundaries pushed: when saxophonist Rob Brown took off on a riptastic solo, they howled in appreciation. Probably the strangest and most satisfying experience I had at the festival was standing next to two preteen skate rats who were intently watching the jazzers blow in the blazing heat.
For the most part, though, the embrace of hip-hop–and not just boho-friendly backpacker stuff approved for use by people who don’t otherwise listen to hip-hop–has been a good thing for indie rockers in general and Pitchfork in particular. Of all the acts at the festival, Clipse ranked highest on Pitchfork’s best-albums-of-2006 list, and their set presented the unlikely spectacle of thousands of artsy middle-class white kids gleefully cheering for two thug-posturing crack poets whose DJ punctuated their set with sampled gun claps. Malice and Pusha T worked mix-tape material and deep album cuts just as well as the big singles from their recent Hell Hath No Fury, and the crowd kept up the whole way, always knowing what to say when and responding eagerly to the MCs’ prompts. Only De La Soul, whose Sunday-night set resuscitated an audience worn down by more than two days of music, got more people to sing along.
