Intro | Friday | Saturday
1:45 PM Dianogah Pitchfork’s Chicago roots are showing. This local two-basses-and-drums trio hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire with its fusion of postrock and posthardcore—though the band has sustained a cultish following for nearly 15 years, thanks in part to its mastery of dynamics and sometimes lovely melodies, that following is just about exclusively Chicagoan. a Balance Stage —MR
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2:30 PM Blitzen Trapper On last year’s Furr (Sub Pop), this superb Oregon group tones down the wiggy, sugar-rush energy that makes the roots rock on its third album, 2007’s Wild Mountain Nation—a mix of the Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and the Band—so fun and irresistible. But Furr is hardly a disappointment: steady touring has sharpened the band’s chops and helped focus their songwriting and arranging, and what they’ve lost in playfulness they’ve more than gained in power. A new EP, Black River Killer, is due in August, so it seems fair to expect some new songs at this show—it’ll be exciting to see what these guys do next with their surplus of ideas and talent. Blitzen Trapper also headlines the Empty Bottle tonight. a Aluminum Stage —PM
3:35 PM Women Basted in springy reverb, swaddled in the special sound you can only get from analog tape, and jumping discontinuously from style to style with the perfect instincts to make every leap feel right—just like your favorite Swell Maps side—this Calgary outfit’s self-titled debut album for Jagjaguwar reminds me of what was great about first-generation postpunk bands, at least before the bills came due and they had to appease their major-label paymasters. But cool production techniques mean nothing onstage, so it’s a good thing Women write tunes as catchy as the Association at the top of their game. a Balance Stage —BM
6:15 PM M83 M83‘s 2006 album Before the Dawn Heals Us has always reminded me of David Lynch’s Lost Highway: lush and abstract, it’s unsettling in a way that’s hard to put your finger on yet still deeply pleasurable. But for last year’s Saturdays = Youth (Mute) the group’s mastermind, Anthony Gonzalez, applied his talent for fascinating sonic textures not to cinematic nu-classical compositions but to actual pop songs—and it turns out he’s good at both. The album is a tribute not only to the music that teenage goths have been swooning over forever—lots of delay, lots of synths, a breathy chanteuse singing alongside Gonzalez—but also to teenage gothdom itself, most noticeably in its immensly catchy centerpiece, “Graveyard Girl.” a Aluminum Stage —MR
8:40 PM Flaming Lips At least for most of the past decade, the Flaming Lips seem to have chosen showbiz overkill over musical substance. On the two full-length albums they’ve released since their 1999 masterpiece, The Soft Bulletin, they’ve calcified into predictability, and for years they’ve been playing essentially the same live set—which might be why they initially balked at participating in Pitchfork’s all-request Write the Night series. With any luck people have been voting for some of the great songs the Lips shelved ages ago, not quasi-anthemic fluff like “Do You Realize??” a Aluminum Stage —PM
