In its early years, the Pitchfork Music Festival dedicated its first night to bands performing classic albums in their entirety, a then-novel format with a nostalgic bent that didn\'t fully square with the editorial philosophy of the website behind the festival. Pitchfork may have come to attention as an online indie-rock zine, canonizing music that other critical resources had been slighting, but over the last decade its coverage has broadened. The site is now defined not as much by its tastes as by its ardent focus on new music, regardless of the form that new music takes. In effect, Pitchfork now argues that there is no canon, or that if there is one, it\'s fluid and subject to constant change and revision. Even the site\'s greatest honor, a Best New Music tag, is by definition a temporary recognition. This is the music that sounds best at the moment, the title says, we make no promises about two years from now. That mentality has been reflected by the site\'s recent festivals, which have given priority to new or just-breaking artists over elderstatesmen, and this year\'s lineup was especially current, dominated by acts that were unknown just a year or two ago, if they were around at all.<o:p> <p class=\"Standard\"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class=\"Standard\">An early afternoon rain Saturday muddied the Union Park grounds for the rest of the day. The downpour came midway through the Cleveland pop-punk band Cloud Nothings\' set, in the middle of their angst epic “Wasted Days,” and nobody seemed particularly prepared for it. Stage hands scurried to cover sensitive equipment and draw a tarp across the stage while the band stretched the song\'s already lengthy instrumental interlude a few extra minutes. That might have made for a killer payoff if the sound hadn\'t died when right before the song hit its climax. With singer Dylan Baldi silenced by his dead mic, the soaked crowd screamed the song\'s closing chorus for him. Set over.<o:p /></p> <p class=\"Standard\"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class=\"Standard\">With Cloud Nothings cut short, Atlas Sound\'s Bradford Cox started his solo set on a neighboring stage early, with a song he claimed to have made up on the spot. His face painted white with a thick coat of sunscreen, and his head covered by a straw hat, he played a long set of dreamy, sometimes indulgent, effects-laden songs, with scant regard for the audience\'s interest in them.<o:p /></p> <p class=\"Standard\"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class=\"Standard\">A second downpour thinned the crowd for black-metal revivalists Liturgy, but the sun came out in time for Cults\' chipper performance. The New York celebration-pop band wasn\'t flattered by the big stage. Perhaps some of the moniters were off from the stage\'s earlier drenching, because singer Madeline Follin seemed oblivious to how pitchy her voice was.<o:p /><br /><br /> Youth Lagoon\'s Trevor Powers, performing concurrently at the festival\'s side stage, sounded much better. When the duo last played Milwaukee, Powers was fighting off a bout of food poisoning and looked it, slouching over his keyboard as if to preserve every bit of strength, but he appeared much more comfortable here, and that extra energy lent some extra uplift to the group\'s huggable synth-pop.<o:p /></p> <p class=\"Standard\"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class=\"Standard\">Electronic producer Flying Lotus brought the day\'s first party to the main stage during his DJ set. Eschewing the elliptical mood pieces of his solo albums, he worked the crowd with tracks from Lil Wayne and the Beastie Boys, closing his set with a rowdy dubstep remix of Waka Flocka Flame\'s “Hard in da Paint.”<o:p /></p> <p class=\"Standard\"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class=\"Standard\">The riot grrl supergroup Wild Flag opened their set with a cover of Television\'s “See No Evil” that couldn\'t help but sound thin compared to the original, but they settled in quickly, delivering the day\'s most fun rock \'n\' roll show. I never saw Sleater-Kinney during their run, but Carrie Brownstein proved to be every bit as magnetic a performer as her reputation. When she wasn\'t making playful kicks and leaps, she scanned the crowd with Bangles “Walk Like an Egyptian” eye pans.<o:p /></p> <p class=\"Standard\"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class=\"Standard\">The Pitchfork Music Festival provides a safe place for people who wouldn\'t normally go to a rap show to sample some live hip-hop, though that cultural clash can make for some awkward moments. Playing behind his occasionally magnificent 2011 album <em>Habits & Contradictions</em>, Schoolboy Q assured the crowd “I fuck with white people,” and granted them permission to sing along to a chorus with a N-word, but given how enthusiastically some crowd members took him up on that offer maybe he should have reconsidered. With no guests to assist himhis friend A$AP Rocky had apparently split town after playing Pitchfork the night beforeSchoolboy sometimes had trouble anchoring the stage on his own and his set occasionally dragged, though like his album, when it was good it was exhilarating. Danny Brown\'s set later on the same stage never suffered for lack of energy: The frizzy haired, tart-voice rapper was wildly entertaining throughout, and he kept his whole performance as brisk as one of his verses.<o:p /></p> <p class=\"Standard\"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class=\"Standard\">The night closed with dueling sets from reunited post-rock pioneers Godspeed You! Black Emperor, one of the weekend\'s only performers without a new album under their belttheir last one came out a decade agoand the self-producing songstress Grimes, who traded some of the subtleties of her rich recent album <em>Visions</em> for a harder dance thump (being on tour with Skrillex will do that to you, perhaps). It was a striking contrast, a time-tested (and in many ways out-of-time) band against an Internet it-girl. Grimes\' slinky pop may not prove as enduring as Godspeed\'s steel-forged compositions, but at the moment it sounds mighty good, and that\'s what matters most at the Pitchfork Music Festival. As a snapshot of what\'s in vogue in right now, in the summer of 2012, the lineup couldn\'t have been much better.<br /></p> <p class=\"Standard\"><br /><o:p /></p></o:p>
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