For extensive coverage of the fest, please follow this link.
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The Five Best Moments of Sasquatch 2009
5. Ra Ra Riot
This band has a frontman/guitarist named Wes Miles, who loves what he's doing, but the star of New York's classical dance-punk anomaly Ra Ra Riot is inarguably masterful cellist Alexandra Lawn. She was beautiful in every way possible: on point, eloquent, rocking, and moving. Watching her twist and contort her cello without missing a note was like watching her dance with a ballroom professional. Her instrument was hollow, but filled with more life than I heard from anyone that day. She could sing well too. The crowd was atwitter with guys slapping each other on the shoulder and pointing.
Miles tried big, and his grizzled emo looks were easy on the eyes. The violinist, drummer, and bassist gave it too, but from all accounts, Alexandra is the one band member who has undeniably hit the next level. If they can get that to come across on record, you will be hearing a lot more about this band. As is, this was the best performance we saw on Saturday.
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4. Gogol Bordello
With all due respect to Devotchka, Gogol Bordello are the reigning kings of gypsy punk. They play on the edge, like there is no tomorrow. Eugene Hütz rocked out especially hard on an acoustic guitar, while constantly running around all crazy and kicking the guitar tech.
Amazingly, they had almost as many people grooving as Santigold, and to a style of music many of them would likely never be interested in if their tastes were left solely to North American radio playlists. They have successfully revived ancient forms of tested and true celebratory music from Eastern Europe, and dirtied them up with some Lower East Side, New York flavor. They will only get bigger with every performance.
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3. The Red Wine Boys
Notable long-time comedians Todd Barry and Jon Benjamin recently joined forces to become The Red Wine Boys. They appear with only one or two pre-planned ideas that they may or may not get to and simply wing it. As we saw, they are masters at reading and reacting to a crowd. Though the vast majority of the crowd were in the Comedy/Dance Tent for the sole reason of getting out of the sun, The Red Wine Boys gave them a reason to stay and watch the best stand-up set of the weekend, though Benjamin admitted that they "can't compete with shade." They won the audience over quickly when they called the entire VIP section douchebags, and they held their attention with continued sharp and engaging observations.
The Boys didn't just suck up to us, though. They read their review in the "The Stranger's Official guide to Sasquatch!" aloud for the audience; it referred to them as being "allegedly" funny. They then proceeded to rip the festival for it. While every other act trotted out the typical "we've never been here before; this place is beautiful" wank (Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen practically choked on the words as they dribbled from his mouth), The Red Wine Boys had the balls to tell Sasquatch to fuck itself. They were drunk and droll with the right amount of crass, diss, and self-consciousness.
Aziz Ansari followed the Red Wine Boys, and highlighted the difference in their styles. Aziz has decent jokes, but his approach is completely standard "set-up/punchline" fare. As such, his themes were detached and predictably topical. Aziz could have done the same show whether we were there or not. Barry and Benjamin were able to adapt to the room, feeding off our energy. They were truly there with us, in the moment, just like the best musicians.
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2. Loch Lomond
Despite a dry program description that made them sound like the walking history of roots folk, I was pleased to discover Loch Lomond as my new favorite band from Portland. When someone dressed straight out of your grandpa's high school yearbook walks out on stage, and the first words out of their mouths are "the sound of children laughing makes my eyes bleed," you can't help but fall in love. They obviously practice together a lot, because in a festival full of mediocre vocals, they harmonized five across with perfect pitch and timing, matched by precision musicianship that was full of personality. They knew they could rely on one another to be where they needed to be, and they never disappointed.
As they got to the chorus of "Tic," one of their epic numbers, a serious gust of wind picked up. Seeing their synergy come together as they belted out a Joseph Merrick ("The Elephant Man") inspired chorus while the forces of nature bore down on them was like being at a music video shoot. You could not have scripted it better. That something "special" that every band needs: Loch Lomond has it in spades.
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1. of Montreal
[Photo: Christopher Nelson]
of Montreal surprised us by giving, hands-down, THE show of the festival. A guy in a tiger mask came out on stage alone and started the weirdness, followed by a choreographed menagerie of aliens, creatures in gas masks, a giant blueberry afro, pig men, magic wands, mud demons, and the entire VIP section, who all acted out various aspects of Kevin Barnes's hilariously brilliant lyrics. The tiger returned later to play-fight with a man in pink spandex, then dance with him, and eventually flip him upside-down and feign performing vigorous oral sex on him. It was like watching Prince in the '80s, Parliament in the '70s, and Arthur Brown in the '60s all at the same time; they were fully committed to the premise instead of searching for a lazy gimmick.
They were unerringly tight through a broad range of eclectic styles. People were going off everywhere. A few escapees from the intensity of Nine Inch Nails wandered up to have their minds blown, then reassembled, and blown again even sloppier. Their cover of Prince's mildly obscure "Computer Blue" brought the house down. Visual stimulus was in a constant peak, embraced by vigorous crowd surfing, and given a button by Barnes, who smashed his guitar and displayed its buzzing guts to the front row. It was a real rock 'n' roll show, like Frank Zappa used to do.
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The Five Worst Moments of Sasquatch 2009
5. Got pot?
I took a picture of this shirt during Death Vessel's set because I thought it was funny at the time. After several hours, it became apparent to us that Sasquatch consists of at least 25% Canadian attendees, all of them searching for pot. Though a shocking percentage of the crowd smoked cigarettes, it seemed few brought their stash. The shortage forced me, out of sheer desperation, to walk around with a sign of my own by the end of the next day.
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4. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
I own everything New York's notorious Yeah Yeah Yeahs released before their latest album. It's Blitz sounded like a Karen O solo project, with an almost unnoticeable presence of lead guitarist Nick Zinner. While I was sitting there listening to Karen's non-studio treated vocals, something became clear to me: they have hit a wall.
Nick is disappearing before our very eyes, and Karen needs to sing better. Nick has talent, allowed to bubble forth for a brief second during his acoustic rendition of "Maps," but it is usually buried beneath the sea of FX pedals. Karen has an amazing energy and a captivating smile, but no vocal control whatsoever. They all looked like they were having a good time, and the crowd certainly appreciated the effort. Yet, its obvious they are capable of more, and they are at a point where they need to bring it. There are The Beatles and there are The Blues Magoos, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are looking more Magoo-ish every day.
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3. God's Pottery
I, myself, do not believe in God or anything along the lines of Christianity, but God's Pottery just seems kind of shitty. While overzealous religiosity can be funny, these guys seem intent on subjecting Christian belief to lowbrow ridicule without a trace of intelligence. Their pathetically enthusiastic religious songs are intended to make us laugh, but most of their blatant Flight of the Conchords rip-offs had no punchline or attempt at sarcasm. Their songs were poorly written and executed, so obvious that they spent the whole time on stage winking each other to death. Someone needs to show these goombas Moral Orel so they can see how tongue-in-cheek religious humor is done right.
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2. Aramark Gouging
There is nothing like warm ranch dressing on a hot summer's day. Aramark, the Halliburton of food service vendors, provided all of the nosh for Sasquatch. It makes sense to have a single provider from the Gorge's point of view, considering they had 70,000 some-odd people drinking in the sun without immediate access to cooking equipment. One wouldn't want to risk anything going wrong, and Aramark is insured until the end of time.
However, the single choice for food service caused some problems for us. Not only did we not want to give a company with a notorious record of union-busting one dime, we really didn't want to give them $9 for the worst chicken fingers and starchiest fries ever to emerge from a gauntly yellow heat lamp box. I chewed one bite for 20 minutes. When I went to throw both of ours away on the way to the Porta potties, I discovered the trash bin was half full of the very same chicken fingers. On the up side, taking a crap afterwards turned out to be the most interesting thing to happen during Animal Collective's set. [see more below].
If you ever plan to attend Sasquatch, bring as much food, water, and booze as you can, unless you want to spend $9 on a Coors Light, $8 on a lousy burger, $6 on fries or a churro, and $4 on a small bottle of water or peanuts. They also removed all caps from water and juice bottles under the pretense that people might throw them, but they actually did it so that no one could refill them. The worst price we saw was $5 for 16oz teas and $7 for 20oz. That's right, a whopping $2 for only 4oz of hot water. You can be sure the prices will only be higher next year.
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1. Animal Collective
We were off getting food when Animal Collective came on the main stage, and it was hard to tell exactly when their set started. We'd noticed they were on stage by the time we got back to out seats, of course, because it sounded like the same song had been playing for the previous 15 minutes, and the vocals were becoming more piercing by the second. Their stage show consists of three guys bobbing their heads behind samplers and FX, sounding something like a whale being raped by a drum machine. Their visuals looked like a cheap screen saver.
On record, their songs appear to have some kind of direction, and the vocals are rich in harmony, but seeing them live was a completely different story. All the songs sounded roughly the same, and the tuneless vocals cut through them like a wet fart in a sauna. The audience didn't seem to know what to do with it, as only a handful of people put their arms in the air and about as many nodded quietly. A few even hoisted themselves up for some lethargic and tragically out-of-place crowd-surfing, but the majority just stood there solemnly and faded in and out of consciousness. It was the most boring and brutal performance of the entire weekend by far.
