Sasquatch Festival 2010
Coverage by: Cooper Foyt
[Note: Because of misfortune of the stolen electronics variety, Cooper doesn’t have any pictures to provide of this event. The pictures herein are from other sources, and in some cases, not even from the festival in question. Sorry.]
A group of friends and I were lucky enough to make the many miled adventure out to the beautiful Gorge Amphitheater in Washington last week in order to catch the great Pacific North West festival. While I won’t be going into the actual road tripping or camping hijinks in this article, I will be giving a brief write-up of the bands and performers I was able to catch while in attendance. Here they are in order that I saw them:
Shabazz Palaces
For a group opening up the weekend at the main stage at noon, these guys really brought it. I didn’t know anything about these guys going into the weekend and I still don’t know much about them now. Apparently they don’t have a MySpace or do many interviews in an attempt to keep things mysterious. The project is the brain child of Palaceer Lazaro and they play a brooding style of slowed down hip hop that feels urgent and easy to jam to at the same time. They blended live drums with electronics and had a lot of call and answer verses that were crowd pleasers. It was a little ironic to hear them rap about the “white man’s structure” at the decidedly white out population of the festival, but a week later some of their songs are still stuck in my head.
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Brother Ali
Next up at the main stage was Minneapolis hero Brother Ali. I’ll be honest and say I hate almost all hip hop to come out of Minnesota, something about the vocal deliveries and thinly veiled metaphors turn me off, but Brother Ali killed it at this show. He was a bit cheesy at times, giving the crowd discussions about not accepting who we all are but to cherish and celebrate ourselves, but he injected some good humor into the routine so it worked. Towards the end of the set he brought up his fill-in partner DJ Snuggles who wowed the crowd with some truly impressive beat boxing. Each song was performed energetically and Brother Ali got the crowd into it almost all the time. Also he name dropped Minnesota a lot. Big ups.
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Portugal. The Man
These guys were playing on the second biggest stage of the weekend, the Bigfoot Stage. This stage was the first one you got to from the entrance so a lot of people not particularly interested in seeing Portugal were there and that sort of killed the mood compared to Brother Ali. It also didn’t help that their set came right between Mumford & Sons and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes (what’s up with ampersand wielding folk bands, amirite??) so a certain sect of the crowd was really not interested in them. Thankfully that didn’t stop Portugal from putting on a pretty great show with lots of cuts off their excellent American Ghetto. Their sound was impressive at the festival, even better than when I had previously seen them at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis. They vamped out almost all of their songs to around the seven minute mark which was fine for everyone as their songs allow for that type of crowd pleasing.
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Patton Oswalt
Patton was a last minute replacement for Aziz Ansari who was busy hosting the MTV something awards, and for me this was a nice upgrade. Oswalt killed with material that was surprisingly not totally from his latest comedy album My Weakness is Strong and branched off onto atypical jokes about being a new parent, liberal art college science classes, and time traveling future-men trying to prevent the obese from ham suicide. My personal favorite moment came when Edward Sharpe started to play their hit single “Home” from the nearby stage, and Oswalt ripped on their overly sweet melodies and quipped that he wondered if they were singing about the genocide in Darfur. He asked if this was a “too soon” joke and was greeted by huge applause.
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OK Go
I actually only caught the tail end of their performance on the main stage, but from what I saw it seemed like they put on a pretty entertaining show. The guys all seemed relaxed and happy to be there; leading crowd sing a longs and doing some honest to goodness stage diving was a treat to see. Wished I would’ve been able to catch more of them.
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Broken Social Scene
These guys were unfortunately a little hit and miss for me at Sasquatch. They played a bit too much from their latest Forgiveness Rock Record for mine, and seemingly most of the crowds taste. Having said that they nailed “Time = Cause”, “Fire Eye’d Boy”, and “7/4 Shoreline” complete with a blaring horn section. Kevin Drew seems unusually douchebaggy in his outfit of aviator sunglasses, leather jacket, heavy beard and greasy hair flowing out from a knitted hat, especially when held up against the rest of the smartly dressed band, but I guess he is a rock star after all. They missed pretty hard with songs like the do nothing “Texaco Bitches” and left a lot of people disappointed when they teased the monumental “It’s All Gonna Break” as their finale before opting for an instrumental piece. Cest la vie.
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WHY?
These guys and pretty much any group from the anticon. label are big favorites of mine, so I wasn’t going to be missing this for anything. Unfortunately their late start time due to a poor sound crew (they were on the smallest stage at the festival) forced me to miss some of The Hold Steady, and the sound of set was tinny and flat. For my taste they played too heavily off of Eskimo Snow which is a great album when listened to alone but isn’t the best for a festival crowd, and thought that nothing off of Elephant Eyelash was a bummer. Lead singer Yoni Wolf was entertaining though, sporting a fancy white sun hat for the set and getting laughs for his awkward dance moves. His brother and drummer Josiah Wolf was a monster on the skins and really made an average performance somewhat more memorable.
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Caribou
Caribou were billed far too early in the day for how good they are and what a wonderful show they put on. Unfortunately most of the festival attendees were busy tending hangovers or worse at this point in the day, so it was a small crowd who saw Daniel Snaith put on a drumming clinic with a backing band on Sunday. All of their songs were really fleshed out by the presence of a bass/synth player, guitar player, a drummer, and Snaith himself taking on synth/percussion duties. They found grooves to jam in well, giving some of the most energizing crescendos and noise blasts of the weekend.
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Midlake
Fucking. Boring. I ditched out after a few songs and headed over to Local Natives.
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Local Natives
A fun and bouncy set complete with a Talking Heads cover. My friend saw their whole set and said they did a wonderful job. My trek from Midlake didn’t allow me to see very much however. Their live sound was really fun, big tom drums and spritely guitars to an upbeat tune. Something I will have to, and everyone else should, check out more of.
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Jets Overhead
A filler band that no one in my group knew anything about or wanted to see, but they were against a bunch of acts I had no interest in seeing. Without being super familiar with them, they had a solid sound. It was a little run of the mill radio-friendly indie rock sounding, but there wasn’t anything inherently bad about them, or that sound in general. They did have a lot of fans there though that knew all of their words and shouted them along with the lead singer, so there could be something there I’m missing. At this point I was mostly eager to get to the rest of the day though so my mind wasn’t all there for these guys. Sorry Jets Overhead.
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Rob Riggle
Rob Riggle put on a surprisingly hilarious stand up set. I knew him from his work on the Daily Show where I find most of his stuff funny but not hilarious, but off air he was superb. His humor was pretty much “potty humor” but he got a lot out of it. He had a great joke about the men’s restrooms in stadiums being the worst places in the world that had me in tears. Not as great as Patton but funny nonetheless.
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Cymbals Eat Guitars
My personal little band that (hopefully) can was there and put on the wonderful show that I wrote about briefly in the “May or May Not…” article. For a band that has songs with a lot of (severe) tempo changes and dramatic pauses, they were extremely tight. Chalk it up to worth ethic and practice I suppose. Lead singer Joseph D’Agostino was extremely intense during their set, sometimes almost comically so. Imagine Jack Black performing from the opening scene of School of Rock kind of intensity. D’Agostino’s face would warp into hellish demon faces while he would rip out solos and hit the high notes of his vocals. It was hugely entertaining and their songs translated from album very well. It was a good time for all involved.
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Kid Cudi
Easily the worst and funniest performance of the weekend, but most of the crowd loved him so I guess that makes me the cliché old guy who doesn’t get what kids like these days anymore. Cudi’s DJ, and I use the term DJ very liberally here, was some dude in a tracksuit who I am pretty certain hit play on his iTunes for every track before pretending to scratch for every 40 second song. His scratching didn’t do anything, he would do it for a few measures and then abruptly start waving his hands up and down in the air to the beat, and the music wouldn’t change at all. He was a glorified hype man I suppose. Kid Cudi didn’t do any better, essentially backing himself up on almost every song, letting the song play and rap itself for most of the songs. At least five times in his 40 minute set he resorted to the “When I say ‘Kid’, Ya’ll say ‘Cudi’” gimmick which then became “When I say ‘Good’, Ya’ll say ‘Music’”. The crowd ate it up. As I said, each song was about 40 seconds since a lot of his popular songs have guest verses, and he wouldn’t do any of them live, so he essentially just did a series of verses to his iTunes playlist of himself. Good music.
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Tegan and Sara
These girls put on a wonderful set that probably felt even better than it was since it immediately followed Kid Cudi. Their songs were air tight and they packed in just about as many as a fan could hope for. They went surprisingly deep into their catalogue and played all the fan favorites, from “Walking with a Ghost” to “The Con” to “Back in Your Head”. I was also more than happy to hear songs off their newest album Sainthood since “Alligator” is such a damn catchy song. Their between song banter was silly and endearing, but even sillier was the group of extremely drunk bros in front of me who knew every single word to their songs and kept declaring the “fat one” as the cuter of the two. Oh festival crowd idiosyncrasies…
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LCD Soundsystem
For me, and I am sure many others, this was hands down the best set of the weekend (at least the mid fifties British man who handed out high fives and group hugs afterward would agree). James Murphy and crew seemed a little tired from whatever trip they took to get there; maybe the champagne set up on stage with them was another indication. Once the music started, however, they came alive. Opening with a great performance of “Us v Them” which spurred a lot of pointing and arm flailing in the crowd. Old standby “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” was a mega hit, and “Drunk Girls” seemed appropriate given the state of the crowd. This is Happening centerpiece “I Can Change” was beautiful and inspirational. They closed the too short set with “All My Friends” and just about everyone in the crowd was singing along emphatically. Midway through the song some people up on the hill of the main stage started a dance move to the music that spread across all the LCD attendees and it was gloriously fun.
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Pavement
I was really excited for this, unfortunately. Sort of. Having never seen a Pavement show in their prime I don’t know if what they did on Sunday night was par for the course or the signs of a band that didn’t really want to be there. Stephen Malkmus had an apathetically cool persona going on stage, and the band as a whole seemed really jokey and loose. But in a way that was, as my friend said, “five dudes pallin’ around”. They had a bunch of inside jokes that no one got, and then a bunch of things said in Spanish, I guess a reference to Primavera. As far as the actual music went it was 50/50. Their cuts off Crooked Rain were great and had a beefy full sound to them. In fact almost anything that was above 80 bpm was a good time in the Pavement set; unfortunately when their songs slowed down (with a few exceptions) the mood was murdered. Following the emotional high of LCD, Pavement sort of wavered. To be fair I would mostly blame this on the event organizers who shouldn’t have put them between LCD and Massive Attack, but they could’ve played a more upbeat set if they wanted. Sound issues and an overlong set made this performance a bit less than great. I felt pretty drained by the end of “Range Life”.
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Massive Attack
Being headliners who were probably given a boat load of money to put on a show, I have to imagine a lot of that money went right back into their stage show. The light panels that were up behind the band were put to great use, providing challenging and often times depressing statistics and dialogues revolving around war, torture, debt, and essentially all things wrong with America and the world at large. The contrast of the material on the light board with the music was sometimes jarring, sometimes beautiful, and when the two coincided it always left an emotional impact. “Inertia Creeps” was easily my favorite song of their show which featured the transcript of military conversations before opening up fire on suspected terrorists. Martina Topley-Bird was along with them and looked stunning as she performed a haunting rendition of “Psyche”. Horace Andy was also there and his song “Girl I Love You” which featured a laundry list of harrowing stats about America’s transgressions on the light board was a bit of a show stealer. Perfect ending to a loaded Sunday.
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Phantogram
Their head bob inducing synth pop is best suited for small dark rooms where the bass can really fill up the space and swallow you up. The Yeti Stage at two in the afternoon at the Sasquatch festival was not ideal for their set. But despite this they still made it a good time, breezing through their catchy songs one after another, all while looking like the most beautiful band of the weekend.
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Drive By Truckers
Full disclosure: I only ended up listening to these guys because my group and I were dead tired from the weekend and we crashed up on the hill of the main stage for the day. These guys weren’t terrible, but considering my only previous exposure to Drive By Truckers was them having a default track on the Windows Media Player of my parents’ 1998 Dell computer, I was not expecting much. It was so-so for their whole set, until their ill advised 15 minute jam ending which had no lyrics, but instead a spoken word performance by their lead singer. All you need to know is that it contained a reference to his dead relatives who were “up in that big 18-wheeler in the sky.”
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Passion Pit
Passion Pit still haven’t found out how to recreate their great album sound in a live setting yet. Manners is a bumpin’ album that can get me into the danciest of moods on any given day, but I have never felt the need to move in any capacity at any of their shows so far. Their sound seems hollow in comparison to the album, and the energy never quite peaks the way you want it to. The only time I saw the crowd get into the music was on the brief synth solo sections of “Sleepyhead”, otherwise it was a pretty lackluster performance. But they’re trying and that counts for something.
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She & Him
Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward are top competitors along with Phantogram for most attractive band of the weekend. Their set was breezy, fun, energetic, whimsical, adorable, cutesy cutesy cute. Zooey played a tiny uke and bounced around the stage while M. Ward wore sunglasses and a goatee and looked like a cool dude. Off stage Ben Gibbard scowled with jealously of their youthful exuberance (no seriously). All of their big songs that everyone knows were played. Some slept while others danced in the sun. It was very pleasant.
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Band of Horses
This was the biggest pleasant surprise of me for the weekend. I didn’t know what to expect going into their set, although I hoped for a lot of songs from Everything All the Time and I was lucky enough to receive them. Their sound was epic and it filled up the Gorge amphitheater in a way that few other bands did as elegantly. Ben Bridwell’s one of a kind voice was the perfect accompaniment to a setting sun over the gorgeous scenery of the gorge. “The Funeral” got the biggest crowd reaction and it should, it’s a fucking great song. Other highlights included “The Great Salt Lake”, “Is There a Ghost”, and “No One’s Gonna Love You”. For a band that isn’t nearly one of my favorites, they were a big favorite of the weekend. Even their new songs didn’t suck!
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New Pornographers
The final show of my three day odyssey, the New Pornos proved to be a perfect finish to the festival. Todd Barry gave them an expectedly silly intro and the mood was really relaxed for the whole set. The band chatted and joked with the crowd, making passing jokes at the expense of upset MGMT fans (I hear they spaced out “Kids”, “Electric Feel”, and “Time to Pretend” across their entire set list) but then immediately gave kudos to MGMT for not playing their hits, and quipped that they would do the same. The Pornos gave a career spanning performance that left everyone giddy with excitement. My personal favorite was Dan Bejar singing “Testament to Youth in Verse” with microphone in one hand and quickly depleting beer in the other. Neko Case was there and she got huge hoots and hollers from the largely Canadian audience throughout. Solid performances of “Jackie Dressed in Cobras”, “Sing Me Spanish Techno”, and “Challengers” were the big highlights. Oh, and they did an encore which was really cool of them.
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So that was my experience of the music at Sasquatch 2010. Overall it was a ton of fun with a lot of great music, here’s hoping for more of the same next year.
Leave a comment if you were there too and remember things differently!
Cooper Foyt is a music enthusiast with a penchant for the pen. He has attended the University of Washington and Hamline University where he is majoring in English. He currently resides in Saint Paul, Minnesota.