• Josh Bis

Even before Pavement stepped on the stage it was clear that their slot in the lineup was a misstep by Sasquatch's organizers. LCD Soundsystem had just worked everyone in the crowd, from the front of the stage to the back of the hill, into a delirious, dancing frenzy. It really didn't matter what Pavement played, they would never be able to elicit a response like LCD had. After the set there was an exodus of young concert goers from the front of the stage, what seemed like ten people leaving for every one trying to get closer for Pavement. The light was dimming, and there was no beautiful sunset like on opening night; Pavement's backdrop was a dark, ominous overcast across the gorge. The set started out rough, with the bass shorting out on their third song, "Rattled by the Rush," causing a several minute delay to the already behind schedule show. There were plenty of small hiccups, like Malkmus forgetting a lyric and just singing "I fucked that up" instead, and a general lackadaisical attitude to their performing, but that's what's so endearing about the band: they've always been charmingly crappy. Seeing them now, older and reunited for a short time, it felt like watching a band of cool uncles who got together to play a really big barbecue, performing to a handful of friends and family instead of thousands of people. They played a weird set list, with several songs I was unfamiliar with and others I knew but would never consider favorites. They played one song I didn't recognize which went into a classic "jam" scenario, with Malkmus lazily soloing, and it became immediately clear that Pavement is a shitty jam band. What's awesome about it though is that the band has to be aware of it, and they obviously don't care. They are going to do whatever they want with their reunion. "Range Life," "Silence Kit," and Gold Soundz" off Crooked Rain were played the tightest and seemed to be enjoyed the most by the crowd; the 2010 version of "Range Life" was updated to include a dis on the Walkmen in the Smashing Pumpkins verse. By the second half of the set the band seemed to have shaken off the rust and were in excellent form on the songs "Shady Lane," "Stereo," "Spit on a Stranger," and "Summer Babe," which Malkmus introduced by saying, "Check out this imitation grunge song." By then end of the set the sky was dark and the rain was starting to fall softly. During the closer, "Stop Breathin," guitarist Scott Kannberg, not realizing he was on the jumbo-tron, tried to shoot a snot rocket and it went all over his face. He had to stop playing for a second to wipe it off. It was the type of thing that happens to real, normal people that you just don't expect to see on the mainstage of a huge music festival, but that's why I will always love Pavement. They're just a bunch of dudes playing fun songs, and like it was in their heyday, it's their imperfections that make them so appealing.

Sunday took a rather dark turn after tUne-yArDs’ refreshing midday Yeti-stage party. I gave the Bigfoot Solar stage another try with the XX—but as I discovered, there may be a minimum distance from which one has to stand to fully enjoy “noir&b.” I elected (wisely, as it turned out), to split from Bigfoot prematurely and head towards the mainstage to grab some good deep-pit real estate for LCD Soundsystem’s sure-to-be-epic performance.

LCD, unsurprisingly, did not let down. James Murphy appeared to be abuzz with childlike enthusiasm—he was the most exuberant perfectionist I think I’ve ever seen. He winced after every less-than-perfect vocal bon mot or technical slip-up, and kept adjusting things onstage and doling out instructions to his bandmates. The dude is just dripping with love for music, and you can tell that he wants, really, really badly, for his band the be “the best.” And, without question, their set was Sunday’s strongest (better, even, than Caribou’s well-executed AM kick-off).

DFA secret weapon Gavin Rossum lurked at the back of the mainstage, coolly scowling at the crowd like the hip lovechild of John Malkovich and that Klingon warlord Christopher Lloyd played in Star Trek III. He had maybe the best job out of any of LCD’s able performers, as his duties included triggering the massive synthesized percussive whomps of “Pow Pow,” each one of which resounded with tidal, sub-bassy pressure.

The day’s second great surprise (after tUne-yArDs totally killing it at Yeti), was turning around during LCD’s set to see an entire Gorge-full of people dancing in perfect synchronization, each person egging the hundreds of people on all sides of them to join in the simple, “hands in the air” mass-consciousness happening. It was 2010’s answer to last year’s infamous “Sasquatch! dancing man” viral youtube clip.

Pavement made for a weird change of pace. While they delivered an expectedly slackadelic set, I was tempted to give in to a darkly melodramatic reading: their multiple, cringe-inducing fuck-ups (Mark Ibold bungled the start of a song not once, but twice, prompting Malkmus to call him “pathetic”) served to sort of put a point on the festival’s generally doomy atmosphere and litany of apocalyptic details. Pretentious reference time: much of the festival has, maybe appropriately, recalled Jean Luc Godard’s nightmarish film Weekend: Friday’s massive, all-night gridlock, the hundreds of festgoers in face paint and feathers, the unexplained instances of animal cruelty (two beheaded snakes may have been found at our campsite Saturday morning). Lots of attendees are moving in packs this year, dressed in identical uniforms or costumes, as if in anticipation of a coming Armageddon and the total breakdown of social order (I thought of them as gangs of nomadic warriors, drunkenly scavenging a post-apocalyptic wasteland).

That said, the second half of Pavement’s set picked up, and they sounded as good as I could have expected them to. I’m still not sure what to make of their trotting out of (what I’m assuming was) a band members’ kid for (non-existent) piano accompaniment on one song. Huh? Felt like aww-sploitation. Maybe it was just something special for Stephen Malkmus’ birthday (not to self: wiki May 30th birthdays, look for Art Bell-worthy conspiratorial ties).

But, hey, if you’re going to ride right into the end times, you’ll need someone holding it down and speaking the truth, and Chuck D is definitely the right mad prophet for these crazy times. I wandered past the Bigfoot stage one last time before checking out last night, and caught some of Public Enemy’s talky set, which was full of vintage Chuck D rants.

Eric was right on the money in his effusive description of Caribou’s Sunday morning set—it was well worth the early rise and snail’s-pace trudge through the festival’s congested entrance. I might not be willing to call it the best of the fest so far, but it certainly lived up to my expectations (and now I’m really wishing I’d been at his Thursday night Neumo’s gig).

I tried to vibe on The Tallest Man On Earth’s set, but “tall” though he may be, he just didn’t seem large enough for the Honda Bigfoot Solar Stage (a mouthful, I know). I can’t think of anything explicitly bad to say about his concert, but it just didn’t sound especially engaging, and with Kristian Matsson unaccompanied on the massive stage, there wasn’t much too look at, either (like I could have expected otherwise, but still). I like Matsson, and I like his songs, but it was obvious that Sasquatch! didn’t offer the best conditions in which to see him. Still, his cover of Paul Simon’s “Graceland” sounded awesome.

tUne-yArDs, on the other hand, probably deserved a bigger stage. Multi-instrumentalist Merril Garbus was backed up by a bassist and sax player, though she probably could have rocked the crowd just as hard without them. She howled and chirped and belted beautifully, coming across like the spastic cousin of like-minded vocal loopsters Many Mansions and Juliana Barwick. The purest expression of tUne-yArDs’ childlike enthusiasm—something which quickly infected the whole of the Yeti stage crowd—might have been during her second-to-last song, when she commanded the crowd to bounce up and down in place. The mass of attendees obliged her unquestioningly, bobbing up and down like a single, joy-powered organism. I spied the Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth in the crowd for Garbus’ set—I wonder if he was one of the revelers jumping around like a sugar-high kid.

I have a feeling that tUne-yArDs will come away from Sasquatch! with more than a few new fans. Everyone watching seemed to be really, really into it, and she was definitely the best surprise of Sunday, if not the fest so far.

For me, the highlight of Saturday's Sasquatch! festivities was undoubtedly The Very Best, who went all out for their evening set at the comedy/dance tent (which is idiotically called the “Rumpus Room” this year). The stage’s tacky zig-zagging neon decorations—a source of great amusement for alt-comic heavyweight Patton Oswalt—helped set the right mood for TVB. Johan “Radiocllit” Hugo did his knob-twiddling and sample-triggering in the back of the stage, next to an inflatable palm tree and flanked by two supple dancers. At the opposite end of the tent, there were fire dancers. It was a good scene.

The Very Best are a band that’s difficult to describe without resorting to clichéd, no-brainer superlatives. Their set felt like a prime example for what an upbeat, wholly absorbing festival performance should be. The band behaved as if in adherence to a shared mental checklist of crowd participation “musts.” When Esau Mwamwaya strolled onstage, he was grinning from ear to ear. He didn’t stop smiling for the duration of TVB’s mega-posi set, and neither did I.

Everyone on and off the stage appeared to be having the time of their lives.

After countless air horn drops and two attempts at crowd surfing (one successful, one not), the set closed out to roaring applause. It was only mildly ironic that the Vampire Weekend-sampling “Warm Heart of Africa” made for an ecstatic late-set highlight while, at the same time and not far away, Vampire Weekend were digging their heels into their own well-oiled set.

The details of TVB’s full setlist are more or less lost to me in the half-remembered, blissed-out blur of their set, but I can tell you that I left feeling a little stunned, a little amped up, and shamelessly enthused. I might have keeled over during Dam-Funk’s set if it hadn’t been for the jolt Esau and crew gave me.

Dam-Funk's set was interesting. While he certainly did his best to work the crowd, he couldn’t psych them up into the same kind of fervor that The Very Best did. I spent most of my time Saturday bumming around in the Rumpus Room, and the vibe was pretty consistent but definitely reached its apex during The Very Best (though the comedians, it's worth noting, were very warmly received).

I was a bit taken aback by the lack of ironic distance in Dam-Funk’s set—he really went for it, with the kind of naked enthusiasm that you’d be more inclined to expect from a for-fun bedroom genre exercise. If there’s one thing Damon Riddick wanted to make clear, it was that he was all about the funk. The dude was cranking out android groovalisations (by piping his vocals through his smooth-lookin’ white keytar) for so long, that I was able to completely zone out for a good while before regaining my bearings only to realize that, yes, Riddick was still milking the same melody. The sheer indulgence of the Dam-Funk project (his debut record was five discs) definitely translated to a live setting, where his extended jams and insistence on sticking with a single groove for as long as possible lent the whole set the quality of a practiced and deliberate DJ mix.

Which is not to say that it wasn’t thoroughly solid. I had a damn good time, even if it all came off as a bit ridiculous.

Broken Social Scene, as has been mentioned already, sounded great, even though their set heavily favored the new material. The rising wind made the band members look appropriately epic (the whole narrative around their latest sorta-post-reunion release Forgiveness Rock Record is one of triumph in the face of near-destruction—the last time they were in Seattle, they seemed convinced it would be for the last time). There’s no question that this band is somehow still at the top of their game, and no amount of hammy Kevin Drewisms (there were plenty Saturday evening) can diminish that.

Alright! Sold out festival! Who wants to wait in some lines! Seriously, though, you forget about the lines until they’re all around your area, and then they own you. We took off Friday evening thinking we were going to beat that Saturday morning rush, get our camp set up, have a nice relaxing night before the festival started. With little traffic you can drive from Seattle to the Gorge in 2 ½ hours. Our trip took 8. The final three hours were spent in gridlock between the freeway exit and the campground, a sea of cars inching forward for hours on end. People were running out of gas, stranded on the shoulder. So, as everyone waited, the parties started in the cars. Guys in goofy hats longboarded between the lines of traffic. There was a car from Alberta with a couch tied to the roof. We began to notice that virtually every car had a Canadian license plate. By the time we made it through the checkpoint at 3 am it became clear that this place was far beyond thunderdome. No one was directing traffic, or making sure cars parked in organized lines, it was just a mad dash for available land. Tent cities were quickly erected in the dark, and everyone in all directions began to collectively let off the steam of sitting for so many hours in such an insufferable line. Stereos blasted from all directions, and at 4:20am a yelling spread like a wave across the campsites. Soon the dawn broke, so we started playing Frisbee, hitting tents and cars with errant throws. A group of Irish set up behind us, blaring house music from their truck, setting up their tent literally on the back of one of our cars. They pulled up chairs to join us and we drank into the morning.

At 8:45am a large group of Nova Scotians began screaming outside my tent. One of them stood on top of an RV, fervently waving the Nova Scotian flag. I think they also have a karaoke machine. The Canadians are everywhere. This appears to be why the festival sold out so fast: the Canadians planned ahead and bought up all the tickets early. You snooze, you lose, Americans!

First off, it should be noted that the mainstage sounds amazing this year. Whoever is doing sound has their game on lockdown, I have never heard that stage sound so good. Shabazz Palaces sounded particularly great from up on the hill; their sparse beats seemed to reverberate perfectly from the stage up through the crowd. Being able to watch the a close-up of Ish playing his sampler on the jumbo screens was a nice added bonus. Minus the Bear also sounded great on the mainstage, and got a pretty enthusiastic reaction from the crowd up front. They got everyone to wave their arms back and forth for “Into the Mirror,” the intricacies of which made their way through the hills with perfect clarity. They closed with “Absinthe Party,” which is still after all these years an undeniably feel-good song and perfect for a festival atmosphere.

The comedy tent is set up in a new and improved fashion this year. A giant circus-style tent with a stage inside was set up in one of the open fields, letting people sit comfortable in the grass while they hear some jokes. Moshe Kasher was very amusing and had great pacing, telling acerbic, self deprecating jokes about being a nerdy, gay-looking Jew. Brent Weinbach had an opposite approach, creating big awkward sections were no one laughed, as was his whim. Someone actually yelled “You suck!” through the silence. But then he would break the tension with a hilarious observation, and you’d start to think, “Okay, he’s getting his rhythm now,” and then he would make it even more awkward. He did a pantomime set to smooth jazz of delivering a baby, then taking that baby and delivering an even tinier baby out of it, then delivering a microscopic baby from that one. When I left to go check out the main stage he was interrupting his own joke with an explosion sound played at rapid intervals for well over a minute straight. The tent was (not surprisingly) completely packed for Patton Oswalt, who mixed some classic jokes like “Physics for Poets” and accidentally walking in on an orgy at an open house. He ranted on how much he hates Manhattan, told some “sweatpants adventures,” and was very funny and genuinely stoked to be performing. At the end of his set he threw his all-access wristband in the crowd for a lucky fan, but made them promise they wouldn’t do anything psycho backstage.

Kevin Drew from Broken Social Scene looked just like Russell Brand with his black beanie and big black sunglasses. BSS played a mix of songs from Forgiveness Rock Record as well as previous crowd pleasers like “7/4 (Shoreline).” Their new female vocalist Lisa Lobsinger is great (and incredibly beautiful. I mean, my God. So pretty.), and she shined on their new jam “All to All.” Why? Didn’t sound nearly as good over on the Yeti stage, with Yoni Wolf’s voice EQed all wrong, emphasizing the nasal aspects and putting them way out in the front of the mix. It was tough to hear any of the xylophone stuff Patrick Wolf was doing on drums, all the sounds washing together into a disappointing mush. Still, I’d rather hear them performing while I wait for chicken strips than most other bands.

Next on the mainstage was Vampire Weekend, whom I had no interest in seeing but gave the benefit of the doubt to anyway and was pleasantly surprised. I still don’t really dig what that band is all about, but their songs are super feel-good and people everywhere seemed to be having the time of their lives. “A-Punk” incited an incredible dance party. It’s so hard to get down on something when it’s causing everyone around you to dance with such unabashed glee. I’m by no means a convert, but Vampire Weekend succeeded in playing a fun, tight set that was easy for everyone to love.

• Josh Bis
• My Morning Jacket

(More My Morning Jacket photos after the jump.)

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Sasquatch 2010 got off to a crazy start. Fortunately, as anticipated, Shabazz Palaces obliterated the midday malaise brought on by Friday night’s bullshit (gridlock, lines, more lines, and one of the most bitterly ironic moments of my life: around 3 or 4 in the morning, as my head finally hit my pillow, an unmistakable bassline unrolled from a nearby boombox. It was Washed Out/Ernest Gonzalez breezily telling me, bro, you “Gotta Get Up.” The light of the sunrise filled the tent. Groan.).

But Shabazz’s set was a burner; relentless, totally hypnotic, and heavily bassy. In a few very superficial ways, I was actually reminded of Animal Collective’s afternoon set on the same stage last year. Both bands wove their material into a unified, grooving mass—using jammy transitions and delay-addled mic improvs to guide the crowd from banger to banger. Another parallel: both AC and SP built an outsized sound out of relatively little, using only Roland samplers and live percussion to make colossal, organ-rattling beats (So far, anyway, Shabazz Palace has mounted the fest’s first legitimately “massive attack”).

Portland’s Nurses offered up a capable-sounding set that was unfortunately mired by a swampy, muffled sound mix that didn’t carry far past the Yeti stage. Fool’s Gold, the LA-based Afropop revivalists who preceded them, sounded louder and more insistent. The crowd—which included a swarm of shameless, gold-adorned die-hards—was eating up the long, jammed-out versions of their songs (none was shorter than ten minutes).

They must have gone too-far with their tricked-out, sun-melted take on album standout “Surprise Hotel,” however—a good two-thirds of the Yeti crowd split after that song had wrapped.

When lead singer Luke Top told the crowd they had “one more jammer for you,” it was almost laughable. Dudes, you played five songs in one hour!

Fool’s Gold setlist:
-Ha Dvash
-Nadine
-Surprise Hotel
-Poseidon
-The World is All There Is

Despite last night’s fatiguing setbacks, the sun stayed out and I didn’t feel single drop of rain. The Very Best took Fool’s Gold’s polyrhythmic promise of ecstatic, pan-global escapism and ran with it. More on that to come, but I’ll say for now that TVB were by far the best act I saw on Saturday. So far, though, the word of the fest has been “jam”: traffic jams, Shabazz jams, Fool’s Gold jams, My Morning Jacket jams.