Not that much of a surprise.

These are the people playing the show:

Jack White, Beck, Bon Iver, Pretty Lights, Tenacious D, The Shins, Beirut, Girl Talk, The Roots, The Head & The Heart, Portlandia, Feist, Silversun Pickups, Metric, Explosions In The Sky, The Joy Formidable, Mogwai, Nero (DJ), M. Ward, John Reilly & Friends, Childish Gambino, St. Vincent, The Civil Wars, Jamey Johnson, Little Dragon, Tune-Yards, Wild Flag, Blind Pilot, Wolfgang Gartner, Beats Antique, Apparat, The Walkmen, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Mark Lanegan Band, Spiritualized, Blitzen Trapper, The Cave Singers, Shabazz Palaces, Fun., Grouplove, Tycho, Sbtrkt, Strfkr, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Deer Tick, Imelda May, Alabama Shakes, Dum Dum Girls, The Helio Sequence, Kurt Vile, Cloud Cult, We Are Augustines, Ben Howard, Here We Go Magic, Zola Jesus, The War On Drugs, Shearwater, Cass McCombs, Active Child, Trampled By Turtles, Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires, Araabmuzik, Star Slinger, L.A. Riots, Com Truise, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, I Break Horses, Walk The Moon, Dry The River, Allen Stone, Pickwick, Hey Marseilles, Gary Clark Jr., Purity Ring, Electric Guest, Yellow Ostrich, Nobody Beats The Drum, Coeur De Pirate, Lord Huron, Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside, Beat Connection, The Sheepdogs, Hey Rosetta!, Said The Whale, Howlin Rain, Gardens & Villa, Felix Cartal, Craft Spells, Vintage Trouble, Poor Moon, Black Whales, Gold Leaves, Greylag, Awesome Tapes From Africa
, Thee Satisfaction, Dyme Def, Fresh Espresso, The Physics, Sol, Metal Chocolates, Grynch, Spac3man, Don’t Talk To The Cops, Scribes, Fatal Lucciauno, Fly Moon Royalty, Katie Kate

Comedy: Nick Kroll, John Mulaney, Todd Barry, Beardyman, Rob Delaney, Pete Holmes, Howard Kremer, and more.

Tickets go on sale Saturday, Feb 11 at 10 am. Get 'em here.

In just a few weeks we will know who is playing Sasquatch! 2012! The launch party is Thursday, February 2nd, at the Neptune Theater with Junip, Matthew Caws, and the Physics.

Along with the live music, they'll also be announcing who's playing the festival, which means we have until February 2nd to fill the rumor mill with all sorts of speculation!

Will it be Built to Spill? They just announced a handful of spring tour dates in California, Louisiana, and Texas, but no Washington (yet). Maybe Pearl Jam? They have a European tour announced for June 2012, but no other dates have been announced. Neither of those clues are very strong, mind you. Maybe Nada Surf is on the bill, seeing as how their singer, Matthew Caws, will be performing at the launch party. Seems fitting.

Who do you think will be performing at Sasquatch 2012? Or: Who do you want to perform at Sasquatch?

For those who like to plan their festival schedules six months in advance, Sasquatch! is offering a limited number of discount 4-day passes for the Memorial Day extravaganza to be held May 25-28, 2012 at the Gorge Amphitheatre. Prep your debit/credit cards for 10 am PST Fri. Nov. 25. The lineup will be announced in February. Who wants to bet that Loutallica will headline one night?

Press release after the cut.

[This video was the top result after typing "2011 Sasquatch! highlights" into YouTube's search engine.]

Continue reading »

See part one of this report right here.

While most people were beside themselves with happiness at TSMF, some found food & drink prices to be over the top. Free water was made available, but the lawn area surrounding the tubes from which the free water flowed quickly became a morass of possible malaria. Here's a short audio interview with Stuart King from Chilliwack, British Columbia who describes the prices at the festival as "absolutely vile" and also admits his feeling that Canadians are smarter than Americans.

More pictures & audio & talking below! Continue reading!

• Give me the keys, I'll drive.

Continue reading »

The idea of comedy at the Sasquatch Music Festival (from now on referred to as TSMF) is somewhat funny itself, as the constant surround noise made it hard to hear set ups & punch lines. The laughs were scheduled during the day in a tent called the Banana Shack, which then turned into the place for electronic blips and bleeps in the evening. I was excited to see the Great White North's Trailer Park Boys in the flesh as I've been a fan of the television show for ages. I've always thought that their movies didn't deliver the same wit, but the series was consistently laugh-tastic. We arrived early in what seemed to be the middle of Tig Notaro's set, which was absolutely brilliant. Her style is rather monotone and charmingly almost misanthropic, her jokes more psychological than typical. She spent ten minutes attempting to imitate the sound of a clown horn, unhappy with her results and then repeating the same noise. Her rapport with the audience was perfect as she dealt with the wits and dolts with candor. If you like subtle and intelligent humor, Tig Notaro has heaps of it to offer.

• Derek Erdman
• Tig Notaro was born in MISSISSIPPI.

Twenty minutes later, the Trailer Park Boys performance started with what seemed like a prerecorded video sequence that was poorly recorded and hardly audible. Eventually Ricky, Julian & Bubbles appeared on stage in what seemed like a hysterical fit. It was hard to hear much because they were all talking at once. Eventually they pretended to be astronauts and a video was shown of them taking off in a rocket. Rickey threw a piss jug into the crowd & a sex doll was tossed onto the stage. The biggest disappointment for me is that Bubbles didn't seem like Bubbles at all. His voice was different and his demeanor was much more abrasive than usual. He always struck me as the calm & stable foil to the two other characters, but here he seemed like a mix between Jim Lahey, Randy & J-Roc. It was confusing. After the show a friend of mine came upon all three actors hanging out behind the tent. He heard one of them mention that Trailer Park Boys and TSMF wasn't a good fit and that they didn't have the best time. While I was walking away from the tent, three young men covered in body paint walked by drinking tall-boys of Corona Extra. I overheard one of them say, "Fuck, that shit was so fucking funny, I have to piss so bad."

And the world keeps turning and turning and turning and turning.

Bubbles: Oh my fuck, boys. What if it's a Samsquanch? It could be!
Julian: They don't exist, Bubbles.
Bubbles: Julian, you try telling that to all the people that got eaten by the dirty bastards.
- Trailer Park Boys, Season 4 Episode 6: "If You Love Something, Set it Free"

• Oh look, there's $25 on the ground.

Continue reading »

• Josh Bis
• Best Coast

See her. See Best Coast. She is incredible. She’s part vocalist, part guitar player, part songwriter, part siren. She’ll lure you to her rocks, but you won’t crash, you will just stare at her because she sings so well. Best Coast was the last Yeti Stage band of the festival, a three-piece of two guitars and drums. Their surf-garage sound made me walk over from the mainstage bowl, because Cosentino’s voice sounded so soaring. Her voice soars. She’s got some amped up Patsy Cline/Neko Case in her. I’d see them when you can if you like the lofi garage type mode graced by a voice with wings.

Someone threw some sort of toy finger onstage during their set and Cosentino said, “I don’t get it.”

• Josh Bis

“Cowboy Dan” and “Dramamine” were highlights. Layered, clear, ringing, and blemished. Brock and guitarist Jim Fairchild (from Grandaddy) wove their playing tactfully. A couple songs after “Cowboy Dan,” someone in the crowd requested “Cowboy Dan.” It caught Brock’s attention. He laughed, “I could have sworn we just played that one. I mean, it would be easy for us to play again, but we have other songs.”

Set List: “Shit Luck,” “Gravity Rides,” “Dashboard,” “Bukowski,” “The View,” “Lampshades On Fire,” “Cowboy Dan,” “I Came As A Rat,” “Baby Blue Sedan,” “Dance Hall,” “King Rat,” “Dramamine,” “Wild Pack Of Family Dogs,” “Poison,” “Float On,” “Here It Comes,” “The Whale Song.”

• Josh Bis
• Das Racist

The trio has been noted for hit-and-miss live performances. At Sasquatch Sunday night, they were most definitely a hit, throwing quips and shit back at the audience, performing All Brown Everything and other hits with backup from an all-white wind section (including a tuba, trumpet, and euphonium) changing up the words to "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" ("It was the best of times/It was the worst of times/It was the combination best of times and worst of times."), and throwing out "another smooth jazz number"—an a capella cover of Usher's "You Make Me Wanna."

Beats aside, Das Racist easily controlled the rowdy, thousand-strong crowd that turned out to see them with humor and good grace. "Throw your glass bottles at us," Suri said when debris started flying on stage. "Let's get it over with."

"Throw us your Soy Joys," shouted Victor Vazquez. (Free Soy Joys were more ubiquitous than white Indians at Sasquatch.) "Throw up a Soy Joy if you've ever been in love." Hundreds of Soy Joys rained down onto the stage.

But my favorite moment came when Paul de Barros, the Seattle Times jazz critic who the paper sent out to cover Sasquatch, sidled up to me halfway through Das Racist's set."Do you know what happened to Das Racist?" he asked. "Did they switch slots with Yeasayer or...?" I think out of politeness he didn't mention the fact that nothing they'd been playing resembled smooth jazz.

Yeah, I said, Yeasayer is off totally their game.

I mean, they can play their instruments alright, I just don't get why they let so many Mexicans onstage.

• Josh Bis

Pete Carroll no longer coaches the Seattle Seahawks, he sings for Guided by Voices. They just finished their mainstage set. I can't believe he's not coaching football anymore. Who knew he was the leader/vocalist for the Ohio based alt rock heroes with sixteen albums under their belt?

Carroll sang pretty well, for being a football coach. He kept referring to the crowd as "kids" and he said that GBV still party and drink.

No wait, I take that back. It was Robert Pollard singing. The real GBV lead man. I bet he could draw up a couple plays and zone defenses though. I bet Robert Pollard wouldn't be striking next year in the NFL.

** Updated via Derek "The Ox" Erdman:

• As you can see, they look exactly like each other.

I totally agree with Trent's take on Wayne "Come on motherfuckers!" Coyne at last night's Flaming Lips show. ("His message is that of happiness and acceptance. Let us say yes to it all.")

However.

The people sitting around me, they had a different feeling. To them, Coyne looked like a crazy hobo throwing fortune cookie wisdom at them in a weak falsetto, and no lights and balloons—not even the perfectly tuned sunset behind the stage—could make up for how much this grated.

"This. Guy. Can. Not. Sing." said one of them, a guy in his 20s. His girlfriend was on crutches. She was loathe to move for anything. But Coyne's annoyingness moved her. She pulled herself up, wrapped herself in a blanket, and crutched off to Ratatat, where she hoped there wouldn't be any more "whining."