There is a magical moment when you hear a band or a musician for the first time and an element of their music stirs something within you. One of the highlights of last year's Sasquatch music festival was the number of fresh discoveries, the performers, previously unknown to me, who conjured such emotions. Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, White Rabbits, the Heavenly States, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Vince Mira, Crudo, all ranked with the headlining acts and old favourites for energy and novel sound. Sasquatch 2009 didn't have as many of these moments. That's partially a result of my familiarity with many of this year's performers. The lineup this year seemed weaker as well, especially the headliners: Kings of Leon, Jane's Addiction, and Ben Harper; an over-hyped so-called "Southern U2," a band who's last great album came out in 1991, and the original Jack Johnson.
Kings of Leon seemed to pull in the popularists. Our crew - gathering from the Island, Vancouver and Williams Lake - battled border crossing queues, Seattle rush hour, and the three-lane crawl over Snoqualmie Pass to reach the Gorge Amphitheatre, situated on the Columbia River in the southern ranges of Washington. We arrived after midnight and set up camp on the far edge of a field that the previous year had been almost empty when we arrived seven hours later at dawn. Chaos reigned. There were many more people, with a number of 70,000 tossed about. Nine dollar cans of Coors and Pabst prevented drunken bedlam from dominating the event. The sun - "the burning orb of death" - ruled over us all for three straight days. It seared our skins and fried our brains. There was little shade and the crowd applauded when a lone cloud on Saturday shielded the sun late in the afternoon.
We entered early on Saturday to see Vince Mira, the unexpected star of the Yeti stage in 2008, who projects the voice of Johnny Cash from the body of a teenage boy. He opened the Sasquatch main stage shortly after noon and satisfied with a number of original compositions as well as the requisite Cash numbers. Familiarizing myself with the new layout of the festival - the shifting of the two side stages, Wookie and Yeti, to accommodate the prominence given the comedy/dance tent - I returned to Doves, a Manchester, England band I'd only come across this year. Passion Pit, a much hyped Massachusetts band, played with grooving rhythms, but lead singer Michael Angelakos's vocals were distracting, his off-key falsetto detracting from their sound.
I've long been a fan of M. Ward, a Portland singer-songwriter whose version of 'Rave On' was enchanting, but I needed more energy in my day and made the journey back to Wookie. Setting up were King Khan & The Shrines. I tried to identify King Khan amongst the band members only for him to parade onto stage for the opening song wearing nothing but tight undies, a cape and a feathery crown, sporting a staff and a luxurious belly, and preceded by a cheerleader waving pom-pons. Khan and his Shrines proceeded to rock the Wookie crowd with a mix of garage rock, punk and soul, the horn section blaring, keyboardist dazzling and one band member dropping his pants to demonstrate his mangina during 'I Wanna Be A Girl'. They were my pick of the day.
I returned to Sasquatch for DeVotchKa, a Denver, Colorado band whose four members fuse Eastern European styles with folk and punk (categorised as gypsy punk) and play a variety of exotic instruments, including theremin, bouzouki, Melodica, organ, double bass and sousaphone. The sousaphone was wicked, a giant silver tuba that slipped over the body of the female musician who played it. Following were Animal Collective, touring their latest album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, a critic's pick and a favourite of the year to date. I was disappointed with their show, feeling they overplayed the discordant nature of their work and left their harmonic pop friendliness unrealized. I left and saw slices of Sun Kil Moon's excellent acoustic set at Wookie and Ra Ra Riot's cello and violin-heavy chamber pop on the Yeti stage. Back on the main stage, The Decemberists played their latest album, The Hazards of Love, a rock opera with a continuous narrative thread, in its entirety. The two female guest vocalists, both lead singers of their own bands, had beautiful, powerful voices and the band played a tight set, punctuated by a naked couple making love on the edge of the amphitheatre.
The Gorge Amphitheatre during Animal Collective's set.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs had a giant eyeball hanging over the stage. I'm not sure of the significance but nonetheless they engaged the crowd. Karen O never stopped smiling, and an acoustic version of 'Maps' was the one mellow moment in a fierce performance. Unfortunately, to see Yeah Yeah Yeahs I had to miss Bon Iver, who friends tell me was sublime. Kings of Leon were not. The amphitheatre was packed for their show, but we bailed after a pair of limp songs.
Sunday was another cooking day with Sarah and myself front and centre in the pit for The Walkmen. Calexico brass played support on a few tracks, 'Canadian Girl' received a cheer from the large contingent from the north, 'The Rat' accelerated my day, and Hamilton Leithauser, The Walkmen's lead singer, held a pure note of ecstasy. They were superb. Calexico, from Tuscon, Arizona, have a Southwestern, mariachi sound. Their brass section was vibrant. We left before the conclusion of their set to see St. Vincent, the moniker of singer-songwriter Annie Clark. She performed her offbeat pop with a band and engaged the crowd like a seasoned professional as we failed to clap to the beat. It helps she's cute. Over on Yeti I found my first real discovery of the weekend, The Builders And The Butchers, a Portland band who cranked acoustic guitars and created mesmerizing songs.
Back at the Sasquatch stage I was lulled to a snooze by a sizzled brain, the aggressive punk of The Murder City Devils, and the crazed rants of their lead singer, Spencer Moody. He owned the stage, mouthing off the crowd and the VIP section as he took issue with heterosexuals, high school jocks, and privileged rich white kids. I heard 'faggots' repeated ad nauseum, as Moody professed his love for homosexuals. High entertainment. Refreshed, I descended into the pit for TV On The Radio, a Brooklyn band whose Dear Science was one of my albums of 2008. They played a energetic set, with highlights including 'Dancing Choose', 'I Was A Lover' and the closer 'Staring At The Sun'.
Nine Inch Nails, who are touring with Jane's Addiction, followed TV. Apparently this may be Trent Reznor's last tour, and we were treated to the full complement of his catalogue, with classics from Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral alongside more recent work from Ghosts and the like. Dry ice fogged the stage and Trent sweated like cheese in the sun. I wanted to check out Of Montreal, yet another band out of Athens, Georgia, who were playing at the same time on the Wookie stage. They were keeping the crowd bouncing with energetic, funky rhythms and electronic-pop melodies. All kinds of craziness were taking place on the stage - costumed creatures and miniature melodramatic performances - but we jetted back for the conclusion of NIN.
Jane's Addiction, famous for Nothing's Shocking from 1988 and Ritual de la Habitual from 1990, headlined Sunday. Perry Farrell stalked the stage and Dave Navarro produced slashing rhythms from his Signature PRS. They were tight and practised. The bands who have performed extensively are amazing to see live. They know how to make their set propulsive and keep the audience engaged with their show. NIN are such a band. REM and The Cure, two of last year's headliners, are the same. Jane's Addiction, still kicking after 24 years and a decade-long hiatus, revealed their experience.
Monday, May 25 was the anniversary of the first day Sarah and I kissed in a Christchurch student flat. Seven years together. We shared a bottle of Lindemans Pomme Lambic, a Belgian apple beer perfect for starting another sunny morning of drinking.
We grabbed a sun-drenched space on the grassy slope for Grizzly Bear's orchestral pop. The tempo went up a few notches with Santigold following on stage, playing her fourth show with a band. Her self-titled album is a diverse blend of dancehall, dub, reggae, ska and indie rock and her set was all of that and more. Santigold was full of sparkle, dancing around the stage and inviting members of the audience up to join her. I caught a portion of Blitzen Trapper's diverse sound on Wookie, before returning for Gogol Bordello. Another NYC band, they have been described as "a bit like The Clash and The Pogues having a fight...in Eastern Europe." More gypsy punk then, but much crazier than DeVotchKa. The crowd was wild, the music was up-tempo, with barely a pause between songs.
Fleet Foxes slowed the pace with their vocal harmonies. Their self-titled album was another of my favourite records of last year. One disadvantage of festival acts is the uneven sound quality, as technicians fiddle with sound levels while the performance begins. The bass was a little heavy for the first few songs of Fleet Foxes's set, but things were tweaked right by the latter half of their show. The band has become more comfortable on stage since last year's performance, even bantering with the crowd.
We left LA band Silversun Pickups and cruised the festival. We drank a fine American Amber Ale from Oregon's Rogue Brewery (smuggled past security) while appreciating the mellowness of Beach House. We put on our dancing shoes for the sampling mash-up madness of Girl Talk. We grooved to Erykah Badu's sultry soul and, as we slowly made our way from the festival, we listened for a time to the instrumental dynamics of Explosions In The Sky, an Austin, Texas post-rock band.
And then we walked out the gate, leaving Ben Harper to his fans, and the Gorge for another year.
Quote of the festival: "Nice vagina"
A woman squats against a fence in a quieter region of the festival grounds and urinates. Another woman sitting near my witnesses Mark and Meg says to the clandestine urinator as she stands: "You have a really nice vagina."
