Pitchfork Music Festival: 10 Best Moments

Early Friday afternoon, almost precisely at press check-in time, there was a horrifying thunderclap worthy of Nosferatu. It rained and rained, let up just long enough to lull concertgoers into a false sense of security, and then rained exponentially worse than it had all day. Early into the Canadian rock duo's set, however that all miraculously changed. Somehow, the band made the rain end and the sun come out. Even though the band was protected by the stage's awning, singer-guitarist Brian King pumped the brakes to muse, "I think the sun came out, I think everything's gonna be okay!" He was right. —David Wolinsky

I glossed over Feist's appearance in my Pitchfork preview posted last week—hey, there are 47 bands playing total—but am making good here by recognizing what an amazing job she did closing out the fest's first night. Those only familiar with the Canadian chanteuse in passing were likely even more blown away by Leslie Feist, who wore a pretty, stark white dress and led her band through hypnotic, edgy folk that somehow seamlessly meshed post-Zeppelin guitar swagger, female singing trio Mountain Man and a superhuman command of polyrhythms. Still, she modestly deferred to the band performing immediately beforehand for winning over her crowd, saying: "I see all of you have your Dirty Projectors glow on. They made all of us glow."

The real headliners didn't take the stages until a few hours later, but Sleigh Bells storming the stage and whipping the crowd into a rabid-mouthed frenzy might have caused some fans to check their watches. Lead singer Alexis Krauss, clad in a sleeveless white T-shirt, jean-short cutoffs and fingerless leather gloves, mercilessly pummeled the audience with her unending energy. Live, the band's guitars are like twin machetes hacking through the air instead of the overly compressed white-noise growls they resemble on record.

It's a given that Brooklyn indie-rockers Dirty Projectors were going to be a blast live. But what wasn't expected was how much everyone in the audience would vibe on the band's peculiar, tough-to-pin-down musicality that occasionally eschews guitars to instead let R&B, choral and whatever else influences frontman Dave Longstreth, shine through. During 'Swing Lo Magellan''s first single, "Gun Has No Trigger," I glanced over and saw an older fella in an orange baseball cap and yellow-and-gray polo rocking out more than seems possible while in a lawn chair. His enthusiasm was so infectious I had to come over and chat. John B., 54, shared his passion not just for the band, but also for the festival: "These guys are quirky enough [that] they can't be mainstream… Not a bad group today. Lolla's Lolla, but Pitchfork is Chicago at its best!"

"Wasted Days," a track off Cleveland indie-rock band Cloud Nothings' latest album 'Attack on Memory,' is already a dramatic nine-minute gut-wrencher, and the stakes were heightened thanks to the pesky rain. It was coming down so hard that the band's microphones had to be shut off, for fear it might electrocute them. What happened next made the giant festival feel like an intimate, leaky garage show: The crowd screamed the lyrics that the band couldn't sing at that particular moment. It made getting sopping wet on a Saturday afternoon pretty much worth it. Even better? Nobody died.

No music festival is complete without a little people watching. Pitchfork certainly didn't disappoint in that aspect. My favorite was a couple wearing white T-shirts with black letters on them. The guy's, in cursive: "I want a partner in crime." On hers, in block letters: "I want a juicy burger." Ah, young romance.

Any notion that Brownstein forgot how to rock when she started performing droll sketch comedy with Fred Armisen in 'Portlandia' were quickly put to rest when indie-rock super-girl-group Wild Flag took the stage with a thorny cover of Television's "See No Evil." Then came a new song where Brownstein snarled, and then roared, "I don't see any way around this / So let's go through it." Sketches about free-range organic chicken-raising cults couldn't possibly feel any further away.

Near the end of the garage-punk band's set, frontman Ty Segall extended the microphone stand out into the audience, who graciously showered it with a round-robin of the expected, boorish "Whoooooo!"'s. Turns out Segall was kicking on the tires on how enthused his crowd was, because shortly afterwards Segall hopped out and sang while crowd-surfing. Commendable and exciting as that was, it became downright hilarious when all the arms pushing and pulling him yanked his pants down just far enough for Segall to inadvertently moon the entire audience. This was made infinitely more noticeable thanks to the JumboTron, which didn't switch to another camera. I snickered, as did all the people around me.

Another act skipped in the preview but caught during the fest, AraabMuzik, aka Rhode Island's Abraham Orellana, is a hip-hop producer proficient on the MPC 2500, which sounds like a witch's cauldron bubbling up with dubstep, electronica and ghettotech. Maybe it was all the extreme weather finally setting down, but a lot of people decided to take a lay-down for the set. I joined them, folding my Stetson down over my face, and dozed off to the most unlikely lullaby: a cacophony that sounded like two separate drum sets being played simultaneously with four touch-tone phones left off the hook, combined with a rocket taking off to a click track.

The weekend got rolling with the Japandroids making the sun come out, and Pitchfork peacefully edged to the finish line with dreamy pop duo Beach House tucking it into bed. The band's chill-out music made the moon start to rise and the heat continue to drop, as the crowd savored the final moments of Pitchfork before realizing that, yes, we'd all have to return to the real world Monday morning.