Things I Saw at the Pitchfork Music Festival (2011)

This is the second time that Erin I have attended the Pitchfork Music Festival (the first time being in 2009), and while the bands have always been a big draw, we attended primarily tell sell our humble screen-printed rock n’ roll posters at the coinciding Flatstock Poster Festival. Even so, with there being two of us, there is always the opportunity for one of us to sneak off to see some one band or another, and this year was no different.

Here is what I saw / what I learned / observed:

EMA – It’s a hot Friday afternoon (the afternoons only got hotter as the weekend wore on) and the awkwardness of EMA in glare of sun was more than apparent. This music is definitely better suited for brick-lined basements. Still, despite it all, she managed to pack some punchiness into her dark, gothic, grit-punk, and her half-baked rock moves were definitely amusing (albeit in a humorously awkward way). All I really was planning to do was watch her set until she played “California”, but she played “California” last so I ended up seeing the whole set. Good move, EMA, good move. “California” ended up being pretty anticlimactic and yet it still gave me chills – I’, not going to pretend to understand why.