News from the Sasquatch! Music Festival

POSTED 10:43 PM Sunday
Chillin' to the music

How cold is Sasquatch! Sunday? So cold that Paul Banks, the lead singer for the dapper New York rockers Interpol, was wearing a stocking cap. This in itself isn't so unusual, but it's hard to imagine Banks or the rest of the quartet (abetted for this performance with a keyboardist) normally donning something so quotidian. This is probably the only band in the U.S. whose drummer wears a Fedora while behind his kit. Banks is a limited singer and a frequently lousy lyricist. But the band's throbbing groove was locked in, steady, and strong. You could move to it — not that the shivering masses needed much encouragement. Site vendors have been selling out of large T-shirts for underdressed fans to bundle up in.

POSTED 09:21 PM Sunday
Wind doesn't extinguish shows

After a nearly three-hour delay, the Sasquatch! Mainstage was back in business. After The Polyphonic Spree's exit around 5 p.m. — heavy winds were swinging the stage's rigging, lighting, and speakers — stagehands worked to strengthen the gear. New York comedian Aziz Ansari came out at a few points to update the crowd. First, he got the audience to lustily scream along with him: "[Expletive] you, wind!" At 6:50, he led a few more chants: "Ten dollars for a beer is too much! Four dollars for a water is too much! Eight dollars for chicken fingers and fries is too much, but it's kind of reasonable considering how much the other stuff is!"

The winds kept up over the Gorge, but by 8 p.m., the show was back on.

The Austin band Spoon, originally scheduled to begin at 5:40, went on with a strong set beginning with a one-two punch of "My Mathematical Mind" and "Small Stakes," highlights of their two most recent albums. (A new CD is due this summer.)

Michael Franti and Spearhead, scheduled to play the Mainstage at 7:05 p.m., were moved to 9 p.m. on the Wookie Stage, where they are to following Portland's Dandy Warhols.

The wind has stayed consistent all evening, prompting Phil Wandscher, the less-than-hirsute guitarist from Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter, to crack, "It's times like these when you're glad you don't have hair."

POSTED 05:20 PM Sunday
The Polyphonic Spree plus a mighty wind

The band was mid-song when lead singer Tim DeLaughter took the microphone back from an audience member (the Spree is big on crowd participation) and cut the band off. He then joked, "Do you feel this wonderful breeze?" before announcing, "They just told us we have to quit."

Overhead, the scaffolding, speakers, and lighting equipment that help make the Gorge's nighttime shows go were swaying precipitously. In the crowd, wrappers, empty bottles, and paper plates were shooting around in zigzag patterns, and picnic blankets lost footing.

After DeLaughter and his group began their departure, a security manager got on the mike and said that the stage would be vacated until the weather righted itself, suggesting that the crowd check out the music still going on at the Wookie and Yeti stages.

Sasquatch! has endured bad weather in the past — last year, there was a heavy hailstorm that interrupted some Mainstage sets. DeLaughter, though, vowed to go on, announcing that the group would be playing at a tent following the Beastie Boys' set, which ends the festival's Mainstage performances. "We'll go on all night," DeLaughter said.

POSTED 03:59 PM Sunday
Björk comes on strong

As someone who's long found Björk's records uneven, I was prepared to feel much the same about her headlining slot last night. But she came on strong, with the new single "Earth Intruders," and continued through a sharp, 90-minute set.

Even the lulls worked in its favor — a good thing given how late she went on (more than a half-hour later than her 11 p.m. scheduled start).

Distance from stages tends to warp sounds at the Gorge, with today's heavy winds creating distortion, particularly uphill from the Mainstage. (The winds have also upturned the occasional plate of food. Let's just say I picked a good day to wear an obnoxious Hawaiian shirt.)

A couple dozen yards from the Wookie stage, where New York blues-rock trio Earl Greyhound played a tumultuous, riff-heavy set, is an example. The band sounds great, but was distorted in a couple ways even beyond its thick guitar sound.

POSTED 10:51 PM Saturday
Manu Chao and The Arcade Fire

Manu Chao has been compared to the Clash's Joe Strummer, and his main-stage set made it easy to see why. Fusing rock, reggae, and plenty else, the guitarist-singer led a smoking band through a tireless set that was interrupted every so often by a squad-car siren--as if to emphasize that we're living in a state of emergency. "You can't fight terrorism with Guantanamo!" he shouted at one point, and throughout his set he seemed like a man on a mission.

The Arcade Fire are similarly energetic and driven, but to a more tiresome end. Their set doesn't stint on overemphasis, from the band members leaping around onstage to lyrics like, "Their voices when they scream, well they make no sound" (from "Antichrist Television Blues," which they performed). But in practice, it's like being beaten over the head by a glockenspiel by choir kids fed on jumping beans.

POSTED 7:28 PM Saturday
People watching, Citizen Cop and Mirah

People-watching at Sasquatch! is as rewarding as the music. The best T-shirt so far: "Animals Against Atkins." Surprisingly, the woman wearing the latter didn't have one of several stickers from an animal-rights booth: "I Am Not a Nugget." The big screens that flank the Mainstage, meanwhile, offered this ready-made motto: "Only You Can Prevent Emo."

Sadly, the screens left us in the dark about who could prevent Citizen Cope, who played the Mainstage at 4:50 p.m. The alias of mush-mouthed singer-songwriter Clarence Greenwood, Citizen Cope makes the kind of music that people make fun of frat boys for liking. A far better singer-songwriter performed over on the Yeti Stage beginning at 5:25. Mirah played sweet-toned, melodically strong folk-rock with a four-piece back -up group that began quietly but gathered momentum, ending with "Cold, Cold Water," from 2002's "Advisory Committee" album, and one of Mirah's most popular numbers.

POSTED 5:10 PM Saturday
Ozomatli and Neko Case

I think I've figured out Ozomatli, who played the mainstage at 2:30 p.m. Each member plays a different style of music at the same time. Whoever's loudest — that's what you hear.

That's how I explained it to a friend, anyway. The L.A. group had already played Latin funk, rock, and hip-hop, when my friend exclaimed, "Klezmer! I don't believe this." Then they began a cumbia. Ozomatli finished by strapping on bass drums, tooting horns, and venturing into the crowd, where they played a song, unamplified. Think of them as the Arcade Fire for happy people.

"I'm going to see if I can make it through an entire set this year," Neko Case said when she began at 3:40 p.m. Last year, Case's Sasquatch! set was plagued by hail; this year, she got lots of sunlight, which didn't prevent her from playing Bob Dylan's "Buckets of Rain." Case's largely acoustic performance was a good mid-day balm.

POSTED 2:57 PM Saturday
Early experiences of Sasquatch deliver

May 26, 2007:

The early part of Sasquatch!'s first day has been agreeable all around. Portland's Blitzen Trapper plays bent Americana — they're ragged, tuneful, goofy, and less predictable than their category. "Jericho," played midway through their noon set on the Yeti Stage, is a country lope but they were fast more often. At one point, a guy with a blanket cape and bunny ears began stomping along, appropriately enough.

The Hold Steady played the Mainstage at 1:30. Sticking heavily to material from last year's "Boys and Girls in America," the group was airtight. At one point, guitarist Tad Kubler strapped on a double-necked, six- and 12-string guitar; "18 strings of badness!" shouted one fan. Most appropriate to the event was the chorus of "Party Pit": "Gonna walk around and drink some more!" shouted the crowd along with singer Craig Finn. Sounds like a plan.