tonight marks the start of the pitchfork festival with its usual abbreviated night of friday performances. the shows will begin at 5 and there are only 4 bands playing — tortoise, yo la tengo, the jesus lizard, and built to spill. in past years, friday night performances have been part of the all tomorrows parties series, where a band plays one of its classic albums from start to finish. this year, they changed it up a bit and friday night became a “you write the setlist” night. everyone that bought a ticket was sent a link to a page where they could vote for their favorite songs that they wanted to hear, and even request covers and other things like that, and the bands will be writing their setlists based on that. pretty exciting because it gives the fans the opportunity to hear those songs that the bands never play live.

since ive already talked about tortoise a little, i decided to bring you a song by yo la tengo. yo la tengo is one of these bands that has been around for a million years and consequently has recorded millions of albums, so there is no way that i have even been able to work through most of their discography, but i do know that their songs span the spectrum from incredible slower songs to heavy heavy rockers, and theyre mostly pretty catchy regardless of the genre. even the first three songs from their 2006 album “i am not afraid of you and i will beat your ass” showcase this versatility [aside: their album title always reminds me of this little girl]. it starts out with the 10+ minute rocker “pass the hatchet i think im goodkind”, then goes into the uber-fun “beanbag chair” before transitioning into the much slower “i feel like going home”, ripe with lush piano chords and a string section. todays track is “black flowers”, one of the slower tracks on the album, but one that still has that distinct yo la tengo sound that runs through all of their songs. cant wait to see this versatility live in action in a few hours.

yo la tengo – black flowers

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