Pygmalion Saturday Report: Headlights, Yeasayer, Bound Stems, Owen, Foundry Field Recordings

October 2, 2007

The last day of Pygmalion Fest had by far the most diverse and awesome line-up of the weekend. If you haven’t been keeping track, Pygmalion is not only a Levantite vegetation god and an album by Slowdive, but a midwest festival that’s modeled after SXSW (bands play at numerous venues in downtown Champaign/Urbana over the course of a few days). The first band of the night was an acoustic gathering at Café Paradiso to see a solo Mike Kinsella, formerly of American Football and currently of Owen.

Although I’m not very familiar with Kinsella’s work (I listened to the American Football LP in high school a bit), I enjoyed the intimate gathering the coffee shop provided for his music. Mike, who claimed he’s more comfortable talking than performing, would often stop his songs midway and chat with the audience about whatever comes to his mind, whether that be their favorite places to go in Chicago or the iPhone. Then he would shoot right back into the song without skipping a beat. It provided for an interesting and very personal performance.

MP3 The Sad Waltzes Of Pietro Crespi

After the show, I went to the Canopy Club to catch indie pop maestros, Bound Stems doing their thing. I had heard of the Chicago band and knew of their live prowess but I was really blown away by the exuberant youthfulness they exhibited on stage. The band had a lot of energy and on-stage chemistry, and they sounded great . The keyboardist/singer had this sort-of feedback-creating device that she would wave her hands over creating noises (anyone know what that’s called?) that I’d never seen before. To me they sounded like a much poppier girl/guy version of Modest Mouse. Oh, and they also broke nearly all their instruments during the performance which is awesome.

MP3 Excellent News, Colonel

The most anticipated performance of the evening for me was the blog favorite, Yeasayer. I jumped immediately on board with the band after hearing their incredible track, 2080, and was really excited to see how it would come off live. The band had a very new age/gypsy feel to their music as they grooved to the music and Chris Keating pranced around stage banging a tambourine or working the sample pad (of which much of their unique sound came from).

They played a short set but it was more than enough to leave an impression on the crowd, many of whom had no idea of what to expect. “2080″ was played early on and was definitely the highlight. The song starts off extremely melodic and spacey, but takes a completely different turn when lively chant-filled bridge begins. The climax was spectacular, as expected, although I would have liked for them to find a way to add those kids voices to the mix somehow.

MP3 2080

After this show I headed on over across town to the Cowboy Monkey where Foundry Field Recordings was set to play (I opted out on Casiotone for the Painfully Alone who were also playing at that slot). The band didn’t quite have the audience that the Canopy Club performers did but it didn’t seem to phase them as they appeared in their swanky suits and played their noisy guitar pop. The band was very down-to-earth with the mostly intoxicated crowd and even brought one of their drunk friends to play tambourine with them on a song. The music was mixed surprisingly well allowing the guitar feedback and huge drums to wash over during moments like the extended outro to “Transistor Kids”.

MP3 Transistor Kids

I was extremely tired by the time Headlights played at the Canopy, but the promise of hearing some new songs from the band kept me from heading back home. I was very surprised that Headlights was no longer performing as a three piece and had added a second guitarist and bass/acccordion player for the night. This allowed them to expand their sound tremendously for the new songs and it added more depth to their older material.

Perhaps due to the fact that they were playing to a hometown crowd and knowing that most of the audience had seen them multiple times before (myself included) they were not afraid to skip over many of the fan favorites in favor of new stuff, all of which sounded great. From what I heard the band won’t stop making catchy, dream pop songs any time soon, but have also let some midwestern influences such as country and folk into their sound. It should be very interesting to hear what their new album sounds like (which is due early next year). Overall, a fantastic weekend. Much thanks to the organizers of the festival for putting together a wonderful line-up and for proving yet again why midwest is best.

MP3 Put Us Back Together

Posted by Taylor in Festival, Live