Around 1,500 people attended Quadstock XXI Saturday. If you were one of them, you may find that we photographed you rocking out like this or caught you on camera digging Macklemore’s rhymes.
And if you didn’t go, you can check out what you missed.
With Quadstock 2010 behind us, it’s time to begin the yearly Spectator tradition of wading through the many gigabytes of content captured by Spectator staffers during the festival. First up is some video footage from two Quadstock acts: Macklemore and Dan Deacon. Check out these videos of full songs from their performances!
St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) is equal parts fair and ferocious, and her music is a perfect reflection of her demeanor. Photo courtesy dansmallspresents.com.
If any trend tied together the new releases of the indie music world in 2009, it was the movement Pitchfork.com and others dubbed chill-wave/glo-fi. Drawing on sunny sounds and druggy melodies, bands like Washed Out, Neon Indian, Delorean, jj and Memory Tapes fogged this year’s airwaves with their narcotic-laden, swoon-inducing summertime electro-pop.
But the whole glo-fi thing never really caught on for me, so my favorite records of the year generally ended up in two camps: noisy, grating synthetics and smoky dive-bar folk and rock. And whereas 2008 seemed to be full of great records in my mind, 2009 seems a little more divisive; glo-fi included, there were a lot of really good releases this year, but only a few great ones. Those great ones, however, mostly border on perfect. So my year-end list this time around is going to be a little more focused than lastyear’s, and I’ll start things off with five honorable mentions — records that are lovably flawed or difficult to always be in the mood for, but definitely warrant repeat listens on their own terms and merits.
So without further ado — and in no particular order – five excellent records you should definitely check out from 2009:
Conversation