Pictures don’t do The Gorge justice, but here’s a shot of the main stage anyway.

I hadn’t seen Sufjan’s new guitar before the festival. It’s quite beautiful.

Sufjan Stevens and his band are great on a small stage. I’ve seen them at Bowery Ballroom and at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room and they put on fantastic shows. But they are not a mainstage festival act. Their sound is just too fragile to be pumped through giant line arrays to 20,000 people. Iron and Wine were similarly dwarfed by the size of their surroundings. Arctic Monkeys on the other hand justified their move from second stage to main.

The Shins played one new song and ran out of time before they could play a second. They didn’t mention the name of the new song, but I’m looking forward to hearing it recorded.
The Shins - New Song.mp3

The first time I saw Jamie Lidell live I was amazed by his skill but somewhat disappointed that the songs had very few, well… notes. His vocal beats make up 90% of the songs and when I heard him at Bowery I thought the songs sort of melded together. At Sasquatch I knew what to expect and brought my dancing shoes (my muddy cons). His is not a show where you sit around and say, “Oh, that chord sounds pretty”.

I’m glad the The Decemberists aren’t touring with Petra Hayden anymore. She’s a fantastic musician, but she never really felt like part of the band. Colin got about two-thirds of the pit to crouch down during Chimbley Sweep at the point where he put the rest of his band “to sleep”.

The biggest conflict I had was between The Decemberists and Laura Veirs. I spent time in between both stages for a good portion of their sets. Here’s Laura and her band The Tourtured, Tourtured Souls playing Parisian Dream (mp3)

Sunday afternoon it rained for a short time. It didn’t look like it would hail again but everybody dove for their umbrellas and tarps. Adding to the random nature of the weekend’s weather, we got this huge rainbow.

Beck played a new song called The Information (mp3). It’s dark and reminds me a little of The Cooper Temple Clause for some reason. His “Puppetron” was the most hilariously detailed gimmick I’ve ever seen.

There’s a video of the new song at Welcome to Blog. You can see how great the show’s production was. The video work (broadcast on three screens) was top-notch, with at least three cameras on the puppets and more on the band.

At one point when the band left the stage they showed a video of the puppets hanging out before the show. It’s not nearly as funny without the visuals, but here is the audio for their adventures at The Gorge. Beck’s Puppet Interlude.mp3 (That’s Ben Gibbard who you hear speaking halfway through… “Take us on your Death Jet”)

I had some more audio from Sufjan, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and others but outdoor recording is tough and most of those tracks didn’t sound very good. Thanks to my friend Kasia for taking most of these pictures and surviving the weekend with me.