On The Road (Again) With J. Neas :: Pitchfork Fest, Chicago

Ahoy there, J. Neas here. AD is once again heading to the Pitchfork Fest at Union Park in Chicago later this week. I'll be posting daily recaps of the previous day's festivities here on AD as well as updating my personal Twitter account during the day. No promises that you won't have to read the occasional tweet about lines at port-o-johns, but for the most part it'll be live tweet reactions to the artists on stage and anything else awesome that goes down. Below are a handful of the bands I'm most looking forward to catching if you're looking to stalk and/or buy me beers.

Once again, the opening day of the festival changes its focus. This year the festival goes back to a more traditional opening day lineup with an earlier start on Friday (3:30 PM CST). No gimmicks this year (like last year's Write the Night fan requests or previous years' Don't Look Back-style complete album performances), but Friday does include a first: stand-up comedians. I'm especially looking forward to The Daily Show's Wyatt Cenac (6:30 PM), The State/Stella member Michael Showalter (7:15 PM) and the incomparable Eugene Mirman (8:00 PM). In the realm of music, Tallest Man on Earth (4:00 PM) gets the festival off to a great start early on, but he's sure to get some noise competition quickly as El-P (4:35 PM) takes his awesome show to the stage. It's been a number of years since I last saw El-Producto, but he was an amazing performer then and no doubt now. The always intriguing Liars (5:30 PM) go on to give a nice pre-dinner performance for people and, for dessert, Broken Social Scene (7:20 PM). The night's headliner is Modest Mouse (8:30 PM), a band that I have never seen live, so am greatly looking forward to finally catching.

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