The night before, they sold out Schubas in Chicago. Madison? A moderate crowd of varying demographics that came very close to filling up the entire cafeteria masquerading as Club 770. MoB caught up with the Ra Ra Riot’s string section and drummer to discuss the past two years and the great beyond.

The band formed on January 17th, 2006 and by August they played enough house parties around Syracuse to secure an “eight shows in twelve nights tour,” but their lead singer bailed for Portland with his girlfriend. Without a front man or the apathy to quit in the wake of his departure, keyboard player Wes Miles stepped up and took over vocal duties. When I mentioned that this may be a reason why the band seems to engage in a dance party on stage, with constant movement and interaction, violinist Rebecca Zeller agreed saying, “When [ex-lead singer] Shaw left, everyone was like, ‘How are you going to continue? Shaw was your stage presence.’ We were like, ‘We can dance, too.’” Cellist Alexandra Lawn added, “It was awkward and probably hilarious at first and then everyone really stepped it up because up to that point Shaw was Ra Ra Riot. There was all this pressure when all the energy left the band. People would come up to us and say, ‘Yo, I saw you with your other singer and you guys aren’t really as good any more.’”

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Before day two of the Pitchfork Music Festival kicked off, Y Mae and I climbed a small fence and asked the boys of Grizzly Bear to take a break from their pre-noon sampling of Goose Island and sit in the shade for a quick chat. Chris Taylor and Chris Bear obliged and explained to us the inner-workings of the Bear

We asked them about recording Yellow House in an actual yellow house and both stressed the importance of recording in a non-studio setting to ensure that the level of creativity outweighs the level of restrictiveness. No matter how loose the sessions are they still follow a comfortably routine: Singer and songwriter Ed Droste would come in with material that outlined the basic skeleton and then the rest of the band would add instrument after instrument until the delicate mix sounded right.

One would imagine such construction would be hard to translate into a live setting and the bandmates Chris agreed. They said that even though it’s sometimes a trying process, the finished product and subsequent crowd reaction is always worth it. At that point we asked about their daring acappella Take-Away Show and the You Tube responses. Despite the Bear’s large palette for experimentation, they were hesitant to even perform the song due to their absence of acapella experience, yet they trusted the genius that is Vincent Moon and college choirs are forever thankful. They were amazed at not only the level of talent among the choirs (Chris B preferred the Carleton College version), but also the capacity for such an interaction to exist.

The first day of the Pitchfork Music Festival kicked off with a brief press conference in which the city of Chicago was introduced to Pitchfork Media founder and Editor-in-Chief Ryan Schreiber. Mitchell Bandur and Y Mae Sussman from Emmie Magazine were there to ask him some questions.

First of all, how did you decide to collaborate with All Tomorrow’s Parties?

We decided to collaborate because when we started the Pitchfork Festival, the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival served as a model for what we wanted to do. We looked to them and what they do in the U.K. and occasionally in the U.S. too, and it seems very utopian and very peaceful and very friendly. At a lot of music festivals I feel like the attendees are treated like criminals until proven otherwise and it mystifies me why people would treat somebody like that, especially at an event that is really put on for the fans.

I’ve heard you say “utopian” a couple times. Have you been to festivals where it’s been mishandled?

Yeah, it happens all the time. I think in a lot of cases in smaller festivals you can get around it because you know that they don’t have a lot of money to work with, and it’s all well-meaning and maybe one or two things go awry. But really what I think bugs a lot of people and what bugs me is when you go to major music festivals and the ticket prices are enormous and it’s just totally crowded and uncomfortable, there’s nowhere to go to the bathroom. It’s not conducive to people having a good time.

We kind of wanted to prove that it could be done in a way that was still successful yet accommodating. And here we are in our third year, and it’s so awesome to be back doing this, to see it all coming together. People are just starting to trickle in now, so it’s turning around pretty quickly.

The albums these bands are playing today [Spiderland by Slint, Liquid Swords by GZA, and Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth] were all released at least ten years ago. Are there any classic albums from today that you feel could have been chosen?

Oh man, there’s no end… With newer bands, there certainly are records that have come out in the last decade – many, many, many of them – that I would consider classics, but at the same time, you certainly don’t want to pigeonhole somebody and say, “This was it. This was your record.”

What are you looking forward to this weekend?

The bands that I’m looking forward to the most would be a lot of the newer, upcoming bands that I’ve seen in clubs and that I have a feeling would do very very well in a festival setting. We’re just going to wait and see. I really want to see Dan Deacon; you’re either on one side of the fence or the other – he’s very divisive with his records. A lot of people are not into it, a lot of people are really into it. I think it’s going to be kind of an Art Brut thing, like last year. That was a really divisive record, a lot of people weren’t really into it, then they saw them live and sort of realized what this band is about. And I think with Dan Deacon, and Battles, there are a lot of bands like that here who just pull it out in a live setting and really hit it home.

I know some people who saw Dan Deacon last week in Milwaukee and they said that he really tore it up.

I know! That’s the thing that you always hear about his shows, that he’s this sort of maniacal, crazy performer. It’s really difficult to put into words, it’s this strange, big communal experience. Very positive. Which is something that I think a lot of hipster kids generally have a little bit of a difficult time with.

Speaking of hipster kids, do you feel that your website reaches out to anyone besides the hipster kids?

You know, It’s really difficult for me to know at this point who we’re reaching. Because there came a point with readership where we were at like 30,000 readers a day, back in 2000, 2001, and that’s like what a Yo La Tengo or a Built to Spill record would peak at in terms of album sales. And so it was like, God, it can’t really get much bigger, can it? And it just has continued to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

So in a way I hope what it’s doing is sort of inviting people in, and saying “Look, there’s an alternative to everything you’re force-fed through MTV, commercial alternative radio.” As common sense as that seems to us, there’s still a lot of people out there who just totally aren’t aware of it. So hopefully we can be sort of a conduit for their discovery of music. ‘Cause you know, there was a time when I was totally unaware of it, and it just took the right time and I just needed the right experience to get in.