Day 2 of Pitchfork Festival started with a serious announcement: Play safe and stay safe in the sun! The people at Pitchfork were very concerned about the health of festival attendees, so they did a few things to encourage wise actions during the festival. The price of water went down from $2 to $1, the First Aid tent offered ice for your drinks and sunscreen for your skin, and they even implemented a healthy recycling program: Pick up 10 plastic cups and turn them in for one drink ticket. (For those of you who weren’t there, one drink ticket was equivalent to $1, which equals one water. Therefore, 50 cups would get you a beer!)

Now that we have safety taken care of, let’s get back to the music! Many people moseyed in to the festival during the sets of bands like Real Estate and Sonny & the Sunsets. Soon after, Delorean played the main stage. The band’s early set was surprising to many, but they energized everybody, even in that burning afternoon sun. The audience members were more than happy to have this small, dancey Spanish Armada treating them to excellent electro dance hits, and they danced accordingly.

Not in the mood to dance yet? Well then Stage B was the place to be, especially when Kurt Vile took the stage. As soon as the shaggy haired boy came onstage, a cool breeze went by, carrying the scent of weed. His harpist looked kind of grumpy, his drummer wore a sturgeon face, and Kurt’s hair overwhelmed his face. You could only get a peek at his tired eyes or his big pink lips every once in a while, when he whipped his hair out of his face in between verses. The relaxed music was perfect for an afternoon chill-out moment. (Side note: Kurt Vile’s second guitarist was wearing a Bottom Lounge wristband, meaning he was probably at the Liars concert the night before!)

Titus Andronicus brought a party to the stage, while Raekwon sadly had technical difficulties. After starting late, the beats would randomly cut out. But a hefty “Wu-tang” chant from the crowd must have revived his equipment, because things started working, and Raekwon finished off what was left of his set time.

Back at Stage B, the crowd was rocking out to a couple of Chicago-native youngsters, Smith Westerns. Ripped jeans, safety pins, and long hair adorned the boys, indicating the garage rock about to hit the crowd. Lead singer Cullen Omori admitted to the audience, “We can’t drink here because we’re underage,” and then he went right back to crooning out songs like “Imagine, Pt. 3” with his eyes closed.

By this point, you probably had forgotten how much time had passed already, and that it had probably been about 5 hours since you ate anything. Five words: Street meat, beer, Wolf Parade. Since the band got back together, it’s pretty obvious that they’ve meshed well, as evidenced by the new album Expo 86. They played new songs like “Ghost Pressure” and old songs like “I’ll Believe In Anything” — and the crowd most definitely welcomed their return.

Panda Bear (Noah Lennox of Animal Collective) lulled the audiences into a more dreamy state, like a musical sedative, which was probably necessary for what happened next: LCD. Yes, LCD Soundsystem headlined Day 2 of Pitchfork and wasn’t it amazing! It seems like, for that performance, all the busy bees from all over Union Park gathered together to become one sweaty, bouncy mob as they danced and jiggled before the giant disco ball dangling from the top of the stage. I mean, LCD knows how to party.

The encore was especially near and dear to the New Yorkers out there; after playing “Losing My Edge,” the group played “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down.” But LCD wasn’t done there…during the New York-themed ballad, the band played a cover of “Empire State of Mind” as an interlude!

If you didn’t leave Day 2 with a smile on your face, then there were plenty of parties to change that. For example, Best Coast‘s show at the Empty Bottle was a popular (and sold out) destination, where you might have seen Eugene Mirman putting his drunken arm around the drummer from Girls. And then, if you stayed out late enough, you might have seen Kurt Vile’s entire band come in to the Bottle for late-night drinks. Excellent…