Check back for more updates all day from Pitchfork. Check out pictures from Day 2 in our Flickr set and read our write-ups from yesterday here.

Boban & Marko Markovic Orkestar: If Beirut (the indie rock cause célébre, at least the past few years) was all you’d experienced of Balkan brass band music, the first act of Day 2 likely delivered a pleasant surprise. Under another cloud of summer drizzle, Serbia’s Boban and Marko Markovic Orkestar gave a master class in iron, brass band energy and syncopated, head-bobbing beat construction. If only PE’s Bomb Squad and this band could get together, we could create a funk-pocalypse!

Wearing white button-down shirts and khakis, there was no mistaking the tentet for hipster runaways. Instead, the massive ensemble deliver orchestral, well-defined madness with the lean kinetic energy of New Orleans. And because the melodies pass by at such blazing fast tempos, when the flugelhorns play “in unison,” it has a cacophonous effect. In other words: Reckless, wild and completely coordinated.

Boban and Marko—Boban’s son—both played flugelhorn, alongside three other flugelhorn players, but they were unquestionably the leaders. Positioned out front, each summoned forth the full power of the massive ensemble with a simple flick of the head. Boban, though, remains the leader of the leader, if you will; for one, he sings and, two, at pivotal moments, it’s him pushing the band all the way up to its best moments, usually involving giddy, adrenalized tempos.

The engine driving the band? A rhythm section of helicon (sort of a tuba/sousaphone-type bass horn), drum set and a lone snare player. Amidst the fireworks from the rest of the Orkestar—at turns bluesy, Semitic (“Hava Nagila”) and minor mode-Rroma— not enough props can be sent their way. - Matthew Lurie

Titus Andronicus: Accompanying Titus Andronicus’s set was a steady rain, on a crowd that had already had enough of it just one hour into Pitchfork’s second day. It was miserable weather for miserable lyrics by a band named for a Shakespearean tragedy and hailing from a state that knows from misery: New Jersey.

Surprising then that the band seems to be having so much fun. Starting with a few tossed-off lines from Pulp’s “Common People” (if Jarvis refuses to sing it, it’s nice that someone else tries to fill the void), lead singer Patrick Stickles – clad in a Batman t-shirt – howls and bellows his way into “Upon Viewing Brueghel’s ‘Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus.’” Any band pompous enough to use that as the title of a song usually plays it on a theremin, but Titus’s mockery extends to itself as well as the creature comforts of the world. (“Morporate Kagazines Still Suck” reads the shirt of the skinniest of their guitarists.)

Stickles literally tears through the scenery, climbing the stage rigging and gripping the mic cord in his teeth as his bandmates Liam Betson, Andrew Cedermark, and Dan Tews keep up a triple (or quadruple when Stickles joins in) threat of guitars. Music that’s fueled by British punk ideals, and 50s rockabilly shouldn’t require that many six-strings but like many Jersey bands, Titus carries a whiff of Springsteen anthemicism, which works in their favor here as their music – unlike previous P’fork acts – actually carries across the field. They seem to be saying that even in a world gone to shit, there’s always safety in numbers.

More angst follows: “The Enemy is everywhere….your life is over!” And yet the men of Titus Andronicus carry on, six Neros fiddling and telling fart jokes to pass the time. - Scott Smith

Jay Reatard: The unfortunately named Jay Reatard has refined a punk-garage aesthetic on numerous sought-after singles—and toured so much that one could hit two of his Chicago gigs in the time in takes to get your tires rotated. Tonight, he’s playing the newish venue Bottom Lounge. But for now, we’ve got his Flying-V-toting three-piece band, a trunkful of 2 minute songs, and an annoying drizzle. Reatard’s get-shit-done attitude extends to his presentation of tunes: titles are shouted out before he and band head straight into them. The drummer keeps stick-close to the hi-hat, the bassist in gold metallic pants aims his axe to the sky, and Reatard’s mop-like hair flops down around the microphone. It’s a tribute to the genius of the Misfits and the Buzzcocks—the Ramones as well—but Reatard knows better than to drag it out. He’s done before 2pm. His economic micro-hits speak for themselves—but his tinny guitar tone doesn’t travel far in the crowd. No worries, he’ll back again, and again and again.

And now the suns out and T-Mobile has announced free body shaving at its tent, 2-year contract required. – John Dugan

Caribou: Dan Snaith, a.k.a Caribou, started out crafting pretty, minimal electronic discs. Slowly, he’s assembled a trio of backers—on guitar, bass and drums—and evolved into a lightly trippy krautrock band. The Canadian discovered his stage name on an acid trip in the woods, and today’s set backs the tale in swirling pink crescendos of rhythm and harmony. Occasionally jumping on drums, keyboards, guitar and xylophone, Snaith leads his band through 50 minutes of blissful motorik. The quartet sticks to the last two psychedelic records, Milk of Human Kindness and Andorra. Waves of percussion wash out the downy harmonies, vocals are just lace trimming. After a morning of two ripping punk bands and a taste of Eastern European, Caribou brings the festival to a melodic high early with, well, “Melody Day.”

Drums are the centerpiece, literally, with Siamese kits pushed to the front of the stage. Hunched over the drums, mouths slack from heat and trance, the two repeatedly point their sticks to the sky. After a morning of rain, the clouds break. Sun pours in. In his only moment of banter, Snaith asks the crowd, “Did the sun just come out, or is it me?” Actually, it’s a bit of both. - Brent Dicrescenzo

Fleet Foxes: Two-thirds of the way through the band’s set, Fleet Foxes’s guitarist/vocalist Robin Pecknold brought out a fan-made rendering of its name; a painting - of sorts - of a fox of some significant speed. And right there is the Fleet Foxes’s image in a moment: the kind of band you can take home to mom, whose fans give them pieces of art, rather than pieces of ass.

This doesn’t mean they’re no good, but it does mean they cross over many of the lines drawn by other P4K acts (your aunt isn’t going to ask to borrow your Fuck Buttons record), leading to a dense crowd for their 3pm set (the lack of rain didn’t hurt either).

Unfortunately, the first few songs in their set were beset by sound problems, and a tentative approach. Weak guitars and hesitant voices will kill a band whose sound is based on holy layers of both. It’s as if they’re still figuring out how to play to the back of the room. But by the time they hit “White Winter Hymnal,” they’d regained their footing, interlocking harmonies and guitars with equal skill to craft warm, loving earnestness that manages to hold its own, even on a day that’s mostly been filled with snarling punk.

They keep up the momentum through the rest of their set, though occasionally their softer tendencies lead a few in the audience to think it’s time to wander off in search of Dizzee Rascal’s beats. While some might describe their sound as what results when moonshine folk meets Gregorian chants, on this day it’s more Crosby, Stills, and Nash meets The Boo Radleys. Either way, Fleet Foxes are the perfect band to greet the finally triumphant sun. - SS

A Hawk and a Hacksaw: Former Chicagoan and current Budapest resident Jeremy Barnes led this blazing Balkan folk act. Barnes is best known as the drummer of Elephant 6 flagship band Neutral Milk Hotel. Since then, the drummer has re-fashioned himself an accordionist, plowing through Roma rhythms with aplomb. Accompanied by his partner Heather Trost, who shares vocal duties in addition to playing violin, the duo were rounded out by the Hungarian violinist Ferenc Kovács on trumpet and the young Brit Krystof Hladowski on the Bouzouki (a Greek variation on the madolin) for this early afternoon set on the Balance Stage.

AHAH hit Union Park supporting their latest release for the Leaf Label, And the Hun Hangar Ensemble, playing a mix of original and traditional music inspired by Balkan and Kleamer folk genres. Barnes lead this four-piece through a rousing set of Roma rhythms, extraordinary in unison. Deftly running through scales in unison, while the crowd rallied through the intermittent rain. Kovács picked up a violin for a stunning closer, featuring a duet with Trost that would’ve brought even Buckhethead to his (or her?) knees. - Areif Sless-Kitain

Icy Demons: The Balance Stage was the site of a virtual Bablicon reunion, once Barnes’ former bandmates Griffin Rodriguez and Dave McDonnell hit the stage. Rodriguez ran the shape-shifting six-piece through a blistering set. My spine was literally tingling as they ripped through the titular track off their new album, Miami Ice.

Along with usual co-conspirators, drummer Dylan Ryan and multi-instrumentalist Chris Kalis, the band banged out arty party jams, including a new hip-hop number featuring an R&B chorus that sounded straight ripped from a Pharrell hook. With romantic enticements like “We can eat some cheese if we want to,” this synthed-out slammer could be the feelgood jam of the weekend. From groovy sambas to video game anthems, Icy Ds refused to be pigeonholed, appropriately closing with “Jump Off,” driven by Ryan’s furiously precise drumming .—AS

Fuck Buttons: In a fest that prides itself on esoterica, what to do with a band that’s a drummer away from duplicating Coldplay? Now, I actually kinda like the reviled mega-band so that’s not inherently a knock on Fuck Buttons. But Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power, the two keyboardists and multi-instrumental dudes in this Bristol duo, play music that often seems every bit as sentimental and navel-gazing as their London peers.

At their best, the Buttons are a young man’s Suicide, further bolstered by a manufactured (drum machines and a sampled floor tom) Liquid Liquid backing band. A little jammy, a little onstage hippie dancing, but no more so than Liquid. One inspired track pitted Hung’s banshee shrieking—processed through some Lee Perry delay—against Power’s rickety amateur floor tom drumming. And Power’s hardcore screaming—through a toy microphone, no less—gave a glimpse of the ominous undertones their buzzsaw basses and Game Boy rhythm tracks aim for. But when they weren’t plumbing those dark depths—which, sadly, was most of the time—their set stumbled the line between brutal minimalism and just plain boring.

It’s a problem Suicide surely had, too; it’s just not easy moving your body to pulsing sine waves and aimless arpeggios. But they seemed to relish the anti-climactic nature of the music, too; just as the trance-y beats seem to ebb toward a logical climax, the Buttons pulled out the rug from under the audience, never giving them the satisfaction of a boom-bastic celebration. And harmonically speaking, many of their tracks used the same undulating, Phillip Glass-lite chord progressions as the ‘Play. With a third of the crowd thinned out by the time the set was over, I’ve seen my first taste of a band that would have been better served in a  claustrophobic club. —ML

Dizzee Rascal: London’s best-known grime rapper Dizzee Rascal takes the stage with an extra taller MC and Baltimore’s Aaron LaCrate (wearing one of his own T-shirts) on the digital turntable. Dizzee immediately berates the guy doing monitors for not having his sound tight, and jokes about the “folk shit” that preceded him. Indeed, his “London city” attitude and crisp urban streetwear make a nice contrast to the mellow harmonies of Fleet Foxes. Rascal’s commanding ways extend to telling the crowd to get its own act together. “This is the home of hip-hop, I know you can get liver than that,” he says. “This ain’t no fucking picnic.” He raps about jezzies, getting our backs off the wall, grime hype and manages to get thousands of fists pumping. It’s a bit surprising to see a wall of kids who know Dizzee’s lyrics by heart. After a solid bounce-worthy set, many more know his name. Casually, he comes back for an encore—which just happens to be the number one song in England, an electro-pop club banger “Dance Wiv Me,” a massive departure from his dive-bombing bass tracks, but a catchy one at that. — JD

The Ruby Suns: By mid-day, the B Stage is running 25 minutes late, but the horde tucked away in the side show’s new location doesn’t seem to mind. It could be the copious shade on the south end of the grounds, or perhaps that Fuck Buttons just switched off their squall. California-born expat Ryan McPhun, who proves to be the most inappropriately named musician of the day, announces, “We’re the only band from New Zealand here this weekend.” Alongside him stands Amee Robinson, behind a small array of gold-painted drums, keyboards and samplers. When it becomes clear that Ruby Suns offer little more than triggered samples, snare pounding and weak harmonies, the crowd begins to lose interest. It’s a shame, because on record the band can offer occasional gems the openly draw from the Beach Boys and the Shins, such as “Maasai Mara.” But that was a couple years ago, when name dropping the Shins could still draw a crowd of hipsters. Stuck in a line-up with Vampire Weekend, High Places, Animal Collective and El Guincho, the Suns’ loop-happy blend of Pacific Coast psych and gimmicky world beats end up smelling a whole lot like trend hopping. A middle aged man turns to me and asks, “Hey, is this Fuck Buttons?” For a supposed sunshine pop band, is there a bigger damnation? —BD

Vampire Weekend: For a band so divisive, Vampire Weekend have the entire festival crowd at their attention. It’s just the critics who can’t bring themselves to give in to the Ivy Leaguers. Odd, because of a lot of music critics I know went to Brown and Dartmouth. The band revels in their upper class, uncool, lighthearted success. The drummer sports a fucking PHISH shirt at the Pitchfork Festival. Gotta love that chutzpah. Back to the main gate, the field of damp festive-goers clap along and even shout out absurd lines like “Blake’s got a new face!” at the request of singer Ezra Koenig.

The band’s sparse, punchy pop whittles NYC rock and Afrobeat dabbling to such a delicate confection, that one mis-placed element can ruin the entire affair.  And that element is typically Koenig. A girl behind me yells to a friend, “The singer totally looks like your dad,” as the over-animated frontman winks, raises his eyebrows and white-man-overbites like he auditioning for Mary Poppins. Problem is, he completely lacks loud-quiet control. He bursts Tourette’s-like into yelps. A wave of wincing flows through the flock after each aggressive seal bark in “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.” On the one new song played, he sounds like he’s being tickled with a large feather. The drummer has tightened the band’s sound as they’ve toured the globe over the past year, and their hooks are undeniable, even as Koenig nearly derails the band’s charm with cheeky stupidity like, “This is a song about a bus!” Yay! Choruses go over well, but the set loses momentum in stops and starts. Guys, you’re an inch away from full-blown ska revival. (“A-Punk” comes off live like Operation Ivy on Sesame Street.) Pick it up, pick it up. Hup hup hup. —BD

Extra Golden: To all of you who saw Vampire Weekend before Extra Golden, how do you think they stacked up? It was a bit of instructive bill-ordering on the part of Pitchfork: Why don’t we put the band influenced by African music before the African band?

Really, when you get a chance to compare the two side by side, both sides benefit: Vampire looks more playful, more fun than I thought; and Extra Golden sounds more orderly and professional.

Extra Golden is composed of three American white dudes—based in D.C. and Chicago—and two Kenyan men. Today, they’re playing as a septet with extra percussion. So it is not wholly “African,” although the music they play definitely is. Kenyan benga, syncopated African pop is not easy music to play but Extra Golden goes at it with little breaking from the orthodoxy, from convention. So as good as they were, it’s obvious their African lineage is their ticket in—if there were an African Pitchfork, they’d get a 1.2. Besides, for guitarist Alex Minoff’s mock indignation at the “noise” from the other stage, this was a professional, great band. —ML

!!!: On paper, Sacramento-via-Brooklyn’s !!! (first described to me years ago as a “party band”), sounds like a festival winner—punked-out dance beats, loads of percussion, funky bass, sassy frontman—with sweaty craziness all around. And having last seen the band throw down energetically at Lollapalooza, I half expect to get my big stage summer boogie on whether I like it or not. But somehow, !!! just don’t click for me today. Seven people on stage seems too much—like a jam band that has no center—!!! just feels like it’s spinning its wheels. The funky jams run into one another and don’t have a lot to lock in on—I certainly don’t feel a massive urge to dance. There are some Parliament-like moments when the outfit wants to lift off—“Must be the Moon” definitely takes it higher. A nearby fan might be on to something when he says… “I think these guys need to play at night.” Thing is, they usually do. —JD

The Hold Steady: The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Minnesota band always goes down well at festivals. Amidst a lineup of hip-hop, gypsy, spazz punk, laptop noise, Afropop, krautrock and psych-rock, a bunch of guys in love with fat guitar chords and chant-along choruses isn’t going to let anyone down. Oh, yeah, right! Classic rock and roll! Good ol’ riffs, hooks and solos! Nods to naugahyde-era staples like J. Geils Band, AC/DC and even Emerson, Lake & Palmer! And a front man, Craig Finn, who earns the title “front man” through charisma, not merely his position on stage. Finn twitches with strokes of joy, hyper-actively clapping his hands like a toddler told he’s going to live at Chuck E. Cheese’s.

The group kicks off early, packing in a long set that draws from all four albums, and, appropriate for the setting, leans heavily on the numbers that go “Whoa-oh-oh-oh!” The Hold Steady have about six of those. Noodlier fare from the new record, Stay Positive, like the one with the harpsichord and the acoustic one that sounds like Bon Jovi, is left behind. As always, the songs sound twice as immediate and awesome live. What the hell are producers drugging the band with in the studio?

A bro in the crowd (there are a lot of bros in the Hold Steady’s crowd) tosses a Minnesota Twins visor on stage. Finn dons the headwear and says, “Thanks! Now I have something to wear to the next Twins rave.” That’s the Hold Steady in a beer-nutshell: part testosterone-fueled spectator sport, part ecstasy.—BD

Atlas Sound: Best known as the frontman of beloved Atlanta band Deerhunter, Bradford Cox received roaring approval from the crowd from the minute he hit the Balance Stage for a solo set. He brought a band of Kranky all-stars (including label head Brian Foote in addition to Honey Owens of Valet) the last time he played Chicago in March at the Empty Bottle, but for this late afternoon set he appeared solo. His atmospheric musings sounded beautifully ambient, playing material from his debut, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel (Kranky). I was disappointed that he didn’t bring a band; Cox sounded solid, but a bit sterile, seeing as he was accompanied only by recordings. Nevertheless, his ethereal voice swooped through beautiful soundscapes, rounded out by adept tabletop-tronics. His vocals were loaded with so much delay that he could have been playing on Friday night and the crowd wouldn’t have known the difference. —AS

Jarvis Cocker: Next to Flavor Flav, there is no bigger rockstar here than Jarvis. The former Pulp leader sashays to the front of the stage, in a button-down, Levi’s and a blazer, and shrugs off his jacket with a leap. Girls and boys in the crowd cry out, “I love you, Jarvis!” Part Mick Jagger, part Serge Gainsbourg, part Woody Allen, the Sheffield songwriter has not played Chicago in about a decade, but uses the occasion to unleash a near-album of new material. Only 5 of the 11 songs have been heard before. Unlike few others could, the magnetic entertainer pulls it off.

Cocker has been secretly holed away in Chicago for the past week, practicing the new material with his band (including Pulp bassist Steve Mackey), and for fresh cuts, the tunes sound ready for the record plant. “Girls Like It Too” and a song "about the Natural History Museum" are vintage Pulp—ritzy ballads of the lovelorn packed with sex, romance, failure and brilliant one-liners. But songs like “Complications,” “Caucasian Blues” and “Angela” show a new side the fortysomething icon—hard rocker.

Hilarious stage banter kills. Before “Caucasian Blues,” Jarvis explains how the Blues were born in Chicago, whereupon they crossed the Atlantic, only to be heard by Eric Clapton. “Yeah, sorry about that,” Cocker apologizes on behalf of his country. Between other songs, he reads from a Wikipedia list of notable Chicagoans, including “dental educator” Charles G. Maurice. For an encore, a cover of a Chicago band is offered, and it sounds like Cocker says it’s the Sea & Cake. (Turns out, it’s an ’80’s house cut by Master C&J. But it kinda sounds like the Sea & Cake when worked by a live band.)

But make no mistake: Witty chitchat is mere icing. Backed by a tight combo that mixes Britpop, blues and Phil Spector, Cocker thrusts his boney hips and vogues on top of speakers. The marching “Black Magic” is epic, thick with “Aa-aah!”s and bells. Jarvis finishes the song in a heap, spent. Before the unbeatable protest song “Cunts Are Still Running The World,” a Pitchforker leans over to me, and whispers, “We’re not going to hear a better song all weekend.” Cocker jokes, “I hope to one day not have to play this song.” We share his sentiment, but please, no.—BD

No Age: The L.A. outfit, made up of Randy Randall and Dean Allen Spunt, plowed through their set in fine form, supporting their full-length debut, Nouns, released this year on Sub Pop. Touted as one of the highlights of last year’s South by Southwest festival, their blitzkrieg attack was more than appreciated by the hundreds of starry-eyed youngsters huddling against one another at the front of the stage. The band grew out of a tight-knit community in downtown L.A., based around the experimental venue called the Smell that counts forward-thinking punks like Mika Miko and the Mae Shi among its regulars. The duo keeps it simple: Spunt drums and sings while Randall handles guitar duties. While minimal, they’re surprisingly messy for just two dudes. Though often compared to Sonic Youth (due to their similar art-rock leanings), they lack the grooves and clarity, sounding more like a minimal Minor Threat. —AS

Animal Collective: Compared to the rest of the weekend’s post-sundown acts, the acid-head beat beatniks in Animal Collective seemed the least deserving to headline. But they’re the ones who needed the night most. Half jam band, half rave, the quirky Baltimore crew offered a laser show for the eyes and ears. Gurgling arpeggios, overlapping rounds of harmonies, tribal drumming and loops eating themselves built into a massive psychedelic swirl over the dark bodies in the field. Poles of light cycle through the spectrum, shooting bolts of color into weary retinas, elevating the band, um, “in rainbows.”

As always Panda Bear’s sweet harmonies prove to be the better mixer in this LSD soup than the bad-trip barking of fellow singer Avey Tare. The band pulled primarily from the digital-based Strawberry Jam, tweaking synthesizers and pedals while staring at their feet, bobbing their head. Many critics point out the band’s love of the Beach Boys, which seems silly when faced with this bubbling pot-brownie trance that aims for little more than an aural remake of the star gate sequence in 2001. They’re not fans of Brian Wilson as much as they’re fans of Brian Wilson’s drugs. As “Peacebone” (Isn’t that a brand of hemp necklaces?) builds to a climax, someone dressed in a full-body fox costume skips around in the mud with a garland of flowers ringing the cartoon creature’s head. Seems about right.—BD

Photos: Boban & Marko Markovic Orkestar - Martha Williams; Titus Andronicus - Scott Smith; Jay Reatard and Icy Demons - Matt Taplinger; Vampire Weekend - Erica Gannett