The Canadian gentlemen of Women would like everyone to stop referring to their music as “Lo-Fi,” thank you very much. The foursome told me in an interview prior to their set that they prefer the term “Art Trash,” which seems fitting given the menagerie of sounds and instruments employed on their self-titled 2008 debut, recorded and released by illustrator/animator/sound-experimenter/Flemish Eye label-owner Chad VanGaalen.

It’s an album that should sound haphazard, each track angling into something new (from Beach Boys-style vocals to straight-up noise rock, with much in between)…but doesn’t. When asked to peg down what the cohesive element of the band’s sound is, bass player Matt Flegel immediately lit up and said “the bass playing…because I’m the bass player, and I don’t get recognition…ever.”

Evidently the sound engineer at the B Stage thought so too. At first it seemed like a noise-bleed issue from the Pharoahe Monch set, but it was soon obvious that bass was all fans were going to hear from Women. Singer Pat Flegel’s voice is one of the most compelling sounds on the record, some of his tracks having been recorded in an underground corrugated-metal wildlife passageway, but festival-goers hearing Women for the first time won’t have a clue until they get home and buy/download/pirate the album.

The hasty departure of five friends who, after hearing the single “Black Rice,” had given up any hope of redemptive EQ-ing from the sound tent prompted me to make my way to the side of the stage…where the monitor mix was perfect, this fantastic band sadly having no idea what their audience was being subjected to.

Time Out Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival 2009 gallery