We took the SasquatchLite approach to this year’s festival, opting for maximizing quality over quantity and avoiding traffic. By the time we’d collected a selection of snacks from Whole Foods, navigated the mountain passes, the scenic views (even though I’ve been to Sasquatch three other times, I always seem to forget the gorgeous big lake in the middle of the drive, the rolling farmland that is home to lots of cows and one antique market / specialty foods store), and the Gerry-like creepy desert landscape, we found our friends in the afterglow of a Ghostland Observatory show. They reported that it was ideal mid-afternoon napping material thanks to the massive bass lines that kept them happily vibrating through the peaking heat.

We rushed over to catch the tiniest bit of Mirah’s set and were then faced with a minor conflict: go see Grizzly Bear (for the third time this year) or get a good spot by the mainstage for the rest of the evening. This split our happy little family, but my contingent was the one that went over to the mainstage to listen to the Long Winters. The festival organizers had a crazy crowd control strategy in place, in which the floor was divided by a ring of barriers. Since the audience was sparse for John Roderick and co., it was easy to grab a coveted close spot. As for the band, they were poppy and mostly entertaining, though I think that they would benefit from the addition of another member to make the stage banter two-sided. When Sean Nelson was part of the group, at least Roderick had someone to joke with, rather than casting his asides to a non-responsive crowd. Perhaps he could have enlisted Sarah Silverman, who made a one minute appearance after their set?

Alas, we eventually found ourselves hanging out with some fashionable teens from east of the mountains who had encamped themselves near the stage for optimal Bjork viewing. Although they never quite matched the insane intensity of the very tall guy in our vicinity, they were converted to the revolutionary, genre-hopping, multi-lingual stylings of Manu Chao and Radio Bemba Sound System. For much of the performance, the entire mass of bodies near the stage was jumping, clapping, and pumping fists in the air (making it a little dangerous to be in the neighborhood of the very tall). The set seemed long to me, but the band seemed never ready to leave, as if they were accustomed to playing for several hours at a time, keeping the party going through the night, and were surprised that they had only a little over an hour to entertain an American audience who had waited years for the globally popular band to make a stateside visit.

As soon as Manu Chao had been coaxed from the stage, its transformation to Arcade Fire land began. A floating pipe organs flew in, five circular monitors were wheeled out, a giant silver stand-up bass was set. By the time the sprawling Montreal collective arrived, the stage was decorated with strips of glowing lights, lining the set and erected at the edge. With a long set, the Arcade Fire were left with plenty of time to play most of the songs from their last two albums. I’ve seen them several times, and they never fail to impress beyond my highest expectations. Saturday’s show was every bit as spectacular as I’d come to expect: raucous intense energy, Regine acting out the songs and playing to the sweeping cameras, drums and tambourines tossed high into the air, a mock fight involving Richard Perry, swooping violins, everybody singing, glorious brass. Early in the set, a plastic pink ribbon was stretched across the front of the crowd and was stretched and passed backwards like a massive sweeping wave. The entire set was fantastic, but my favorite was the seamless transition between Funeral’s “Wake Up” and “Rebellion (Lies)”, mostly because when the first album came out I had extended arguments with myself about which of the two I liked more. I don’t know what else to say about their phenomenal performance except that as staggeringly great as the band’s albums are, the Arcade Fire’s live shows blow the recordings out of the water.

I guess that I had plenty of time to sort this out because Bjork’s setup took forever, but I was too tired to debate and we just happily crashed out near the wall of the barrier keeping the late arrivals from squeezing to the front of the venue and dreaming up schemes to try to get a drink of water. This crowd separation scheme was was a nifty idea and I certainly appreciated not being crushed by other people, but the security was a bit lax earlier in the evening about letting people catapult over the walls (and apparently stingy about letting replacements enter through the appropriate channels), which seemed a little bit dangerous.

I’m not exactly sure what took so long — was it the cute banners getting caught in the wind? the awesome touch-screen Star Trek inspired mixers, the Icelandic women placing flags on their heads to perfectly complement their glowing fluorescent costumes? Whatever the case was, Bjork didn’t start until well after 11:30, but once she arrived in flowing yellow gown and all sorts of charmingness, her tardiness was quickly forgiven. Mixing old and new songs — including more than a few that even I recognized like “Pagan Poetry”, “All is Full of Love” — her set eventually had much of the audience dancing madly along by the time the final insane laser light show kicked in (possibly, in part, to stay warm as the temperatures dropped). After a brief encore that featured a modified version of the song that she sang for the Olympic Games, the show was over, everyone squeezed together, funneled out through the gates, to face long drives home or nearby campsites.