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Madfork helps create a perfect evening

Katjusa Cisar  —  7/19/2008 3:16 pm

Whenever Madison starts to get you down (like in the middle of February when the sun hasn't shone in five days and your car is encased in 4 feet of snow), all you need to do is think of nights like Friday on the Memorial Union Terrace, where some of the best of Madison came together: Lake Mendota, nice weather and the Wisconsin Union Directorate's eclectic lineup of bands.

Icy Demons, ExtraGolden, A Hawk and a Hacksaw and Fleet Foxes all perform Saturday night in Chicago at the Pitchfork Music Festival. But we got them first on Friday for "Madfork." For free.

I caught the last two bands of the evening, A Hawk and a Hacksaw and Fleet Foxes. A Hawk and a Hacksaw played haunting songs with equal doses of gypsy, polka and folk from Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey.

The quartet multitasked seamlessly with their instruments. The mustachioed lead singer (who sounded a little like Chris Martin of Coldplay) played with all four limbs: he used foot pedals on a makeshift drum set while working an accordion with his hands. The Hungarian trumpet player also occasionally took up a fiddle, and the bouzouki player wore a tambourine on his foot.

What's refreshing about A Hawk and a Hacksaw is the lack of indie rock pretension. The band plays an exceptional mix of Eastern European dance and folk music straight, without cutesy touches. The set of swaying, mournful songs ended with a series of dancing tunes ("This first song is for the elderly. It's a bit slower," said the lead singer by way of introduction).

Adding to the ambience, at least two tables in the audience had hookah pipes set up. People at one of the tables dipped a toilet paper tube into a plastic cup of soap suds before blowing the apricot-flavored hookah smoke into the tube to make opaque, smoke-filled bubbles. The bubbles floated up, then burst to release a poof of smoke high in the air above the terrace, a beautiful scene against the darkening, pink horizon.

After their set, A Hawk and a Hacksaw fiddle player Heather Trost sold CDs and vinyl records. "Personally, we like vinyl. CDs feel more disposable," she said.

What Fleet Foxes lacks in stage presence, they made up for with arresting three-part harmonies. The five men in the band look like they stepped out of 1971, and their music has the era's innocent harmonies and acoustic summer-friendly jams.

Katjusa Cisar  —  7/19/2008 3:16 pm