A different feeling (Take 11)

To love the Avalanches is apparently to never see them live. It would be one thing if they were the sort of band that never toured, that barely left their houses, that only released an album every ten years like they were a sampledelic Fiona Apple or something. But no, they tour, or they try to; and every time they come to Chicago, or try to, something happens that causes them to not play the show.

The Avalanches are one of my all-time favorite bands for one reason alone: Since I Left You, my favorite album of the most formative musical decade of my life. And I have never seen them live. The process under which I have attempted to see them live is so Kafkaesque that it almost defies description. I would lay it all out on the table, in front of you, and you would deny that such a reality is possible. It is. We are here.

Fast-forwarding past most of that, we reach 2017. The Avalanches were booked to play Pitchfork Music Festival, a thing I have gone to every year since 2005, a thing I oriented my biggest party of the year around for a decade. 90 minutes before they were scheduled to go on, they cancelled. I was so devastated by this that I promptly deleted all of their music from my phone and music player’s library at home, and vowed not to play another Avalanches song in any capacity until I saw them live again. That could be never! I was willing to wait it out. Five years later, I have stuck to this. It has not been hard. In the meantime, they released a third album. I have not yet heard it.

The Bad Times®, of course, brought three cancellations, and a fourth postponement due to unspecified health reasons. Tonight, they were supposed to play two shows – and I had tickets to the early show, which is supposed to happen right now, as I write this.