So that was that for the fifth (or sixth) Pitchfork Music Festival, and the one—and I trust you’ve gathered this by now—that I liked the least. But I do need to make one more thing very clear: The festival consistently remains the best-run, most community-oriented of any of the (conservatively) four dozen of these sorts of events that I’ve attended across the country and in Europe over the last three decades.

Pitchfork is the festival Chicago needs and deserves. So it had an off year; that doesn’t mean I’m not already looking forward to 2011. And even a mediocre Pitchfork will always be infinitely better than the soulless and corporate Walmart on the Lake known as Lollapalooza–which, as my recent reporting hopefully has made clear, is a very Chicago event in all of the worst ways, while Pitchfork continues to stand for the local music community at its best.