King Khan and the Shrines rock Pitchfork Fest. WMUA's Gabe Chicoine was there. King Khan plays the Iron Horse this Wednesday. Good GOD people!

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to attend the Pitchfork Media Music Festival in Chicago. Although the schedule promised many great acts, including the likes of Animal Collective, Mission of Burma, Public Enemy, !!!, and about forty others, the performance I was most looking forward to was King Khan & the Shrines. King Khan's last album, "What Is!?" has been the soundtrack to my summer thus far, and I knew I couldn't miss the chance to witness King Khan's notoriously over-the-top live performance. I was fully prepared to be blown away by his nine-piece band and his alternatingly soulful and howling vocals, but nothing could have prepared me for the full spectacle of what was to come.

King Khan approached the stage in a shimmering black silk robe and gold head-dress with a cooler of dry ice that billowed over the stage. The man had an obsession with dry ice, from the first time I caught a glimpse of him earlier in the day at Jay Reatard's performance, where he stood backstage drinking from a smoldering cup of dry ice and god-knows-what kind of alcohol at 12:30 in the afternoon, wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and short-shorts while making obscene gestures to the crowd and his friends, propositioning them for various unholy acts and completely stealing the show from Reatard. Khan simply has a natural proclivity for showmanship, constantly performing for Pitchfork attendees as he appeared in various absurd incarnations throughout the day, showing up side-stage to steal the show from his friends' bands, handing out ice cream sandwiches from a truck or sharing the stage with Deerhunter's Bradford Cox in an impromptu improv to kill time before the postponed Cut Copy set.

King Khan was clearly not content with simply putting on the most memorable performance of Sunday, he seemed intent on conquering the entire Pitchfork Festival, and by almost all accounts, he succeeded. From the moment he took the stage with the Shrines, he seemed to absorb the energy of the rapidly increasing crowd and channel it all into his performance. Not far into his set, the silk robe was cast away, leaving little to the imagination as Khan gyrated and careened across the stage in nothing more than a black spandex speedo, delivering his powerful vocal assault like a skilled hypnotist. With the raw, chaotic energy of a basement punk show, Khan threw himself into his songs and into the crowd while his band managed to keep things not only together, but incredibly tight. They seemed accustomed to his antics as he bowled them over and wrestled their instruments from them and they laughingly obliged.

At one point, the organist, Fredovich, had to jab Khan away, wielding the butt of his keyboard in self-defense so he could finish drenching the audience in sweet Hammond modulation. Other highlights of Khan's performance included dollar-bill gathering and redistributing during the psychedelic masterpiece "Welfare Bread", a split second of full-frontal nudity to demonstrate the chorus of garage-rock anthem "I Wanna Be A Girl", and a back-and-forth trash throwing battle, prompted and encouraged by Khan. There was a playfullness and an energy in King Khan & the Shrines' performance that is rarely witnessed in concerts today, and even more rarely pulled-off successfully. I am incredibly excited about the opportunity to witness the glory, the spectacle, and yes, the supreme genius of King Khan & the Shrines once more next Wednesday at the Iron Horse on July 30th, which will surely be an unforgettable event, even for those music fans who think they've seen it all.

Get tickets here. More photos available, and another good review here.