Every year, the Sasquatch! Festival (Memorial Day weekend at the Gorge) poses the same essential question: Are you prepared to spend a couple hundred bucks on tickets (and a couple hundred more on beer); drive the three hours through high desert, strip malls, and speed traps; and spend the long weekend sleeping in a parking-lot campground that looks like Mad Max's Bartertown only with more drunk bros strumming acoustic guitars to see this lineup of bands?
With The Stranger footing my ticket (though, crucially, not my beer tab), I was ready to say "yes" back in November, when the long-rumored reunion of Pavement, the finest arch-slacker indie-rock band of the '90s, was announced as the festival's headliner. Now, after Monday night's prefestival launch party and lineup announcement at the Crocodile, I wholeheartedly recommend you buy an early, discounted three-day pass (on sale this Saturday at 10:00 a.m. through, ugh, Ticketmaster). The lineup is pretty fucking outstanding this year, probably the best the festival has ever had; you can find the full lineup to date at thestranger.com/lineout or at Sasquatch!'s official website, but here's what we know so far.
The good: Pavement (see above); LCD Soundsystem (purveyors of dance/rock jams both heartfelt and snide, and one of the most fucking killer live bands around); Vampire Weekend (highly refined and worldly indie pop with more clever things to say about class anxiety than you have ways to dis them); Broken Social Scene (dreamy, Canadian anthem-rock collective); the xx (intimate and hushed lovers' rock—well, electro soul, as inspired by Joy Division as it is by Aaliyah); Dirty Projectors (slippery Afropop guitar lines, dissected and splayed R&B choruses, songs that are as baffling as they are uplifting); Public Enemy (still righteous); the Hold Steady (classic rock short stories perfectly written for festivals); Why? (intricate, devastating hiphop-minded indie mope); a bunch of great electronic acts ranging from big dance-tent techno (Simian Mobile Disco, Booka Shade) to head-scratching, wonky hiphop instrumentals (Hudson Mohawke) to retro-futurist funk (Dam-Funk) to new age new-wave weirdness (YACHT) to sweet psychedelia (Caribou); plus way more than there's room for here.
The bad: Really, not much. Sure, every year has filler acts, or ones that you just don't care about, but there are no really regrettable big names this time around—no Kings of Leon or Jane's Addiction or what have you. The most lackluster big name you've got here is, like, Ween—and I guess for some folks, they're not even that bad at all.
The local: The big local news is Shabazz Palaces, the post–Digable Planets blowout of Ishmael Butler, who've played only one Seattle show to date but are already the single most electrifying hiphop act in town. Other local acts announced so far include Past Lives, Fresh Espresso, Telekinesis, the Lonely Forest, Luke Burbank, and (kinda) Band of Horses.
I'll be shocked if this doesn't sell out, so buy your damn tickets already. 
