This is my eighth Pitchfork Festival, and Sleater-Kinney’s headlining Saturday night set was easily the greatest Pitchfork performance I’ve ever seen. As ever, they’re a seething, emotional, spectacular force. Corin Tucker used to take a few songs to get her feral howl warmed up; here, she launched right in, 0-100 real quick. And by the time she hit a huge final note on a devastating version of “Sympathy,” I was a sobbing wreck. Her and Janet Weiss throwing their arms over each other’s shoulders and waving as they left the stage was a life-affirming sight. New touring multi-instrumentalist Katie Harkin was a fun addition, filling out the songs with whatever extra sounds they needed. Still, whenever she left the stage, I’d get excited because it would mean that they were about to get into some old shit. (The new No Cities To Love songs sounded great, but only “A New Wave” brought the instant endorphin-rush joy-tingle that the best S-K songs have always given me.)

And Carrie Brownstein, always an absolute badass onstage, has become even more of a star in the years she spent away from the band. Tucker’s incomparable voice has always been this band’s greatest weapon, but Brownstein has the best moves: Collapsing to the floor to solo, holding her guitar aloft like a flag, doing Pete Townshend windmills arguably better than Townshend ever did them. But the stage must’ve still been a bit wet, since she went for a high kick on “Ironclad” and absolutely wiped out, falling hard on her ass. She shook it off like it was nothing, leaping back to her feet and barely missing a note. And she didn’t stop kicking. It was an absolute boss moment, one of many.