Chicago's Smith Westerns plan to turn heads at Pitchfork

Two years ago, Cullen Omori attended the Pitchfork Music Festival as a fan. This year, he's leading one of the festival's most buzzed-about local bands.

Omori, 20, is the frontman for Smith Westerns, a Chicago band that's starting to make a name for itself far beyond the borders of the Windy City. The group is scheduled to play at 4:45 p.m. on Saturday, July 17, the second day of the three-day festival.

As recently as 2008, Smith Westerns was little more than a high school "hangout" band featuring Omori, his younger brother Cameron and Omori's friend Max Kakacek. All were residents of Chicago and students at Northside Prep High School.

Last year, the band members started to click, and Omori and Kakacek took their songwriting more seriously. The result was a self-titled debut record that earned positive reviews and secured them slots in key 2010 rock festivals like South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona.

"It's amazing how fast things have happened for us," Omori said. "Playing Pitchfork is another part of that. We're really looking forward to it, especially because it's here at home."

Smith Westerns will share the stage with some indie-rock powerhouses at Pitchfork, which has grown into one of the key events for music fans in these parts. Dozens of bands will play at Chicago's Union Park Friday through Sunday, including established acts such as the acclaimed dance-rock band LCD Soundsystem (Saturday) and reunited alternative gods Pavement (Sunday), along with such indie-rock up-and-comers as Sleigh Bells, Surfer Blood, Titus Andronicus and Wolf Parade.

Omori says he and his bandmates aren't intimidated by the lineup, just excited to be part of it.

"It's a fantastic mix this year - who wouldn't be pumped about it?" he said.

Smith Westerns delivers a sound that reaches back to the glam rock of the 1970s, music that came out long before anyone in the group was born. (Two of the band's members - bassist Cameron Omori and drummer Colby Hewitt - are still teenagers.)

Songs like "Gimme Some Time" and "Be My Girl" have the trippy, distorted swagger of vintage T. Rex and David Bowie records, mixed with a teen-pop earnestness.

"A few years ago we were all listening to the indie rock of the day, bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes," Cullen Omori said. "And then we started digging into the bands that influenced those guys, and we found stuff like Bowie and T. Rex. I got really excited by all that stuff from the '70s."

At the same time, Smith Westerns isn't a revival act, Omori said.

"We're not here just to pay tribute to this influence or that one," he said. "We want to be our own band."

After Pitchfork, Smith Westerns will head to a New York recording studio to record the band's second full-length record. A tour of Europe with Grammy-nominated MGMT will follow.

"We're all in this for the long haul right now," said Omori, who's postponed his studies at Northwestern University to concentrate on the band. "We want to see how far it can go."