Like other city-centric festivals, (Governor’s Ball in NY, Treasure Island in SF) Pitchfork Music Festival unknowingly offers up the best qualities of its host region. Expertly curated and just large enough to feel legitimate without overcrowded, the Union Park event offers minimal musical conflict. All that it asks of you is one identifying thing: which stage are you? Every stage at Pitchfork is a corresponding color (green somehow gets preferential treatment with a larger stage and the nightly headlining slot) but they’ve all got their own style. Below, we present our favorites – colors and all – from day one of Pitchfork.
Red Stage: Sharon Van Etten
As noted by the fans who’d seen Sharon Van Etten at Pitchfork 2010, much has happened in the four year span since she took the Union Park stage, including the release of four strong albums, her most recent being Are We There. Taking the stage with a smile on her face and a joy almost unbecoming of her low-tempo music, it was clear once “Taking Chances” kicked in that this was Van Etten at an all-time, confident high. The singer-songwriter saw one of the largest crowds of the day and by the looks of things, the most authentically loyal. Where the blue stage is a mecca of pot smoke and Goose Island beers tucked away near lounges and food tents, the red stage was your most immediate introduction to the festival and therefore the most gripping. Good on Pitchfork to go with an artist that can really stop you in your tracks.
Blue Stage: SZA
SZA, where have you been all my life? The young crooner has been making mixtapes and generating buzz since securing the blessing of Marvin Gaye’s estate when making the meandering “Sweet November”, a fact that she was quick to mention towards the end of her set. SZA’s saccharine stage banter and sweet vocals were the real deal; an artist just as gracious as she is talented. Though the Blue Stage mainly excelled in surrounding its audience with pot smoke, SZA was able to draw a wide-ranging audience of stoners and audiophiles alike. Believe the hype.
Green Stage: Beck
Given his diverse career and an output more in line with two different artists than one person, you never know what you’re going to get at a Beck show. With Morning Phase still on the brain, it seemed the alt rocker would be delivering a more mellow offering to ease folks into the weekend long festival. That notion was totally and completely wrong. As legendary Italian producer Giorgio Modore spun his last, slightly muted hit, Beck was just taking the stage with opener “Devil’s Haircut”. His levels started out a bit off and given Beck’s insistent gesticulations to turn this guitar and that vocal up, I feared for a meltdown. To my surprise, though lower in volume than expected at a festival (there’s got to be some type of sound ordinance or something, right?) Beck delivered a stunning retrospective of hits ranging from the Information’s “Think I’m In Love” to megahit “Loser”.
Surprise of the Night: Neneh Cherry with Rocketnumbernine
If you’d had told me that I’d go to a Neneh Cherry show and she wouldn’t be playing at a county fair or to an audience incredibly familiar with her 1988 mega-hit “Buffalo Stance”, I’d assume you were talking about a different artist than the denim-clad experimentalist presented before me as I walked into Union Park. Playing alongside the equally idiosyncratic duo Rocketnumbernine, Neneh Cherry sounded more Solange than Sheila E.
DAY 2
It was a far more crowded festival when I arrived at Pitchfork Saturday. Though smaller than the many others in the area, (Lollapalooza is damn near five times larger) the sheer congestion of fans flanking the Red and Green stages certainly made a case against Pitchfork’s lack of musical conflict. Sure, the Blue Stage overlapped slightly with the two larger stages but not enough to evenly split fans and make navigating the crammed expanses of Union Park. Still, Saturday was an incredibly laid back affair. It may have been Neutral Milk Hotel’s headlining that had fans in a less rambunctious mood. Either way, pristine weather and fantastic tunes made picking the best from each stage a very difficult endeavor.
Blue Stage: The Field
The Field was my Blue Stage wild card and, much like SZA, a fantastic gamble. The Swedish producer is the essential Pitchfork artist: a recently unearthed idiosyncrasy that is more atmosphere and vibe than cut and dry soundtrack. Songs vacillated and outstretched themselves one after the other into a cohesive blend of electronic minimalism. The Field is from a far less abrasive time in electronic music. Though certainly not new to the game, his rise in popularity since last year’s Cupid’s Head LP has left fans similarly wondering where the hell the Field had come from and simply where he’d been all this time powerhouse EDM artists and their ilk were pummeling fests with bass drops and laptops.
Green Stage: Danny Brown
Many of Danny Brown’s festival shows can be categorized as one-note, one-tune romps through his latest album, Old. Brown, an introspective artist, may be taking stock of his career and therefore his life but he’ll be damned if he play through B-sides and old hits when his audience may only know him from his collab with Purity Ring on latest and greatest single “25 Bucks”. That and “Dip” were played at Pitchfork but so was “Bruiser Brigade”. The audience, in turn, rapped along with Brown and probably stuck their tongues out just as much. Brown stands is perhaps the most energized artist of Saturday. Though tUnE-yArDs also brought a refreshing late afternoon performance, given the mellow sound levels and slightly less frenetic bent of Nikki Nack, Merrill Garbus and co. were very, very subdued.
Red Stage: St. Vincent
The best and perhaps most ambitious description I’ve heard of St. Vincent post-David Byrne collaboration is that the eclectic guitarist has turned into Prince. Angular movements and pseudo-robotic style is what fans have come to expect since the release of the critically acclaimed eponymous latest album and that’s exactly what she delivered with the type of wide-eyed enjoyment that brought a bit of vulnerability to the cool bent of hits “Rattlesnake” and “Digital Witness”. Compared to Neutral Milk Hotels’ sparse set of songs they’ve been playing and therefore barely changing since the late ’90s, St. Vincent was a breath of fresh air. Punchy guitar work and crunchy synths lined a set punctuated by the new.
Best Promotion: Goose Island’s Missed Connections Board
Certainly you’ve seen the hipster douche meme with a man and his typewriter both enjoying each other’s company at a park. That man writes stories for park patrons and, with Goose Island’s analog attempt at the popular Craigslist category “Missed Connections”, fans could do the exact same thing. A few typewriters and slips of paper were assembled at a picnic table for fans to spill their guts and hopefully turn that quick connection into an actual date. Slightly shy and in need of some liquid courage to help set your fingers to clicking and clacking on the keys of a typewriter? Goose Island’s beer booth lay right next door. Given the single lone Pitchfork missed connection popping up on CL post-festival versus an overflowing bulletin board of lovelorn lust, it’s safe to say that Goose Island did a great job facilitating festival love connections.
DAY 3
The final day of Pitchfork looked like it would hit a few snags with late starts for Pusha T (35 minutes, come on!) and headliner Kendrick Lamar (half an hour of fans freaking out at nothing) but Sunday left the festival with a strong sense of self, reaffirming its mission statement of expert curation and audiophile gold. Food began selling out and so did vinyl and limited edition prints. Throughout the festival however, its many sponsors were rarely that invasive, a rarity in this hyper-marketed day and age. With a lack of corporate distraction, it was pretty easy to focus on the crème de la crème of Sunday’s lineup. Below, we present the final superlatives and a few notes on the festival itself.
Blue Stage: DJ Spinn
In what was an incredibly powerful but joyous performance, DJ Spinn celebrated the life of his partner in crime, the late, great DJ Rashad. Throngs of footwork dancers hyped a surprisingly sober crowd who were there to remember Rashad and get down with a genre that draws from all across the beat-making scene. Spinn is a hometown hero of Chicago pioneering that South Side sound. His performance was a clear showing that Pitchfork certainly knows its audience. Reverence was paid alongside frenetic dancing from both sides of the stage in perhaps one of the most energized performances of the weekend.
Red Stage: Grimes
Women ruled Pitchfork and completely commandeered the Red Stage and Grimes’ dusk performance was an exclamation of just that. Though positioned atop a riser with synths surrounding her, the prolific musician’s set never felt constrained. Early on, Grimes took control of the audience, jumping high and watching them follow suit. Dancers on each side of the stage only bolstered the energy of megahit “Symphonia IX” and her latest single, “Go”. Grimes is at the point where she’s met the crossroads of pop opening act and indie darling with as much ambiguity and yet certainty as contemporary music will allow. Who knows if she’ll win over Rihanna or embark on a power tour with CHVRCHES? With either choice, her strong fan base certainly won’t waver.
Green Stage: Kendrick Lamar
Two years after Kendrick Lamar took the Blue Stage as a precocious MC, the rapper is back at Pitchfork and closing out the whole damn festival. Lamar was late – really late – and that only added to the almost abusive bent of a ravenous crowd. Security pushed through even pushier fans, who slammed into the barricades before the photo pit. Lamar has become somewhat a veteran of the festival circuit, headlining and playing as many as he can in hopes of winning some other publication’s festival over-saturation award. Through that time he’s learned to hone his show far beyond the hits that have made audience scream along since Dre trotted him out for the Hologram Tupac show during 2012’s Coachella. Of course the hits were played from good kid, m.A.A.d city, but far-reaching tracks from before his commercial success were also touched on and – surprise, surprise – the audience knew every word.
Notes and Errata:
Death Grips broke up and the case against festivals with minimal to no stage conflict was again raised on Sunday. It’s great that fans are forced to discover awesome new bands like the surprisingly commanding Slowdive but it makes for an impossible time navigating through the main thoroughfares of the festival, especially given the Red and Green stages’ close proximity to each other. Smaller festivals are awesome and tend to be slightly less overwhelming than behemoths like Lollapalooza, but it’s unclear if that type of model can be contained once a festival as successful as Pitchfork gains prominence in mainstream media and the contemporary canon. Unlike SXSW, which started out incredibly small and now offers Lady Gaga shows sponsored by Doritos, Pitchfork isn’t the type of event with such a limited shelf life that you should either go now or never even attempt to brave it. They’ve still got some fine-tuning to do; nothing an added stage and possibly a different venue couldn’t fix, though.
