I Went To Pitchfork Music Festival Again

A mad recap of the festival & scratch at the surface of urban festival politics

I tell all my friends that Pitchfork is an easy festival. It’s in a public park on several transit lines. It’s in a major city where you’re bound to know someone who’ll let you stay in their guest room (or, in my case, their living room). There are but three stages within paces of each other. The food and drink aren’t *that* expensive, and if you want to avoid spending food & drink money altogether, chances are good there are food & beverage brands sponsoring the event and handing out samples. This year, I savored free cones from Haagen—Dazs and sugar-free Monster for an extra kick in the pants.

Made my annual trip to The Freeze in Logan Square on Sunday night.

I’ve gone to this festival for the past three years, in part, as a much-needed getaway that lets me see the bevy of college buddies who settled in Chicago after graduation. My partner, Eric, has accompanied me twice now, which has been crucial for the required show-off-your-boo-to-your-buddies ritual. Aside from the festival, there are usually bar outings, brunches, and parties in my social network to attend. This year, that included drinks at Best Intentions to celebrate my birthday, brunch at Same Day Cafe where we bore witness to Lori Lightfoot, and a Shabbat party right on Humboldt Park. We ate at The Freeze on a hot summer night. We like Chicago.

Pitchfork Festival offers a curious mix of artists who’ve graced the blog’s pages over, usually, the past few years. Eric and I like to play a game of guessing which BNM-earners will grace the festival stage, and largely, we got it right: we were thrilled to see Grace Ives, Julia Jacklin, Rachika Nayar, Soul Glo, and other blog favorites hit the stage. There were surprises: a set from Youth Lagoon, who’d end up releasing one of the summer’s favorites; Bon Iver, rumored to be substitute-headlining for someone else (D’Angelo, who would’ve interrupted the otherwise white headlining roster); Nourished by Time, a recent favorite who we’d seen open for Dry Cleaning and will soon open for Vagabon.

Grace Ives, a must-see wherever you are.

We managed to get there all three days, spending almost the entire afternoon and evening at the festival, catching the following acts (some briefly, some for their whole set):

Friday: Nourished by Time, Sen Morimoto, Grace Ives, Youth Lagoon, Nation of Language, Perfume Genius, Alvvays (sue us, we skipped The Smile)

Saturday: Deeper, (lightning delay), Black Belt Eagle Scout, MJ Lenderman, (really bad lightning delay), one Julia Jacklin song (thanks to the lightning delay), King Krule, Weyes Blood, Big Thief. I caught two Charlotte Adigery & Bolis Pupul songs from a distance.

Sunday: rescheduled Palm, Ariel Zetina, Rachika Nayar (playing with Maria BC & Issei Herr…I mean DAMN), Florist, Illuminati Hotties, Koffee, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Kelela (sue us, we skipped Bon Iver. We wanted ice cream.)

Pitchfork’s Ryan Dombal interviewing Rachika Nayar (center) and her co-performers, Issei Herr (left) and Maria BC (right)

On Friday, my favorite set was probably Grace Ives. She’s the queen of getting a little silly with it, blending forward-thinking pop with the front-camera comedy we’ve been watching on Twitter all too much. She’d taken a fall the night before at Sleeping Village, but with her trusty Orange Gatorade, she still got silly with it. The Vocoder came out again. She covered Blitzkrieg Bop, but with her own verses.

For Saturday, my favorite set had to be Black Belt Eagle Scout. The Weyes Blood & Big Thief sets were very special, but I’d never seen KP play before, and her music simply hits. Hearing “Soft Stud” live ruled; I cried. Her latest album, The Land, The Water, The Sky is a masterpiece that features prominently. Her stage presence is outstanding. Of course, losing out on Vagabon and Snail Mail hurt me, though.

Lastly, on Sunday, I had a ton of fun at Kelela (patron saint of bangs, Joan of Arc of tube tops), but I have to highlight Rachika Nayar’s set, because I’m me. Ever since stumbling across her first solo single on the NNA Tapes Bandcamp in 2021, I’ve been overtaken by her music. Heaven Come Crashing is a brilliant follow-up to her debut, and getting on stage with Maria BC and Issei Herr, whose music I’ve also come to love, meant seeing all my favs on one stage. I stood at the barricade with Eli Winter. Every drop hit better than the last. Keep an eye on all three of these artists. But also: Palm forever.

Pitchfork Festival is also a chance to connect with the human iterations of online figures I’ve come to enjoy: other writers, publicists, musicians, and fans who I know almost entirely from Twitter. As much as we resent being there, it’s so easy. We’re so spread out. I appreciate how festivals bring us together like that.

Jessica and Eric taking a much-needed sit on Sunday.

Festivals have an odd place in today’s urban landscape. While cities are, indeed, looking for sustainable “economic development” through giving developers and businesses different incentives (read: tax breaks) to set up shop within their borders, that might only go so far for a built-out city like Chicago. Ever since the advent of the modern Olympics or the World’s Fair, mega-events have played a fraught role in urban politics, leading to rapid-dashes of public works that, often, destabilize the city’s poorest residents to get them out of view of visitors. READ: Nolympics

Pitchfork isn’t a mega-event, but it warrants redirection of resources. Extra buses grace the 9 line at the festival’s end. A massive public park west of the Loop is commandeered for a long weekend. Over three years in community development, I planned roughly a dozen community events, ranging from neighborhood pop-ups to regional festivals. They’ve become paramount to neighborhood identity, yes, but also as fundraisers. Community development organizations that aren’t banks or government entities have to get pretty creative with their fundraising, and festivals offer revenue through sponsorships large (title sponsorships) and small (vendor fees). Operating a 5K race or a beer garden suddenly becomes a way to make money to help an at-risk resident make key home repairs. Over time, those festivals become entrenched, steeped in “tradition,” even if those traditions are but a decade old. It becomes yet anther avenue through which local actors wield influence.

Music festival politics are uniquely interesting. We’ve all discoursed on the neo-coloniality of Fyre Festival or the differential experiences by gender at Woodstock ‘99. In Chicago, festival dynamics are especially fraught surrounding Riot Fest, a larger, punk-oriented festival in Douglass Park. Douglass Park has a larger footprint in a westside neighborhood, with dozens of local residents organizing to get the festival out of the neighborhood (read). Riot Fest moved to Douglass Park nearly a decade ago after constant pushback from its Humboldt Park neighbors. Community groups around Douglass Park identify Riot Fest’s presence, and the presence of other festivals that close the park from public use for up to 40 days, as a harbinger of gentrification.

Anti-gentrification was one of the greater Humboldt Park area’s motivations for pushing the festival out, too. But, it would be particularly hard to look at the current state of the neighborhood, especially near the Park itself, and call it “ungentrified.” Residents in the historically Puerto Rican neighborhood report rising rents and a higher cost of living amid redevelopment in the neighborhood. What role that festivals have, or don’t have, in the realm of gentrification is up for debate. At one level, I suspect that festival siting choices are signs of changes already happening. It’s exceedingly difficult to justify to investors and city governments why a festival should get permits in a disinvested neighborhood. But there’s little doubt that events attended, largely, by white people with disposable income (including the less-squabbled-over Pitchfork Music Festival) collect support from institutions hungry for tourism dollars. Local communities rarely see those dollars come back to benefit them. Who does? Restauranteurs, AirBnB hosts, Uber managers (not drivers), airlines, municipal tax coffers, festival management.

In today’s Attention Economy (to bring back David A. Banks), events play an outsized role in local economies, especially in post-industrial cities. While most festivals skirt under the radar as events where organizers and communities get along just fine, festivals and mega-events will continue to bump against neighbors. Mega-events like the World Cup and the Olympics are especially stunning and worrisome. As long as musicians and the industry looks to festivals for networking and performances, festival organizers and music professionals have a duty to organize the most just event possible. What does an anti-capitalist music festival look like? What does a proper anti-racist music festival look like? I don’t know. But it’s worth figuring out.

Thank you, Brady and Gus, for letting us crash again :)

What am I listening to?

Agriculture by Agriculture

In the Light of the Blistering Moon by How Strange It Is