The sun was shining down on the final day of Pitchfork 2023, a much-needed reprieve from the rain that plagued Saturday afternoon and forced a temporary evacuation of Union Park.
Chicago DJ Ariel Zetina got the festivities started with her eclectic electro mix. The rest of Sunday’s lineup offered a good deal of international flavor with Colombian soundscape artist Lucrecia Dalt, London art pop duo Jockstrap, Jamaican multi-talent Koffee and Niger guitar phenom Mdou Moctar wrapping things up before the big finale from Bon Iver.
Bon Iver
It’s been a minute since the experimental indie folk troupe Bon Iver, led by Justin Vernon, has played in this neck of the woods, sticking to mostly international dates the past year. The last time the Wisconsite played the tri-State area, in fact, was the year 2020, shortly after he released his last LP, the Grammy-nominated, “I, I.”
Much has happened in that time for Vernon, not the least of which was recording new material with The National’s Aaron Dessner for their collab project Big Red Machine and of course appearing on Taylor Swift’s pandemic record “folklore.” But for the Midwest homecoming (with Pitchfork leading a series of dates coming soon in Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota), Vernon and crew stuck to what they do best: a dizzying array of frontloaded instrumentals and vocoder-heavy vocals to end Pitchfork with the same chill vibe It began with Friday.
Though the set was sleepy at times — “I know you’re tired,” Vernon even admitted, baiting the audience to stick with him through his musical kaleidoscope — it was also haunting and an example of the true breadth of music that can be achieved without limitation.
Bon Iver relied heavily on “I, I” and 2016’s “22, A Million” for the bulk of the setlist, Vernon donning a solid pair of headphones like he was in the studio, perfecting the tiny nuances of each song. The grouping of musicians behind him added polished layers to bring it all together, while an overactive fog machine also helped set the mood for the sad songs, drifting out into the horizon to meet a thick cloud of vape haze.
Yet, it was the quintessential 2007 track “Skinny Love” that had everyone in a tizzy, provoking a hearty sing-a-ong of the “My my my, my my my, my my” verse, and then prompting much of the crowd to leave thereafter. “Play it again,” a few screamed
Instead, Bon Iver moved on, going a few minutes past the 9:50 curfew and ending by thanking the fans for all their support over the years. “Spread that love wherever you go,” Vernon said, and from the looks of the happy faces leaving Union Park for the last time that weekend, at least for one night they obliged. —Selena Fragassi
Killer Mike
“If you came here expecting an underground rap show, this isn’t it,” said Killer Mike, setting the record straight regarding any expectations of his anticipated performance. The rapper, one-half of the great Run the Jewels, is by now a near household name. But, in this set, he was just Michael — Michael Render, to be exact.
“This is no rap show. It’s an experience. Today we are in church,” he declared. On this Sunday afternoon, while watching a processional of tambourine-wielding choir members take the stage, hearing organ sounds coming from DJ Trackstar’s candle-flanked turntables and seeing the addition of a pastor’s pulpit prop decorated with bouquets of white flowers, it sure felt like we were at services.
The concept is all part of the promotional tour for Killer Mike’s new solo album, his first in 11 years, simply called “Michael.” While Run the Jewels has become known for sociopolitical soundbites (one of the reasons the duo fit so well as openers for the Rage Against the Machine tour last year), this latest solo pivot by Killer Mike has become more of an internal discourse, with songs about growing up Black in the South, being raised in the church and experiences with teenage love (“Slummer”).
Though the album may be his origin story, cut with a heartwarming vulnerability to the braggadocious rapper, he did not refrain from figuratively using the pulpit to preach about current issues.
“If you want to talk about a child’s right to live, make sure you teach boys to use condoms, put sex ed back in schools and pick leaders that don’t tell women what to do with their bodies,” he opined after “Slummer,” met with uproarious approval.
But the most gripping moment of the set came with the incredibly emotional “Motherless,” in which Mike rapped about the gravity of living without his late mother and grandma, breaking down into tears as he unfurled the lyrics while looking at a portrait of his “mama” Denise that had been set up on an easel at stage right. The beautiful gospel of his supporting five-member Midnight Revival Choir only drove the feels home. Mike ended by pointing in the air as if he was sending the song up to his ancestors, and many in the crowd did the same in a beautiful moment that spoke to the community of music, a true congregation united in Union Park.
Capitalizing on the moment, Killer Mike encouraged people to meet their neighbors and do more work from the ground locally, mentioning his “greatest friend and mentor,” Alice Johnson, an activist from North Chicago. He then followed that message with one for Pitchfork, preaching that any review of his new album deserves nothing less than a perfect 10, a point that would be hard to argue. —Selena Fragassi
Mdou Moctar
If this was 1969, Mdou Moctar might’ve played Woodstock; but instead, we’re lucky enough to be able to see the West African guitar hero in our lifetime at Pitchfork 2023. Everything from the hippie-inspired backdrop (with a large imprint of the African continent) to the classic rock shredding was reminiscent of another time — if not also another place.
Moctar, born Mahamadou Souleymane, hails from Niger, where rock music isn’t exactly commonplace or even accepted. It’s said Souleymane taught himself how to play after building his own instrument, stringing it with bike cables, and then voraciously studying Eddie Van Halen videos on YouTube.
The result is a complex mix of electric blues with traditional melodies and cultural influence from the nomadic Tuareg tribes, supported by a just as exemplary three-piece band. The lineup features well-regarded West African drummer Souleymane Ibrahim, rhythm guitarist/backing vocalist Ahmoudou Madassane and Michael Coltun on bass. Coltun is also the group’s producer, who flies to Niger from Brooklyn to work with the ensemble.
The unique blend of American and British rock with ancient music styles has been a trend in the spotlight thanks to other keepers of the cultural flame like Bloodywood (metal with Indian folk music) and The Hu (metal with Mongolian folk). Mdou Moctar has entered the conversation at a prime time, finding kinship with the venerable indie label Matador release “Afrique Victime” in 2021 and being invited to esteemed Western events like Pitchfork, as well as Austin Psych Fest and New Orleans Jazz Fest earlier this year.
There was a lot of buzz for Mdou Moctar going into the late Sunday performance,and the at-the-seams crowd at the Blue Stage was testament (even fellow Sunday talent Hurray for the Riff Raff was seen checking out the set). From the first notes, the crowd roared in approval, many playing air guitar when they wanted to be in sync but couldn’t sing along to the lyrics (most are sung in Tamasheq). Souleymane ate it all up, blowing kisses into the crowd and holding his hand over his heart as he exited the stage, clearly touched by the reaction. —Selena Fragassi
Koffee
With dancers and a handful of musicians backing her up, singer Koffee from Spanish Town, Jamaica, was faced with the task of warming up the audience to her music.
At 23 years old, the talented Mikayla Victoria Simpson already has two Grammys for best reggae album (2020, 2023). She has very rightfully taken up lots of space in music and has collaborated with Sam Smith, Beyoncé — also in town over the weekend at Soldier Field — and Gunna.
Just one song into her set, Koffee handled technical difficulties with grace, deciding to head into her song “Pressure.” It’s a single from the summer of 2020, and maybe it was inspired by the pandemic. But it’s a song about how important it is to “just keep going in life no matter what happens,” she said.
The crowd swayed and danced with each other, especially after she dedicated her cover of John McLean’s “If I Gave My Heart To You” to all of “the lovers” in the audience.
And whenever she needed a water break, Koffee let her guitarist and bassist take over the stage with their bluesy strumming.
As a Caribbean woman, Koffee can call on a lot of different instruments to aid her sound: the steel drums, horns, the xylophone. And although none of those instruments were actually on stage, her keyboardist was able to call on them effortlessly.
She later shouted out all of the Caribbean fans in the crowd before dedicating the song “West Indies” to them.
Koffee left the stage prematurely before returning to perform one last song, which was met with tons of applause. Although fans didn’t seem to know the words to many of her tracks, it’s fair to say that hundreds of people walked away with someone new to keep their eyes on. — Ambar Colón
Jockstrap
Georgia Ellery, vocalist for the London-based duo Jockstrap, is not shy when it comes to singing about sexuality and desire. Her soft-spoken, soothing vocals about embracing femininity are complemented by her partner Tyler Skye’s prowess on the keyboard.
The duo’s been making music together for less than a decade — they met at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London in 2016. The two make a magical combination on stage, and who can ignore Ellery’s talent when it comes to stringed instruments?
First, an acoustic guitar, then a violin.
Dressed in a gold two-piece outfit, the singer looked just as vibrant as the sun beating down on the crowd as her voice, reminiscent of sweet lullabies, carried off into the hot and humid air.
The duo is known for dipping toes into a more experimental side of electronic pop, and are successful at sprinkling in influences of art pop and glitch, the latter of the two a genre that emerged in the 1990s.
It’s not Jockstrap’s first time in Chicago. The duo performed at Sleeping Village last November, and fans here absolutely love Ellery and Skye.
The two performed songs off of their debut album “I Love You Jennifer B,” released last year. Both “Glasgow” and “Jennifer B” were met with huge applause, but “50/50” was met with the most energy from the crowd, as people jumped up and down and danced their hearts out. — Ambar Colón
JPEGMafia
JPEGMafia returned to Pitchfork after four years, and though he shaded the festival—calling it “Condé Nast fest,” after the media conglomerate that owns Pitchfork Media — he was thrilled to be back on stage.
JPEGMafia, affectionately referred to as “Peggy” by his fans, is very clearly a wrestling fan. His producer tag is “you think you know me,” and the female voice on his tracks references the vignettes that premiered as WWE Hall of Famer Edge made his “Raw” debut in 1998. He even sampled an Arn Anderson promo from two years ago on “END CREDITS!”
And JPEG is certainly edgy. Fans first started moshing to “Bald” and kept the pit open well into the majority of the set.
It was so hot out that Peggy’s “computer straight overheated,” he said, resulting in some technical difficulties. But the Flatbush-born and Baltimore-residing rapper is a professional. To keep things fun while the issue was worked on, he went a capella on his own version of “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen as crews worked to cool down his equipment.
Fans’ “Peggy!” chants continued song after song, and JPEG kept a dialogue going with them. He’s an artist who knows how important it is to engage an audience through performance. He made sure to introduce every song that he performed — probably to attract even more fans to his art — and even jumped into the crowd a few times.
In March, JPEGMafia dropped a studio album, “SCARING THE HOES,” with Danny Brown, an American rapper from Detroit. JPEG’s positively chaotic and excitable energy is a contributing force for his popularity at Pitchfork, where fans were left wishing that the raging could continue on just a little bit longer. — Ambar Colón
Illuminati Hotties
A weekend at Pitchfork simply wouldn’t feel like Pitchfork without some infectious pop-punk, and on Sunday that flavor was served in delicious doses by Illuminati Hotties.
The quartet is the recording and touring project of Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, mixer and engineer Sarah Tudzin.
Journalists frequently ask Tudzin how her extensive time in the studio affects the creative vision she has for Illuminati Hotties. It’s a good question for someone whose resume includes sessions with artists as diverse as Coldplay, Weyes Blood, Pom Pom Squad, Boygenius and Barbra Streisand.
Perhaps working with such a variety of talent has informed Tudzin’s stage persona and the various vocal styles she utilizes. During a 45-minute set on Sunday, she shifted with gusto from a girlish croon to a guttural howl, and every tune was so hook-filled that dancing seemed to be the most reasonable response.
Tudzin, who has called her style of music “tender punk,” commanded the stage like a wide-eyed, jovial ringmaster, hopping, growling and striking rock-goddess guitar poses alongside her righteous-riffing bandmate Sapphire Jewell.
Highlights in the set included “Pool Hopping” and “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA,” which found Tudzin cajoling the crowd into sing-along segments like a delirious ringmaster, clearly in her element. Both of those tracks are from “Let Me Do One More,” which landed at No. 35 on Pitchfork’s list of the best albums of 2021.
For fans whose playlists might include The Ramones as well as bubblegum pop from the ’60s, Illuminati Hotties provided a compelling reason to head to the Blue Stage and seek some shelter from the heat, thanks to nearby trees.
Coolness, in both the literal and figurative sense, made for a super-fun set, with lots of grins on both sides of the stage. —Bobby Reed
Lucrecia Dalt
Watching Lucrecia Dalt can only be described as seeing a film score come together in real-time. Her whittling of moody atmospherics, menacing basslines and polarizing beats creates a wild storyline even without any big-screen visuals — other than watching her and animated percussionist Alex Lázaro create their beautiful noise like mad scientists outside the laboratory. It’s quite a feat considering most scores come together with a good amount of time and a full team of machinery in controlled studio settings.
Dalt hails from Colombia, though she currently lives in Berlin, and her experimental works on recent material, like 2022 album “Ay!,” reinvent a range of Latin and South American music traditions with abstract intention, making bolero and son sounds like they’ve gone through an interstellar filter. If Ari Aster ever is looking for an on-brand score artist, he might consider Dalt (in fact, she recently did the soundscapes for HBO horror-comedy series “The Baby” and Sam Walker’s 2021 film “The Seed”).
Yet, not all of her set was as brooding — on the song “No Tiempo” (from “Ay!”) Dalt trades in the distorted vocals for a clean singing style that sounds like an angelic chorus; on other tempered tracks, Dalt’s vocals were like an ASMR-filled sound bath. Much credit needs to be given to Lázaro, too, who was a beast on his towering kit that melded together a global assortment of percussion; though he had a seat, he might as well have kicked it aside.
Greeting the audience in both English and Spanish as she began and wrapped up her set, Dalt received bilingual responses back, her appearance being one of a huge influx of Mexican and Latin American artists appearing on the festival circuit this year, carrying over to Lollapalooza in a couple weeks. —Selena Fragassi
Soul Glo
And now for something totally different: After early helpings of atmospherics from Rachika Nayar and Lucrecia Dalt, Pitchfork turned things up with the hardcore punk band Soul Glo from Philly. Though hardcore isn’t exactly the default genre of the festival, it was a welcome break in tradition, following in Lolla’s footsteps of throwing a curveball, booking buzzy hardcore act Turnstile last year and Louisville’s Knocked Loose this year.
“Are they going to turn it into a mosh pit right away?” one girl asked, eyeing the sizable crowd for Soul Glo already making room for a circle pit nearing the front of the stage. Her assumption was realized from nearly the first note as the diverse trio (with a touring bass player) unleashed the fury on the Blue Stage, spewing songs about race, inequity and political action, delivered by the passionate vocalist Pierce Jordan. At times, he’d even take off his glasses to deadlock eyes with the crowd, ensuring they were paying attention.
Though Soul Glo formed in 2014, major punk label Epitaph caught wind of the act and signed it in 2021, releasing major label debut “Diaspora Problems” in 2022. It already has made waves with disaffected youth (no doubt helped by the headline-making news of Jordan playing nearly naked at Coachella earlier this year), as seen in the rowdy reaction to the song “Gold Chain Punk (whogonbeatmyass?)” that became an instant scream-along. The throngs of fans got so heated up during the set, as temps topped 80 degrees, that security turned water bottles into water guns to cool things down a bit.
But the band’s ferocious energy only continued to rile people up. If it wasn’t Jordan, it was guitarist GG Guerra stomping across the stage, throwing his guitar into the air and catching it like it was his personal stress-reliever ball. After Jordan and Guerra traded posts for a song — with Guerra sounding every bit as feral in his vocal delivery — the band left the stage, leaving a loop of noise in their wake, unable to stay silent. —Selena Fragassi
Palm
Sunday afternoon’s set by Palm was attention-worthy for two reasons. Of the performances canceled by weather-related delays on Saturday, this was the only one that Pitchfork officials announced would be moved from Saturday to Sunday.
Additionally, the quartet announced on June 13 that its current tour would be its last.
Palm played in November at Sleeping Village and on Friday at a Pitchfork after show, making Sunday afternoon perhaps the last time Chicagoans will have an opportunity to see the band, which includes singer-guitarist Kasra Kurt, singer-guitarist Eve Alpert, bassist Gerasimos Livitsanos and drummer Hugo Stanley.
Alpert seemed to have a wistful facial expression as she pulled out a camera to photograph the crowd both before and after the set, documenting an important episode in the band’s history.
Offering a mixture of art rock, math rock and curated blasts of noise, Palm delivered a casserole of controlled chaos.
Just as fans of avant-garde jazz can discern certain musical logic that might elude the casual listener, the hardcore Palm fans in Union Park soaked in the frequent, frenetic time-signature changes that Stanley fueled from behind his drum kit.
The 45-minute set included an explosive rendition of “On the Sly,” from the band’s acclaimed 2022 album, “Nicks and Grazes.”
Influenced by Sonic Youth, the band blended aggressive sounds with soaring vocals by Kurt and Alpert, with lyrics perhaps selected as much for their sounds as for their meanings.
The show concluded with “Dog Milk,” from the band’s 2018 album, “Rock Island.” The tune featured an electric guitar riff reminiscent of a steel drum, an intriguing sonic element that Kurt created with a MIDI pickup.
Many in the Union Park crowd knew the importance of the occasion, getting perhaps a final glimpse of an art-rock band that has followed a unique artistic path. —Bobby Reed
