Article by Arami Chang & Chloe Gonzales
Today’s lineup was scheduled to feature mostly alt rock musicians by day, dance pop legends by night, making for probably the busiest day of the weekend. In response, the city rang its alarm call, the Green Line train above Ashland loudly buckling its wheels, the air above us and the ground below perpetually quivering to the noise, leaving us in limbo. Did everything just rotate a good 15 degrees?
Wednesday
A band near and dear to my heart, today’s performance was the third concert that I’ve been to for Wednesday. And they did not disappoint.
Hailing from Asheville, the indie twang group has arrived at Pitchfork’s busiest day with a nod from Feeble Little Horse: “We are also opening for Karly from Wednesday!” in response to “We’re opening for Carly Rae Jepsen!” The group has been touring for their newest album, Rat Saw God, one of my top albums of 2023. The set was filled with not only songs from Rat Saw God, but unreleased songs as well. While the energy was there, I didn’t notice any moshing like I would in previous Wednesday concerts. That didn’t stop goers like me from bouncing up and down in place, screaming the lyrics to songs such as “Bath County.” The set concluded with Karly asking us to scream for Palestine during their song, “Bull Believer.” Pitchfork rang with screaming as Karly screamed along.
Water From Your Eyes
My first set of the day was led by the Brooklyn-based indie act Water From Your Eyes. Their latest album Everyone’s Crushed features some of the most hypnotic industrial pop music from last year. On songs like “Barley” and “Buy My Product,” shimmering bursts of electronica float atop the bed of soaring guitar leads and aggressively noisy drum patterns like digital pixels rastered across a computer screen. It’s no surprise they caught the attention of Pitchfork; you just simply couldn’t look away from the glow.
But as enjoyable as the music was, it was a bit unfortunate to see their lead singer Rachel Brown suffer from coughing fits all throughout their set. They lightly played it off as karma for sneaking into Pitchfork Fest as a 17-year-old, now being forced to perform here while succumbing to an asthmatic illness. But as I clutched the bag of cough drops in my backpack, I couldn’t help but disagree with them. Because I don’t think karmic debt is what brought them here; I’m thinking of it more as a happy accident.
Jessie Ware
Hands down the most fun I had all weekend was due in part to Jessie Ware. As the first headliner of the night, Jessie had to achieve the crucial task of getting the crowd riled up for all the other headliners to come. Thankfully, Jessie made for the perfect preface for the night.
Under the command of our head freak, we quickly synchronized to Jessie’s disco club bangers from her latest two albums What’s Your Pleasure? and That! Feels Good! As she belted one catchy tune after the other, the crowd danced along, clumsily mimicking her backup dancers’ choreography but still having fun along the way. After all, when you have songs like “Pearls” and “Freak Me Now” that are just so unbelievably infectious, how could you not dance along?
Once Jessie eventually had everyone sing along to her cover of “Believe” by Cher (because of course everyone knew the lyrics), it became proof enough that she had successfully cast everyone under her spell. It became time for her to step up as the mother she is and command everyone to dance to her choreography. “Stand up. Turn around. Take a bow. Because you look so good right now. God gave you face. God gave you style.” she’d instruct on “Beautiful People.” We proceeded to follow her directions.
She eventually closed off her set with the apt “Free Yourself,” leaving us with one final request: “Free yourself / If it feels so good then don’t you, baby don’t you stop.”
Unwound
I had always assumed that Unwound was an autumn band. Maybe it’s because I had “October All Over” and “Demons Sing Love Songs” on repeat last fall quarter, but honestly you can’t really deny the sheer “autumn-ness” of their music. Hell, their final album is even called Leaves Turn Inside You. Because of this, I had wrongly assumed that Unwound wouldn’t make for a good summer festival pick, but to my surprise what they offered instead was the perfect amount of summer heat.
You would think that post-hardcore veterans wouldn’t exactly fit in with the comparably spry Saturday crowd, but in fact Unwound was exactly what the crowd needed on a Saturday evening. With the sun setting and the evening breeze blowing in, the music had appropriately gotten a lot darker, moodier, and noisier. Fan favorites like “Corpse Pose” and “Look a Ghost” generated some heavy head-banging from the crowd. Meanwhile, dronier tracks added a strange ambience to the air that was otherwise absent from the dance floor-ready crowd just a few feet away from us.
Throughout it all, shredding guitars scratched my eardrums, bass lines reverberated into the core of my soul, and my heart began marching to the beat of pounding drums. But as much as each note made my body physically rumble, there was also an odd comfort in watching their poised attitudes and decades-long experience manifest on stage, like revisiting an old favorite song you haven’t heard in a while.
I spent most of the day bobbing my head and shuffling my feet to the party tunes I’d heard all day. But for the first time, all I could do during Unwound’s set was simply drown in guitar fuzz and white noise. Oddly enough, it was exactly what I needed.
Jamie xx
One of my most anticipated albums of the year is In Waves, Jamie xx’s long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s In Colour. I mean, surely an album with a cover like that has got to be good, right? Not to mention, all the fantastic singles leading up to In Waves as well (as of writing this, a 4th single “All You Children” featuring The Avalanches just dropped and, as I had correctly predicted, this song absolutely rules). With that in mind, I was looking forward to Jamie’s headlining set for Pitchfork Fest, as he’d preview some of his new material to close off the Saturday night.
Any passing listener will immediately pick up on Jamie’s characteristic off-kilter use of vocal samples throughout his discography, a Jamie xx trademark at this point. From the enchantingly moody “Gosh” on In Colour to the 2024 party anthem that is “Baddy On The Floor,” Jamie finds all kinds of ways to take basic vocal samples and transform them into mesmerizing soundbites for the greater club banger. Sometimes, they’ll set the foundational melodies to his songs. Other times, they’ll become the final percussive piece to supplement the existing bed of 808s and thumping bass lines. And occasionally, they’ll instruct the listener to get down and dirty on the dance floor. Either way, it’s enough to get the crowd moving.
Seeing as Jamie was the final headliner of the night, his set naturally garnered the busiest crowd of the day. It may seem difficult to get this large of a crowd to fully tune into your music, but with everyone eager to enjoy the rest of their Saturday night, Jamie’s task became simple. Spit out the hardest bangers, and everyone will naturally break it down on the dance floor. Lucky for him, we were more than up to the task.
The People of Pitchfork
