Jeff Rosenstock is a 34-year-old punk-rock lifer who played one of the biggest gigs of his life at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park over the weekend. And he didn’t hide how surprised he still was.
“Thanks to the person at Pitchfork who got fired by letting us play here,” he said, and later announced that he and his bandmates were getting paid the unbelievable sum of $7,500 to play the gig. That’s chump change by the standards of Paul McCartney, who comes to town later this month, but it’s a windfall for a guy who has played plenty of dives since the ’90s.
Rosenstock also lobbed a few comments about the corporate-sponsored scenery around him – including signs and ads on the video screens – before addressing the uneasy relationship between most rock fests and do-it-yourself bands in “Festival Song.” As one of his bandmates said, “This is weird but it’s cool.”
There’s no doubt that Pitchfork has lost some of its original vibe, that of the neighborhood-festival-that-could, the little brother to monoliths such as Lollapalooza, which arrives in Grant Park in two weeks, or Coachella in California. It has become more overtly commercialized with corporate signage and expanded and pricy VIP areas, which have been standard practice at Lollapalooza and its large festival cousins for a decade or more. There were also other growing pains, in particular the long lines for entry that caused some patrons to wait as much as two hours in queues that stretched north on Ashland Avenue and east on Lake Street on Friday. Promoters added a second entrance gate on Saturday that greatly improved things, but traffic flow problems inside the park made waiting for restrooms and concessions an unwanted part of the festival experience for many patrons. A Pitchfork spokeswoman said there were six medical transports for dehydration and one arrest for trespassing.
Where Pitchfork continues to outdo many of its more well-funded peers is in filling its three stages with musical talent. After a few so-so years, the festival rebounded with one of its best lineups since coming to Union Park in 2006. Capacity crowds of 19,000 were expected each day.
The about 40 bands and artists arrayed on three stages included headliners Solange, the adventurous R&B singer who closed the festival Sunday with a brilliantly choreographed set that complemented her sensual, slow-burn songs of feminist and African-American yearning, and two recently reunited groups from earlier eras: LCD Soundsystem and A Tribe Called Quest.
LCD Soundystem performed what it said would be its final shows in 2011, but it turns out they were just kidding. Whether this return is merely an Eagles-style cash grab remains to be seen, but the band’s set piled up a string of undeniable, slow-build electro-rock that had the fans dancing. The segue from “You Wanted a Hit” to “Tribulations” was the festival’s first peak moment, and the ecstatic, nostalgic glow of the closing “All My Friends” was undeniable. But the test of LCD Mach II will be its forthcoming studio album. It performed two new songs, one of which continued the momentum (the surging “Call the Police”) and one which stalled it (the static “American Dream”).
A Tribe Called Quest had every reason to be somber, still aching over the death of co-founding member Phife Dawg in 2016. But the group’s surviving members brought a boisterous energy and sharpness with few pauses between beloved oldies and new material from their excellent 2016 comeback album, “We Got It From Here … Thank You 4 Your Service.” On “Find a Way,” the interplay among Q-Tip, Jarobi and Consequence momentarily broke down, only to recover triumphantly. On “Dis Generation,” they didn’t just celebrate their storied past but sounded hungry enough to carry it into the future.
The festival also scored a coup by booking rare performances by the Feelies and PJ Harvey. The Feelies have defied time and aging by recording albums at a deliberate pace (a mere six in 41 years) and touring sparsely. But the veteran quintet never sounds under-rehearsed or rusty, and its set Saturday was a prime example of its timeless mastery of rhythm. Its gentle vocals and melodies are consistently pushed along by the clockwork precision of its rhythm section, starting with Bill Million’s driving guitar and finished off by the accents of percussion wizard Dave Weckerman. The set rose to a crescendo: the whoosh of “Away,” the slow-build “Slipping (Into Something)” and the frantic “Raised Eyebrows.”
Harvey’s set demanded as much as it gave, a ritualistic brand of art-pop that didn’t necessarily suit the needs of a lawn party on a sunny summer afternoon. But the performer’s commitment was apparent from the outset, with harmony vocals delivering haunting pronouncements over marching drums: “This is how the world will end.” Harvey set aside her guitar to focus on saxophone, and the songs from her latest album addressed a world in tatters. When she dipped back to the gothic blues of “To Bring You My Love,” she commanded the stage in a way that few performers can.
Unfortunately, some seasoned artists did not fare as well: The unfocused jams of George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic, the Sonic Youth-lite of the Thurston Moore Group, the brilliant Vince Staples looking somewhat forlorn as he rhymed over a backing track on a huge stage.
Some of the younger performers fared better: Madame Gandhi’s feminist poetry over hip-hop percussion, the acerbic post-punk of singer Katie Alice Greer and her Washington, D.C., band Priests, the flamethrower voice and guitar of Cherry Glazerr’s Clementine Creevy, the socially conscious electro-soul of Dawn Richard, the simmering intensity of New York-by-way-of-Cameroon singer Laetitia Tamko, aka Vagabon.
On Sunday, the token free-jazz artist on the bill, Colin Stetson, made his saxophone sound like a ticked-off elephant in a raging and at times beautifully otherworldly set over glitchy electronics. Booker Mike Reed, a local jazz drummer, has a great ear for this type of music, and it’s too bad he doesn’t have the leeway to do more of it at a festival so dominated by indie rock, electronic music and hip-hop.
Chicago artists from different eras dominated the early portion of the fest’s final day. House maestro Derrick Carter gave a master class in thoughtfully sequenced dance music on two turntables. And upstarts NE-HI made their guitars shimmy, shake, clang and crash in a galvanizing set topped by a cover of Harry Nilsson’s ” Jump Into the Fire.”
Joey Purp dramatized some of the contradictions at play in a big outdoor festival as he kicked a beach ball and led a hand-waving affirmation by the fans while rapping about death and paranoia in “Morning Sex.” The West Side rapper appeared far more assured as a performer than he did last year at Lollapalooza.
A festival can be judged many ways, and in terms of logistics, amenities and occasional technical glitches, Pitchfork still too often feels like a work in progress. But just as often it gets the music right, and this year was no exception.
Greg Kot is a Tribune critic.
greg@gregkot.com
Twitter @gregkot
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