A Pitchfork Music Festival 2022 retrospective, almost one year later
Pitchfork Music Festival 2023, the three-day event that’s set to bring over 50,000 people to Chicago’s Grant Park this year, is two weeks away.
I secured my tickets to the festival several months ago, and my anticipation has been slowly building ever since. Now, with about 14 days until Baltimore artist Nourished By Time kicks off the first set of the festival at 1 p.m. on Friday, July 21, I thought it’d be a good time to look back.
Last year’s Pitchfork Music Festival was my first, and it was the singular best music experience of my life. Whether it was the lineup packed full of well-known artists (to me at least), the rainy but cool weather, the friends I spent the festival with or just the simple novelty of it all, the experience is — to be a bit cliché — forever engrained in my memory.
So, in anticipation of Pitchfork Music Festival 2023 and in belated appreciation of Pitchfork Music Festival 2022, here’s a brief retrospective on last year’s event, in the form of a ranking (booooo) of my 10 favorite sets from P’fork ’22. I saw more than 30 artists’ sets over the course of those three days, making this list a bit tough to narrow down — although the No. 1 spot was, unlike the weather, pretty clear.
Pictures included.
No. 10: Noname
This feels very harsh. Let me explain.
As you can see from the photo above, we were quite far away from the stage during Noname’s set. That, for one, definitely detracted from the musical experience. Only really being able to see Noname via the big screen wasn’t ideal.
And the reason we were so far back also pulls away from the experience a bit. Earl Sweatshirt was the next artist to perform that day, on the Green stage, just across from the Red stage seen here. We snagged a spot at the back of Noname’s set to be able to find a great spot for Earl’s set. In fact, we even dipped early from Noname’s to grab that spot.
Long story short, Earl was late coming out, and his set was disappointing (see Notable Exemptions below).
But even though I didn’t get to see all of Noname’s performance, what I did see was tremendous. She enthralled. Her live voice was so unique — very soft but powerful, commanding.
If we were closer and could have seen the full set, there’s a good chance Noname would have been a lot higher on this somewhat arbitrary ranking.
No. 9: Jeff Parker & the New Breed
Somewhat surprisingly, I had heard of and listened to quite a bit of music from each of last year’s opening artists. I was able to convince my friends to get up earlier to be there by 1 p.m. for each of those sets, and none of them disappointed (see further down this list for another).
Jeff Parker & the New Breed was Saturday’s opener. The Los Angeles-based jazz guitarist and his band released one of my favorite jazz albums in the past few years, the charming “Suite for Max Brown,” in 2020. He followed that up in 2021 with a stripped down, deeply intimate, almost ambient album, called “Forfolks.”
Parker is, of course, a tremendous guitarist. He plays with a sort of easy feeling, laced with technical intricacy sprinkled about his playing like little crescendos of detail. His band was solid, even funny at times when individual members would pull up a microphone for a few words. He also brought out his daughter, Ruby (who you can see with the violin and green pants in the center of the stage), to sing on the song “Build a Nest.”
Thankfully the rain dissipated in time for Jeff Parker & the New Breed to go on. It was a wonderful beginning to what would prove to be my favorite day of P’Fork ’22.
No. 8: L’Rain
Sometimes, I realized, excellent sets can be defined by the performance of one song.
Such was the case with L’Rain, an artist I hadn’t heard much of before the P’fork ’22 announced its lineup but who I quickly fell in love with for, really, one song from her 2021 album, “Fatigue.” The whole album is great, interspersed with little spoken word interludes. But the song “Find It” — the second on the record — is what pulled me in.
So when I recognized the first bass notes and stuttered drum pattern that introduced the song’s slow-building first part, I got really excited. And the performance didn’t disappoint. L’Rain and her band played an extended version of the song, which slowly built and built over the course of around 10 minutes, full of swelling horns and rampant percussion.
The set was made cooler, too, because L’Rain was an artist I had only really discovered because of and for Pitchfork Music Festival. Seeing her there, in person, with distinct memories of listening to “Find It” while strutting my way home from work down Nicollet Avenue in Downtown Minneapolis earlier that summer, filled my little heart full up.
No. 7: The Roots
Surprisingly, there’s only one closer on this list, and that’s The Roots, who closed out Sunday and wrapped up the whole festival.
The Roots are, of course, and simply put, legendary. There isn’t a ton that needs to be said about the jazz/funk/hip-hop collective. Questlove was enigmatic on the drums. Black Thought led the crowd through the whole performance, never missing a beat while incessantly firing off his potent and pointed lyrics.
And the set’s highlight, pictured above, is when The Roots brought out comedian and writer Hannibal Buress for a few songs. Hannibal’s in the red to the left. Black Thought’s in the center, with the hat on.
The two had an infectious chemistry. Their combined energy propelled the set forward. While the two other closing acts — The National on Friday and Mitski on Saturday — did little to pull a tired crowd through the last set of a marathon day of music, The Roots, and Black Thought especially, seemed keenly aware of needing to keep the energy up.
It never dipped throughout the group’s hour-and-a-half-long set. In fact, it picked up, to the point where the final notes felt like a jarring end to a performance that really could have gone on forever.
No.6: Spelling
Tia Cabral, the Oakland-based artist better known as Spelling, is very, deeply, profoundly cool.
My history with Spelling and the artist’s 2021 album “The Turning Wheel” is somewhat unique, fueled by my past love-hate relationship with one music critic, Anthony Fantano. Once I did get past my distaste, at that time, for the man’s reviews and gave in to his infectious praise for the record, I — like with L’Rain’s “Fatigue” — fell in love.
But this time it wasn’t just one song. The whole album enthralls. I wrote about it in my favorite albums of 2021 review, and I’ll pull a line for that to describe it here: “The Turning Wheel feels like a luscious, grandiose escape into a world that is somehow beyond ours, a dramatic pantheon of a musical project that echoes the ‘turning wheel’ of life, its chaos and its mystery.”
Jesus.
Anyway, Speling’s live set lived up to album’s grandiosity. Cabral seemed very happy while performing, a smile tattooed across her face while she moved and danced around the stage.
I think performing on the Blue stage — the first Blue stage set of this list so far — helped the performance, too. Blue stage is set off to the side, away from the massive lawn that comprises both Red and Green stages. The intimate feel of Blue, the crowd tucked under one large tree, dripping with rain from that morning, pulled us all in.
Spelling simply put on a performance, one that perfectly drew out the theatrical strings that tie “The Turning Wheel” together.
No. 5: Parquet Courts
Parquet Courts’ set partially ruined my Converse.
There was rain interspersed throughout the entire weekend, and while sometimes the grass would dry up, other times the fields in front of the stages would be left a muddy mess. Such was the case with Parquet Courts.
It didn’t help that the crowd turned into, in part, a very wet, muddy mosh during some of the rock group’s songs. “Almost Had to Start a Fight/In and Out of Patience”? Certainly. “Freebird II?” You bet.
The mosh was a bit annoying at times, I must admit. There were points where I wanted to simply stand and enjoy the music but was forced to thrash around with a bunch of other sweaty 20-something white dudes. I did put myself in the mix in the first place, so I guess I can’t complain too much.
Parquet Courts’ set was great because their album “Wide Awake!” was my favorite from 2018. Like Earl Sweatshirt, mentioned above, my anticipation for Parquet Courts was immense, and they more than lived up to it.
And when they played “Human Performance” from the album of the same name, it was life changing.
No. 4: Arooj Aftab
I discovered Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab in late 2021 when going through artists nominated for that coming year’s Grammy awards. Aftab was nominated twice — Best Global Music Performance for the song “Mohabbat” and Best New Artist for her 2021 album, “Vulture Prince.”
I remember first listening to Vulture Prince while sitting in a Washington, D.C. coffee shop. Aftab’s voice, the delicate strings, the compositional detail — the whole record stopped me in my tracks. I listened to “Last Night” while walking to and from bus stops during late nights in November and December 2021. “Mohabbat” found a consistent spot in my music rotation early the next year.
The album is expressive and soothing, to use a word that in no way does the sounds on Vulture Prince justice. Aftab’s story, too, is deeply interesting — a Pakistani-born, Berklee-trained composer who puts on critically acclaimed live performances, as well.
Aftab’s was the first set I saw at Pitchfork on that damp Friday afternoon, and what an introduction it was. Spellbinding might be a better word to describe it — Arooj Aftab the artist, her Pitchfork performance and her acclaimed album Vulture Prince altogether.
No. 3: Injury Reserve
Of all the sets on this list, we were definitely the closest to Injury Reserve. And that’s fitting.
The duo’s record “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” was my favorite album of 2021. It’s a collection of 11 songs about loss in all its forms. Ritchie with a T, the vocalist for the duo who’s holding the mic in the picture, and Parker Corey, the sound master, lost the former third member of their group, Stepa J. Groggs, in June 2020. “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” was Injury Reserve’s first album without Stepa, and it reflects on his passing and its effect on Ritchie and Corey.
There was a beautiful moment during the set when Corey put on a recording of Stepa’s voice and the two remaining members — he and Ritchie — stepped off the stage, leaving the disembodied voice of Stepa to serenade the Red stage crowd.
And overall, the set was, well, strange, if you didn’t know what to expect going into it. “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” is a glitchy, off-kilter exploration of how confusing the loss of a loved one is for those it impacts. There are few moments where the album settles. There are no bombastic beats that people might have come to expect from Injury Reserve.
Instead, it confuses and entangles the listener. The duo’s live set did the same — to the point where one person in the crowd looked at me and asked, “Who is this"?”
But for a long-time fan and deep admirer of Injury Reserve’s 2021 masterpiece of a contemporary hip-hop album, Ritchie and Corey — and Stepa — fully delivered.
No. 2: Japanese Breakfast
Unlike Injury Reserve, we were really far back for Japanese Breakfast. That didn’t stop me from crying during the set, though!
Michelle Zauner, the artist commonly known as Japanese Breakfast, released one of my favorite albums in 2021 — Jubilee — and one of my favorite books from last year — “Crying in H Mart.” (Which I now have a Michelle Zauner SIGNED copy of thanks to my lovely sister.) I knew I had to see her, but was a bit disappointed by how far back we found ourselves in what turned out to be one of the larger crowds of the day.
That’s okay, though, because the tenderness and expression in Zauner’s live performance was able to travel all the way to the far back of the crowd, where me and my friends were positioned. And there was one moment during her set which, I think, ended up being my favorite moment of the entire festival.
You see, Jeff Tweedy, the front man of era-defining alt-country, indie rock band Wilco, who released one of my favorite album’s of all time, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” in 2002, was at Pitchfork for a special, private performance the same day. Tweedy’s own musical career has continued as a solo artist as Wilco’s continues; he released an acclaimed album, “Love is the King,” in 2020 as a reflection on pandemic life.
As Japanese Breakfast started playing “Kokomo, IN,” a lovely but quite sad song from the album Jubilee, Tweedy — with his big gray beard and round-frame glasses — strolled onto the stage, catching Zauner off-guard. Her surprise quickly turned to awe and joy, seen clearly in the smile that graced her face as Tweedy grabbed a microphone and sang the second verse of the song.
Then, in THE most unforgettable moment from the Pitchfork weekend, the two played the Wilco classic, “Jesus, Etc.” together. It, like the album it appears upon, is one of my favorite tracks ever — maybe, even, my favorite? Still figuring that one out.
It was perfect. Michelle Zauner’s beaming smile as she strummed her guitar alongside Jeff Tweedy, who looked perfectly at home performing his band’s most famous song alongside the up-and-coming indie pop artist in front of an adoring crowd.
I shed tears during “Kokomo, IN” and again during the two’s performance of “Jesus, Etc.” And, I was able to capture, from the big screen, this really sweet photo of Tweedy bowing to Zauner at the close of their two songs together.
Not the greatest picture, I know, but you can sort of get a sense of what the moment meant for Zauner and, through this brief review, what it meant for me, too. (If you are so curious, here are videos from those performances of “Kokomo, IN” and “Jesus, Etc.”)
No. 1: The Armed
I already waxed poetic about The Armed’s performance in my favorite albums of 2022 review. To not repeat myself, I’ll pull some words from that review here:
“The Detroit band absolutely blasted the Blue stage, tucked away from the two main stages in a more intimate and, therefore, intense environment. It was the coolest musical moment of my life. I thrashed around in the mud and rain, jostled between a crowd of sweaty and terribly-smelling people in a swirling outdoor mosh.”
The Armed hit every beat of an extraordinary live performance. Tons of crowd interaction. Crowd surfing, even. Fascinating visuals. Pyrotechnics. Brolic dudes with guitars. Everything.
The set was made even better because I had heard whispers going into P’fork ’22 about how amazing The Armed are live. I dragged my friends to their set with the promise of excitement and loads of energy. No single performance that weekend blew my expectations — which were already pretty high — out of the water as much as The Armed.
I don’t have a ton more to say, honestly. The Arrmed just rocked. Pictures sort of do the experience justice.
So, here’s one more from what was, hands down, my favorite set of Pitchfork Music Festival 2022 — for good measure.
Notable Exemptions
Earl Sweatshirt: I told you we’d return to Earl. His set maybe wasn’t all that bad, but in terms of the discrepancy between expectation versus reality, man, he really disappointed.
Mitski: I had seen Mitski live by herself in St. Paul a few months before her Pitchfork set, so I think that experience kind of dampened her big festival performance. Plus, I think Mitski is better in a more intimate, concert hall setting, anyway.
The National: I was way too burnt out after the first full day to really get into The National’s closing set, but I think I’d enjoy it a lot more, now. I listened to a solid bit of The National later that summer, fyi.
Toro Y Moi: Maybe it was because we were too far back, maybe it’s just not my type of festival music, but Toro Y Moi was, for me, the most mid act of the entire festival, especially in terms of its timing. Third to last artist on the final day? Are you kidding?
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I didn’t see Low, Cate le Bon, Ethel Cain, or most of Karate’s set, among many others. Not seeing Low especially hurts now. But there will be plenty more artists to indulge in, and new ones to discover, in just a few weeks’ time.
Here’s to P’Fork ’22 — and P’Fork ’23, soon enough.
