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 promises 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.
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 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.
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
