Pitchfork Music Festival returned for its 15th year on September 10th for a weekend of incredible music, food, and art. The show’s artist’s graced the three stages with enough energy to power even the dimmest corners of Union Park. 

Day one of Pitchfork started unconventionally with waiting in line to go down the stairs from the “L” station. Ahead of me, several other people in line were dressed in a similar theme: reusable water bottles clipped to their bags, beaten up Dr.Martens, and vintage T-shirts. The sounds from the festival were floating up from behind the gates, and ticket hawkers stood prepared at the base of the stairs to shout out their wares.

The three stages were at the various corners of the park, with large swaths of dead grass in between. Early in the day, some attendees opted out for lounging in the shade while they listening to the performances, the sound systems carried music loud and crystal clear to the back of the park. I arrived in time to see the Chicago local, DEHD, blast through their set.

Vocalist and bassist, Emily Kempf commanded attention during her performance. Wearing 4 pigtails and baggy clothing, she exuded the kind of effortless coolness that permeated the festival. Listeners swayed to some of the songs in an almost meditative trance. Her face was illuminated by the camera’s, giving us glances at her braces-filled snarl as she shredded through song after song. She asked for a “vibe check” at one point to which the crowd responded with enthusiastic cheering. DEHD’s performance was a perfect constellation of riffs, crooning, and headbanging.

Immediately following DEHD, Indie darlings, Hop Along began their set. Already drawing a crowd at their mic check, the listeners cheered at every snatch of song that came from Frances Quinlan’s guitar. Once ready, they launched right into “Waitress” and to the sounds of screaming fans. Hearing Hop Along live is an experience not to be missed. The myriad of layers to their sound, the rasp of Frances’ voice, and the general feeling of myrrh are something that doesn’t always come through when listening to recorded music.

Like many other artists would share throughout the weekend of the festival, Frances expressed a collective feeling: “It feels so good to be doing this again”.

Saturday began with me running to catch Divino Niño. Having only seen them once before in 2019, I knew that their show was not one to be missed. Hanging near the back of the crowd, Camilo Medina’s face greeted me on the screen, charismatic and full of energy.
Sporting a white tank and combat boots and a pearl necklace, Camilo crooned and thrust across the stage. With all the bravado of a rockstar, Camilo truly took us there. The band switched seamlessly between moods and even instruments, at times forgoing guitars completely to rap or dance around the stage. It was a great reminder of what live music can be, especially after months of lockdown.

We ended this Pitchfork weekend with one thought in mind: See Danny Brown. This year marked the ten-year anniversary of his album, XXX, which Danny made sure to mention during his set. New to his music, I wanted to see firsthand what his stage presence was like, and to hear his incredible lyricism firsthand. What I was met with was a hodgepodge of music festival moments: Fans rushing to get to the stage, Danny doing call-and-response with his choruses, crowd surfing, and good old-fashioned moshing. By the time a wall of death opened in front of the stage, I knew that this was going to be the highlight of the show. Danny bantered with the crowd, admitting he hadn’t practiced his songs over quarantine: “I was too busy with my air fryer, man.” Which turned out to be true as Danny stumbled over the lyrics to one of his songs and jovially laughed it off. The crowd could care less it seemed as the energy radiating off the crowd was permeable. A turquoise blue bra sailed onto the stage at one point, of which Danny scooped up and wore for part of the set.

After a summer spent mostly indoors, it felt good to see Chicago concert-goers come together under the sun once again for a weekend of live music. If it’s one thing this city knows how to do, is celebrating the return of live music with all the joy and screeching one can handle.

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What is normally a hyped-up festival began with chaotic guesswork; it was difficult to know which of the multitude of bands to catch without hours of listening beforehand. This year, the four-day music festival in Victoria, BC, took on an outer space theme, and the tagline “A weekend of discovery,” a statement which has never been more true.

Thankfully, on the flipside, what the festival does best is unify the city and its residents over four nights of spontaneity, all in the name of the unexpected. What makes Rifflandia, or Riff, so unique in the first place is its multi-venue approach, in addition to two main stages located at Royal Athletic Park, better known as the “Park”, Riff 2014 managed to book over 150 artists at 15 venues located around Victoria – no small feat for the size of the city.

Highlights included a flashy lights show to Tiger and Woods and a retro performance by Cool that can only be described as “rad.” (They sold tapes instead of records or CDs – I’d call that pretty Cool.)

But the real cherry on top was Pickwick’s performance at the gorgeous Alix Goolden Hall church on Friday night. After crowds had listened to hours of mediocre electronica, they offered up incredible energy, spirit, and unexpected beauty. The six-piece indie rock band from Seattle invoked a sense of realness, not to mention flawless acoustics that amounted to the perfect Rifflandia moment.

Half Moon Run also delivered tight performances on both Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, in what were, perhaps, the most current and highly anticipated shows the festival had to offer this year.

Alternatively, Born Ruffians delivered a lukewarm performance at the Park on Friday, followed by the adorable Dragonette, who, despite being somewhat of a has-been, literally appeared out of dry ice, getting the audience’s hands high in the air with old favourites.

Over the course of the weekend, the Park boasted the usual array of food trucks, mini shops and merch, including Rifflandia t-shirts with “September Forever” in caps across the front. In typical festival fashion, hipsters with floral crowns spent long afternoons soaking up the last of the summer sun. Rifflandia is a festival that captures the spirit of summer and holds it in its palm for one last time.

To conclude a weekend full of surprises, an actual meteor streamed across the sky during Death Cab for Cutie, eerily matching this year’s galactic theme. It’s moments like this that make Riff just so damn magical. It’s quite simply hard not to love Rifflandia.

While the initial release of the lineup suffered from a little bit of backlash, as always, fans of the much-loved festival (or rather, everyone in Victoria) came crawling back and it was no less out of this world than it has been in the past. Cheers, Rifflandia. And here’s to next year.

See more photos from the festival here.

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Each of the four songs have a collaborator: Danny Brown, Flowdan, Daddy Freddy, and Kiki Hitomi. Fellow Brit and grime artist Flowdan is featured on half of the tracks.

The EP  starts with a title that could describe the entire four-track EP. “Freakshow” features the highly entertaining Danny Brown, and Kiki Hitomi, vocalist for King Midas.  Brown is fantastic. His style takes the brain and basically bounces it around like a basketball. His lyrics are creative, emphasising words in odd but interesting ways, frequently abbreviating various words. He mentions all sorts of things — pinot grigio, downtown condos, Cesar salads — things that don’t typically belong in a rap song. Hitomi’s voice, on the other hand, is a haunting and memorable contrast to Brown’s jocular rhymes. She holds her own ground, there is a sense that she has the power to do her own damage as a member of the boys club.

Flowdan keeps the “riddim” with “Dirty” which could well be an anthem of any big city center. When he hits the chorus, he insists that the song is not as dirty as much as it is “murky.” That could be said for the whole EP. It’s not exactly dirty as in repulsive, but definitely murky, as in something weird and possibly pretty cool is about to go down.

Martin has some training as a journalist, and his interest in other voices, what they sound like and what they say, is apparent in the third track “Kill Them.” Featuring Daddy Freddy, “Kill Them” seems to be built around Daddy Freddy, the music wraps around the voice once again giving emphasis to vocal talent.

Overall, Filthy is a solid EP, the kind that would be nominated for the Best Sex Album of the year if the Grammys introduced a category of that sort.

Album release date: August 20, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F8GTW4MtUo

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