Pitchfork Festival forecast: 10 emerging acts to show up early for
This year’s Pitchfork Music Festival lineup has been called one of its most eclectic, mainstream and LGBTQ+-friendly in years. And while there’s tons of excitement for Black Pumas, Jamie xx, Grandmaster Flash, Carly Rae Jepsen and Alanis Morissette, you oughta know these up-and-comers, too.
Here are 10 bands to get up early for, but if you do miss their sets during the Union Park fest Friday through Sunday, nearly all are participating in after-shows at venues around the city including Empty Bottle, Constellation, Subterranean, Sleeping Village and Cobra Lounge. Find the full schedule at pitchfork.com.
Black Duck
As a homegrown event, Pitchfork Music Festival has always upheld its responsibility to showcase local artists — and this year is no different. Each day opens with strictly Chicago sounds, starting Friday with supergroup Black Duck. The trio features Tortoise/Eleventh Dream Day’s Douglas McCombs, poet/solo artist/guitarist Bill MacKay and venerable jazz drummer Charles Rumback in a brooding, experimental melting pot that thrives on improvisation. Black Duck's self-titled debut was released last year on, what else but local label Thrill Jockey, and is just clamoring to come out in the daylight. (1 p.m. Friday, Green Stage)
Angry Blackmen
What’s in a band name? For Angry Blackmen, everything. Quentin Branch and Brian Warren subvert everything generalists expect them to be. Their sound: industrial-fused idiosyncratic hip-hop. Their anger: artistic expression articulating the experience of living in white America. Formed in 2017 in Chicago, the duo released its latest explosive album in January. Called “The Legend Of ABM,” it’s inspired by the 1954 horror book “I Am Legend,” and likewise brings forth a poetic narrative that exposes the dark underbelly of society while offering a survival guide. (1:45 p.m. Friday, Red Stage)
Tkay Maidza
A year ago, Tkay Maidza’s R&B pop cover of the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” was featured in an Apple commercial, further thrusting the Zimbabwean/Australian talent into the spotlight. But it’s her originals that have kept that spot warm. To date, Maidza has issued two albums, 2016’s eponymous debut and 2023’s "Sweet Justice," both a hodgepodge of electro sheen, synthpop edge, quick-witted hip-hop barbs and R&B smooth grooves that will be a familiar landscape for fans of Santigold, SZA and Banks. (3:20 p.m. Friday, Red Stage)
Doss
It’s all “Puppy” and “Drugs” in a Doss set. The New York-based DJ and producer presents a happy high in her performances with easy-breezy tracks that introduce downtempo, trance and a bit of shoegaze for a total mind escape. The dreamlike beats are mixed with Grimes-esque cherubic vocals for a kind of electric guided meditation. It’s a mood that many top artists have clung to, with everyone from Caroline Polachek to Lady Gaga calling on Doss for remixes. (4 p.m. Friday, Blue Stage)
Lifeguard
In the Sun-Times’ recent feature about Chicago’s reinvigorated rock scene, Matador president Patrick Amory declared local trio Lifeguard to be “one of the greatest live bands on the planet” right now. It’s a reputation the fuzzy post-punk noise rock act will live up to at its Pitchfork set. The young act’s tracks on 2023 EPs “Crowd Can Talk” and “Dressed In Trenches” are loud, frenetic and full of punch, living somewhere in between chaos and catharsis. Delivered live, they will set the precedent for what a festival set should be. (1 p.m. Saturday, Green Stage)
L’Rain
Yes, her latest album is called “I Killed Your Dog,” but hold your calls to PETA. Like most things from the eclectic L’Rain (the pseudonym of Taja Cheek, in homage to her late mother Lorraine), nothing is as it seems. The subject of her 2023 album and its title track is really pondering what it means to hurt the people closest to you. The deep and artsy exploration takes her into incredible emotional terrain with a soundtrack of sensual R&B, experimental rock, psychedelic folk, even tinges of gospel and ambient drone for a true sonic collage. There’s a reason her records are often at the top of yearly “best of” lists. (1:45 p.m. Saturday, Red Stage)
Hotline TNT
Jack White doesn’t sign just anyone to his Third Man Records label. So when acts like Hotline TNT (part of the roster as of 2023) make the cut, you know they’re something special. The project is the handiwork of New York-based savant Will Anderson, who brings along a stable of friends to create a dimensional wall of sound for their performances. Though Hotline TNT’s go-to label is shoegaze, there are touches of alt rock and noise pop too on songs like “Nineteen in Love,” devoured with a total DIY hunger. (2:45 p.m. Saturday, Blue Stage)
Akenya
Everyone from Paramore’s Hayley Williams to Chicago wordsmith Noname to Chance the Rapper and Mavis Staples herself have called on Akenya to contribute to their records and live performance. While the multi-hyphenate Chicago talent — an alum of the Jazz Studies program at the New England Conservatory of Music — has contributed much to modern music, she finally gets her due in this high-profile solo set. Songs like “Decay” show her mastery in multiple genres from jazz to world music, hip-hop to soul, pop to classical, offering something for everyone to love about her. (1 p.m. Sunday, Green Stage)
Nala Sinephro
If you need some mindful meditation by day three of Pitchfork, Nala Sinephro has the salve. Interpretive jazz is the hallmark of the Caribbean-Belgian talent, a true style agitator who dares to press her instruments and ideas to the next level. A mix of pedal harp with modular synthesizers and piano, the blend is an ambient incubator for off-center jazz. She only has one LP so far, 2021’s “Space 1.8,” but expect to hear a lot more in the future. (2:45 p.m. Sunday, Blue Stage)
Model/Actriz
They don’t make rock bands like this anymore. The Brooklyn provocateurs are raw, rabid, filterless musical voyeurs who feel plucked from a David Lynch movie, the pages of “Requiem for a Dream,” and the world of Anne Rice all at once. Their debut album, 2023’s “Dogsbody,” is a hedonistic romp with huge industrial swings, post-punk ebullition and a total abandon for tradition. It’s all led by the charismatic Cole Haden, who was simply born for the spotlight. (3:20 p.m. Sunday, Red Stage)