Ambivalence Avenue
Unpacking Pitchfork Music Festival's Black Pumas panic and what it might signal for the event's future.
A few bouts of false spring in Chicago have spurred the annual deluge of summer festival lineup announcements, including a newly-launched jam-adjacent event, an EDM bacchanal where Idris Elba (my favorite djinn) will get behind the decks, and the perennial Cheesecake Factory menu of pop stars and bands that show up in AI-generated Spotify playlists.
I’m not feeling inspired to pour over the lineups this year, so this issue of Attenuator is all about a single Chicago festival and the brief-but-palpable fervor that the leak (and subsequent official release) of its lineup incited in my online sphere. Smash the subscribe button below if you haven’t already and settle in for this tale of overreaction and overreach.
Working it Out
Back when the news broke that publisher Condé Nast unceremoniously announced that Pitchfork was being folded into GQ (and that the majority of a talented staff would be laid off), one of the thoughts that half-earnestly, half-jokingly crossed my mind was, “Does this mean that we’re eventually going to see Kings of Leon headlining Pitchfork Music Festival?”
For some reason, Kings of Leon sartorially and sonically feel like an encapsulation of the performatively masculine publication that Pitchfork was merged with. The members of the band apparently meet the GQ definition of “stylish” (which occasionally means donning definitely-overpriced Hawaiian print polos), one of them married a Victoria’s Secret model, and their early-career “bluesy, late-‘60s garage meets ‘70s guitar rock with a sort of hillbilly groove” output is overdue for a reassessment, according to a very recent GQ column. I can imagine hearing strains of “The Bucket” wafting over from the main stage while sipping an $18 Old Fashioned and perusing the Menswear Emporium (Presented by Rolex) at a hypothetical GQ-ified Pitchfork Fest.
Perhaps the crowds in Union Park will be subjected to a rendition of “Sex on Fire” at some point in the future, but this summer there’s another outlier among the ranks of the just-announced Pitchfork Fest lineup: Black Pumas. Best known (to me, at least) as the band that then-Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot introduced at Lollapalooza 2021, the Austin soul-rock duo went from playing bars to signing a deal with major label ATO Records and notching multiple Grammy nominations in a matter of years.
Black Pumas is the kind of band that Pitchfork acknowledged with a generally positive review of its 2019 debut and then largely ignored — the release of the band’s 2023 album was covered via a brief news item, but never received any critical appraisal on the site. At a festival that has long been associated with a curatorial, editorially-informed approach to its lineup, Black Pumas’ presence atop the Friday night roster reeks of corporate meddling — at least according to the folks lodging complaints via Reddit.
Those pointing to Black Pumas’ presence on the 2024 lineup as a direct result of Condé Nast’s decision to fold Pitchfork into GQ are accelerating the timeline a bit. Bands at the top of festival lineups are frequently secured a year or more in advance of their appearances, which means that the Black Pumas booking likely predated Pitchfork’s reorganization within GQ by at least six months. If there was any internal pushback from those working for the publication (whose work informs, but doesn’t directly determine, the lineup), it was long ago disregarded as Condé prioritized further shoring up the flagship festival’s finances.
The Semafor article outlining Condé Nast’s Pitchfork takeover reveals in stark detail that the parent company was always less interested in the publication’s difficult-to-monetize editorial output and more intrigued by its potential as a scalable events brand with plenty of sponsorship inventory (as I’ve previously observed, it’s why there was money to expand the international editions of a Pitchfork Fest, but not to keep writers on the payroll). Semafor reporter Max Tani revealed that Condé execs have been looking to much larger festivals like Lollapalooza and Coachella as models for eking even more profit out of Pitchfork Fest, pushing for pricey VIP lounges (beyond the existing “VIP lite” Pitchfork PLUS section) and proposing that talent-buyers somehow engineer nostalgic reunions, with one suit pitching the not-very-plausible reformations of Oasis or the White Stripes.
The Gallagher brothers won’t be squashing their long-running feud against the shimmering Chicago skyline this summer, but Condé is definitely exerting more control over (and squeezing more cash out of) this year’s edition of Pitchfork Fest. There’s a new VIP tier joining the quasi-VIP Pitchfork PLUS tier that’s existed for the past few years, promising front-of-stage viewing areas, two-tiered viewing decks, bathrooms with A/C, complimentary beer/wine, daily catered meals, and access to the VIP lounge on the north end of the park that was previously the area reserved for music industry folks, sponsors, press, and other guests of the festival (I have a hunch that the supply of comped tickets won’t be nearly as generous this year). With VIP access going for nearly $400 a day or $700 for all three days, Pitchfork Fest has effectively been stratified in the style of Lollapalooza or Riot Fest. And general admission attendees are stuck with a downgraded experience, thanks to the view obstructions that will likely accompany those aforementioned tiered viewing decks.
With a more lucrative ticketing scheme in place, booking an act with perceived mass appeal like Black Pumas is the next logical step — bonus points for finding a band that Pitchfork has actually reviewed favorably in the past. Black Pumas sold out at least two out of three consecutive nights at 3,600-capacity Chicago venue the Salt Shed earlier this year, which cumulatively translates to about half of Pitchfork Fest’s daily attendance of 20,000. Organizers are clearly hoping that a lot of those Black Pumas fans make the trip to Union Park to knock back drinks and point their eyeballs at brand activations, even if they don’t show up early enough to catch local trio Black Duck.
It’s difficult to bemoan the presence of Black Pumas at Pitchfork Fest when the rest of the lineup looks… like a typical Pitchfork lineup. There’s the “probably would have played Ravinia” legacy act (Alanis Morissette), the recently reunited indie bands (Unwound and Les Savy Fav), a couple of hip-hop legends (De La Soul and Grandmaster Flash), someone to dance to (Jamie XX), a critically anointed pop star (Carly Rae Jepsen), and the current indie darlings (Feeble Little Horse and Wednesday). If one psychedelic soul band with a hit single that seems a bit out of place atop the roster is the price to pay for a lineup that otherwise feels aligned to the tastes and proclivities of Pitchfork, it’s as fair a trade as we’re likely to get — especially because nobody is forcing you to stick around and hear Black Pumas’ inevitable cover of “Fast Car.”
If it sounds like I’m defending Pitchfork Fest, it’s because I think it remains an event that’s a net good for its attendees and the city it calls home. It’s still largely run by local musicians, both behind the scenes and behind the bars. Despite its past free yogurt activations and velvet-roped lounges that required a specific Chase credit card for entry, Pitchfork Fest still doesn’t quite have the corporate saturation of larger events (I might be proven wrong, but you probably won’t hear anyone in Union Park say “I’m heading to the Nespresso stage to catch Yaeji!” this summer). And most importantly, it’s a festival where the undercard feels as intentional and calculated as the acts at the top of the roster, whether its a Chicago-based act kicking off the afternoon or a rising artist playing one of their first major festival sets on the Blue Stage.
Based on the way that recent international editions of Pitchfork Music Festival (and the very short-lived winter Pitchfork Fest) have been booked, I’m pretty sure that Condé Nast has a grasp of the flagship event it has inherited. And while booking Black Pumas may signal a shift (seemingly in the name of broader appeal), I don’t think it’s a seismic one — and I doubt that future lineups will stray too far from the fest’s established formula, as long as the event’s Chicago-based production team remains intact. Yes, Pitchfork Fest’s lineup may soon be populated by a few more acts with large TikTok followings or massive Spotify streaming numbers (or the next en vogue popularity metric), but it’s unlikely that they’ll dominate the roster.
I’m more worried about new VIP amenities chipping away at the communal, laid-back feel of the festival, as gated viewing areas leave less room in the park for the other 95% of GA attendees. I’m concerned that Condé might decide that Union Park is no longer worth the hassle, moving the festival to some new outdoor Chicago venue (there aren’t many to choose from) and needlessly complicating the event’s very manageable three-stage layout. I’m also apprehensive of Condé’s commitment to Pitchfork as an editorial entity — in the wake of the recent layoffs, the site currently publishes as little as two album reviews per day (down from about four a day a year ago). Fewer rising artists being covered by the publication’s journalists likely means fewer of those acts appearing on the stages in Union Park, chipping away at the event’s reputation as a place for musical discovery.
I’m not sure if I’ll even be attending Pitchfork Fest this year — my wife and I are expecting a baby in June, so my spare time over the summer will probably be reserved for catching up on sleep instead of standing around in a park listening to music (if I’m lucky, I’ll get to tune in to the livestream). But I hope to someday cart a stroller to Union Park, throw a big pair of noise cancelling headphones on my kid, and gracefully enter my “festival dad” era after 15 years of attending without any offspring in tow. And if, for some reason, Kings of Leon is headlining, I’ll have a good reason to leave early — the kid is gonna have a bedtime, so we’ll be gone long before the opening chords of “Use Somebody” start ringing out.
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