Lost in the Undercard
Two wildly different Chicago music festival lineups get picked apart, a recent concert is recounted, and a bunch of interesting links are shared.
Welcome back to Attenuator, where another salvo of words awaits. If you’re a new subscriber, thanks so much for joining the fray. And if you’re someone who found this newsletter in your inbox, I appreciate you not hitting the tiny “unsubscribe” button and returning for round two. Now, on with the show!
A Tale of Two Lineups
I can’t remember the last time that the lineups for two of Chicago’s biggest music festivals were revealed on consecutive days, but that’s exactly what happened earlier this week. On Monday, Pitchfork Music Festival unveiled its roster of acts for its return to Union Park (July 21-23), and on Tuesday, Lollapalooza followed suit, sharing the sprawling list of acts that will perform across four days in Grant Park this summer (August 3-6).
I’m not planning on attending either festival this year, but I spent the better part of a decade waiting for press releases to show up in my inbox, writing preview coverage, and walking from stage to stage at both of these events — by this point, I’m predisposed to be interested in them. When each fest’s respective lineup dropped, I dutifully poured over every single band name (I’ll admit that I needed my glasses to read the tiny font on the Lolla poster).
On the surface, there’s nothing particularly revelatory about the assemblages of artists that will perform in Union Park and Grant Park this summer. Pitchfork still showcases the mainstream independent (and formerly independent) artists that the publication frequently covers, with some rising rock, hip-hop, and electronic acts thrown into the mix. Lollapalooza continues to solidify its status as a pop music showcase with a massive undercard that often seems to put more stock in an artist’s booking agency connections and Spotify play counts than their actual notoriety.
After spending some time staring at these cascading lists of musicians, I came away with a few observations:
Lolla acknowledges pop music’s global scope. A growing portion of the most interesting contemporary pop music isn’t being made by musicians in the US or the UK — it’s coming from artists that hail from places like South Korea, Spain, Nigeria, and Columbia. Lolla’s organizers began to grasp this when they booked reggaeton superstar J Balvin as a headlining act in 2019, but it’s even more evident in this year’s crop of headliners, which features Colombian singer Karol G and South Korean boy band Tomorrow X Together. It’s a shame that this trend doesn’t extend to the undercard, with the exception of a handful of acts like Nigerian Afrobeats artist Rema and newly-formed K-pop group NewJeans. Considering that Lolla hosts satellite festivals in five international cities, you’d think that some of the regional talent being booked at those events might make their way to Chicago. Perhaps expensive artist visas (which may only get more expensive) are to blame?
Pitchfork finally catches its shooting star. I have to imagine that Radiohead has always been a dream booking for a festival named after a publication that crowned Kid A as the best record of the 2000s and anointed OK Computer as the third-best album of the 1990s. A relatively limited touring schedule and a level of popularity that necessitated arena-sized venues likely made Radiohead unattainable to Pitchfork’s bookers (why play to 20,000 in Union Park, when you could play to 50,000 or more at Lollapalooza, as Radiohead did in 2008 and 2016). That makes the booking of The Smile (the latest project from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood) a fitting victory for a festival where the average attendee seems more likely to be aware of Radiohead side projects. Leor Galil said it best in a recent Chicago Reader newsletter, noting that a relatively new act like The Smile “might’ve gotten mid-tier treatment at Lolla,” but at Pitchfork they’ll command a headlining slot in front of “a crowd that’s long treated Radiohead as a lodestar.”
Lolla remains the Cheesecake Factory of major music fests. Just like the menu at the aforementioned chain restaurant, Lollapalooza’s lineup can be described as vast, overwhelming, and probably filled with a few duds. Even before the festival expanded to four days in 2016, Lolla’s bookers had a habit of filling out the early hours of each day with a haphazard assortment of rising acts. The Cheesecake Factory’s founder once admitted to “adding any food items that happened to be trending at the time,” and Lolla has a similar tendency of chasing of-the-moment trends in its undercard booking — especially if the artists that happen to be making said trendy (and probably algorithmically-friendly) music are signed to a major label. Often that means someone like 19-year-old singer-songwriter Isabel LaRosa (the artist behind recent viral TikTok hit “I'm Yours”) ending up on a stage in Grant Park. Sometimes it’s an artist like public defender-turned-soul singer-songwriter Danielle Ponder (who toured with Marcus Mumford last fall) showing up in the undercard. And then there’s the totally inexplicable additions, like merch-peddling DJ crew Emo Nite, who will almost certainly cue up a My Chemical Romance track on one of Lolla’s stages this summer. For better or worse, it’s all on the menu and even if you’re disappointed with your entrée(s), you can always look forward to dessert (Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, The 1975, et al.).
Pitchfork is missing a legacy act. The tradition of a legacy act headlining an evening in Union Park arguably dates back to the first Pitchfork-branded edition of the fest in 2006, when Brazilian rockers Os Mutantes topped the bill. But the booking custom seemed to take root in 2017, when hip-hop icons A Tribe Called Quest closed out Saturday night. Since then, Pitchfork has seen nights headlined by artists like Ms. Lauryn Hill, The Isley Brothers, Erykah Badu, and The Roots. This year, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are probably the oldest musicians headlining a stage, but the fact that they’re playing as part of a relatively new project (The Smile) rather than their long-running band (Radiohead) makes it hard to label them a legacy act. I imagine that there’s a dwindling number of late-career musicians that resonate with Pitchfork’s audience on tour (and those that are probably get more competitive offers from the nearby Ravinia Music Festival), but I hope the fest’s tradition of booking artists that are representative of music’s past is one that ultimately continues.
Both fests are light on locals. There was a time when Chicago-based bands had a slightly larger presence amid the lineups of Pitchfork and Lolla. This year, I counted four (out of 42) Chicago-based acts on the Pitchfork roster, including dance music producer Ariel Zetina, post-punk outfit Deeper, multi-instrumentalist Sen Morimoto, and disco-tinged hip-hop artist Ric Wilson. Local acts are spread far more thinly across the Lollapalooza lineup, where I only spotted four Chicago artists (Louis the Child, Sincere Engineer, Kidd Kenn, and Dehd) among a list of more than 160 musicians. I recognize that festival contracts often come with radius clauses and other restrictions that make it difficult for acts to book additional summertime gigs in the city. But it’s strange that Chicago’s vibrant music scene isn’t more well-represented at events that leverage the city’s reputation as an amazing place to see live music.
Recap: Jeff Parker & Joshua Abrams at The Hideout, March 18, 2023
Jeff Parker and Joshua Abrams play in two of my favorite live bands (Tortoise and Natural Information Society, respectively), so I jumped at the chance to see them performing as a duo during this year’s edition of Chicago Psych Fest. It was my first time back at the Hideout since it temporarily closed last October in the wake of accusations leveled against the venue’s management by former program director Mykelle Deville. The Hideout reopened in January with a new employee leadership structure and hiring process in place. As far as I can tell, everything else that makes the space a great place to see an intimate show remains intact.
As veterans of Chicago’s fertile jazz and improvised music scenes, Parker and Abrams have performed together frequently throughout the years, at one point playing in a trio that featured Tortoise’s John Herndon on drums (I recall seeing them play at the now-defunct Rodan in Wicker Park). The pair’s history of collaboration was evident as Parker and Abrams sat down and eased into their set at the Hideout, giving each other knowing glances that conveyed a decades-long friendship.
Much like he often does at the head of Natural Information Society, Abrams spent much of the evening harnessed the rhythmic qualities of a repeating riff, first on a bass, then on guimbri (a Moroccan instrument that’s best described as a bass lute). Alternating between staccato guitar embellishments and droning loops, Parker interacted with and reacted to Abrams’ cadence in mesmerizing ways, twisting notes between the steady pulse of bass and guimbri strings. Like any great improvised performance, most of the set felt as if Parker and Abrams were picking up a conversation (via instruments) where they’d left off — and I felt lucky to be able to eavesdrop.
To the best of my knowledge, Parker and Abrams haven’t recorded as a duo, but this Abrams Quartet album (which features Parker on guitar) is a great way to hear their musical chemistry in action.
A Fist Full of Links
For No Bells, writer Zazie Bae penned a tribute to the late rapper Terr9r, whose catalog of music has been partially erased due to a lapse in the payment of a SoundCloud subscription. It’s a sad look at the increasingly commodified nature of the services that so many artists use to share their music. And it really puts the ongoing Datpiff server outages into perspective.
Over on Polygon, Cory Stillman explained why patently absurd but entirely earnest films like Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick are more indicative of the future of cinema than painfully self-aware superhero movies. Bet you didn’t see that coming!
It was fun to see a lot of familiar places and names mentioned in the New York Times while reading J. Kenji López-Alt’s Chicago tavern-style pizza investigation. Beware: A mere glimpse at a photo of a Vito & Nick’s pie topped with giardiniera may cause you to salivate.
Chicago drag performer Jojo Baby passed away last week, making this recent profile that journalist Aaron Gettinger wrote for WBEZ all the more poignant. I haven’t been to a Queen party at Smartbar in years, but I have fond memories of Jojo’s extravagant costumes from the period of my life when I could stay out until the wee hours of the morning on a Sunday night.
For Rolling Stone, labor journalist Kim Kelly broke the news that the employees of popular music streaming and distribution platform Bandcamp are forming a union. As an avid user of Bandcamp, I’m hoping for a speedy recognition of the union by the company’s video game-developing owners.
You’ve reached the end of the second (very Chicago-centric) edition of Attenuator. Don’t worry — that’s the last 1000-word treatise about music festivals I’ll be writing this year. Thanks for sticking it out. Feel free to pass this newsletter on to someone else who might enjoy reading it by hitting that button. See you next Thursday!