From Pitchfork Music Festival 2018: Sunday Sound Bites

Before we tuck into the heartier sound bites, here’s a quick amuse-bouche from Kweku Collins, a young Evanston-based rapper who performed Sunday afternoon. Between songs, he reflected on trying to push to the front during Tame Impala’s Friday performance, calling on fellow male festival-goers to be mindful of their space when wading through crowds: “To all the men in the audience: Your presence is not a burden until you make yourself a burden.” Isn’t that nice? Anyway, onto the article.

Nnamdi Ogbonnaya

Everyone onstage for rapper Nnamdi Ogbonnaya’s kickoff set repped their own personal rainbow. Ogbonnaya himself wore a tank top, capri sweats, and sneakers all printed with their own mismatching rainbow art. As is true for most musicians, Ogbonnaya and his band’s choice of clothes resembled their style of music: violent clashes whose beauty and truth lie in their chaos. Ogbonnaya matched dirty, scratchy punk guitars with sweet vocal harmonies. His varied singing style perhaps best represents his impressive range. He’ll switch from rapping clever, rapid-fire plays on words in “hOp Off” to repeatedly howling simple lines, like, “I just wanna, wanna be loved” in “Me 4 Me.”

Ogbonnaya’s music so accurately captures all of the disparate parts of being a young person: Sometimes you’re a cryptic intellectual, but other times you cry for your mommy. While Ogbonnaya explores all the angst of being young, he spends the same amount of time on sincere joy—he’s having fun even when he’s pissed. He jolts his body into goofy dance moves. He slams you with electric, googly-eyed stares. He squeals into the mic, because, why not? Ogbonnaya’s 30-minute set felt like five (time flies when you’re having fun), and the audience, so charged with the rapper’s explosive energy, not ready for it to be over, begged for an encore.

(Sandy) Alex G

Disclaimer: Are you familiar with Shakespeare’s 130th sonnet? Keep it in mind before you get all hot and bothered.

Rumor has it that indie rocker Alex Giannascoli will be featured on the next season of “Queer Eye.” He’s trading in his wrinkled blue Oxford shirt for something patterned and French tuck-able. He’s throwing away—no, burning—his black leather New Balance sneakers. He’s found a pair of jeans that doesn’t sag in the ass. Giannascoli should not be a good performer—for reasons other than his disheveled appearance. For example, his face often gets stuck in a semi-permanent grimace, causing him to sing everything through gritted teeth. Is he in constant pain? Probably. Most of his songs sound like the musical manifestation of crying in slow motion. While he plays, he rocks back and forth in a seizure-like way, unless he’s “dancing” (in which case, he’s full-on convulsing) during rowdier numbers like the scream-filled “Brick.” And while most artists spend their sets demanding their audiences to “make some noise,” Giannascoli will screech, “SHUT UP!” if there’s too much yelling for his taste.

Despite all this—or maybe because of it, since the tortured boy aesthetic will always be in—Giannascoli’s live shows inspire wild adoration, and his Sunday Pitchfork set was no exception. There’s realness in Giannascoli’s roughness, and his music is soft enough to keep you singing along. It’s refreshing to see musicians onstage with only the music in mind—completely disregarding the cheese of rockstardom, except to mock it. (Exhibit A: The band members walking onstage while blasting the Rascal Flatts version of “Life is a Highway,” made famous by the Pixar movie Cars.) Plus, they even brought out Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast to sing the lullaby-esque “Brite Boy” with Giannascoli. What more could an audience possibly ask for?

Irreversible Entanglements

Most Pitchfork attendees go to the festival in search of indie rock, rap, and artists who mix the two (Noname, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, Kweku Collins covering “Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs in order to lure more hipsters to his set, etc.). Free jazz is a less popular genre among loyal Urban Outfitters customers—and, to be honest, I personally had no intention of seeing Irreversible Entanglements. (Guilty as charged—where else would I have gotten these cat-eye sunglasses?)

So, naturally, it’s surprising that the energy emanating from the Red Stage on Sunday afternoon drew troves of crowd members to see Irreversible Entanglements. Booming drums, thundering bass, and lightning flashes from the trumpet and saxophone created an infinite loop of momentum that effortlessly evolved and devolved as the set barreled on. Frontwoman and poet Camae Ayewa (also known as Moor Mother) let her body convulse with the music before she began to improvise poetry, standing still and staring with fierce intensity at one side of the stage. With lines like, “She was five and knew how to play dead on the floor of the church / At what age do we teach our daughters that monsters are real?,”  it was exhilarating to watch Ayewa reach into horrifying realities of racism and string together such rattling poetry. It would’ve been impossible for any member of Irreversible Entanglements to simply go through the motions—they needed to be severely in sync with themselves and one another in order to maintain their 50 minute-long improvisation, during which they harnessed the power of pushing their instruments, voices, and poetry to their limits.

Noname

Some musicians are admired (the crowd goes “Wow,”) while others are adored (the crowd goes “Aww”). Chicago-based rapper Noname, with her permanently lit up doe-eyes, her full giggles, and her boundless charm, is really, really adorable. Her music offers gorgeously earnest meditations on being a perfectly imperfect teenager, effortlessly rolling off her tongue like she’s whispering to you as you doze off in the same bed, getting lulled to sleep by deep conversations between best friends.

Unfortunately, Noname’s style translates a bit weirdly to live performances—it’s almost as if she (and her music) are too passive for the festival stage. It wasn’t her primary concern to give the audience an amazing show—when she stopped in the middle of one of her songs, she apologized, saying, “I smoked before this and forgot the lyrics,” with a little laugh. But Noname is lovable because she’s so real and she doesn’t make a huge deal out of her relative fame—the crowd was hyped nonetheless.

]But they were so hyped that they often drowned out her mellow energy, the same way the punchy bass and drums made her unassuming rapping style sound a lot like mumbling. Not too long into the set, Noname asked her bandmates how much time was left. She seemed disappointed when they told her there were “20 whole minutes,” so she played one song and left the stage with at least 10 minutes to spare, causing fans to groan. An audience member, though disappointed, sympathized with the young rapper: “Let her live,” she said.

—Staff writer Danielle Eisenman can be reached at danielle.eisenman@thecrimson.com.