Pitchfork is coming to town, and I feel like the only boy I know who's still excited. I know I'm not alone, considering Saturday is sold out. And even the detractors are still somewhat enthused. It is Pitchfork, and the festival has established a firm reputation as a good time to be had by all (unless, you're the
GZA last year).
I have a couple friends who always used to be two steps ahead of me in their record collection (playlists, sure) who seem to be lost recently. And I suppose I can't blame them. This year's lineup features so many names that would have been totally unrecognizable this time last year. Which I consider to be a good thing, a very good sign for the state of independent music. And dare i say it, an identifiable 'movement'? I suppose not.
It is safe to say that noise is back firmly into the musical lexicon. And noise as in noise music per se, but the shoegaze noise, the band that is loud and not incredibly tight and or well produced noise. Which is refreshing to hear after years of taught, angular music, dance music, free/freak/neo folk, and indie stardom. Artists like No Age, Deerhunter, Panda Bear, Animal Collective, and HEALTH have a very similar aesthetic although working with different ideas towards different goals.
My friend Andrew said that African is the new angular. And as far as Vampire Weekend goes, I guess they stand outside of the noisy trend. And whatever about hype and fame, they deserve the attention they get, even if they will be forgotten in the near future.
Either way, I feel like music has become a little rougher around the edges, and thanks for that.
And Mahjongg, thank god a Chicago band is on the bill. Pitchfork can sometimes be a mixture of pride and embarrassment for someone living in Chicago. Pride in being the host, pride in being a major hub for independent music, pride in our venues and labels and history. But, then a sense that there's something missing from the fest, Chicago bands.
There are definitely some incredible bands from the area that exist today, and a long artists from the cities history. But looking at places like Montreal, New York, Portland, Atlanta, L.A., Baltimore, it's hard to hold up the Chicago scene against them. I welcome angry responses from people defending our scene of non-scene, but I know I'm not alone in this.
One of the problems seems to be a very fractured music community. There's a big jazz/experimental scene, a noise scene, drone scene, psychedelic revival scene, punk revival scene, the never dying power-pop band thing, a growing number of excellent hip-hop acts, the also never dying folk/roots scene. And, what am I bitching about right? The problem isn't a lack of talent or opportunity. The problem is (and maybe this is only a problem, in theory, in my brain, for whatever selfish reasons) that they don't seem to be communicating with each other. At all. Even counting the alliances and shared friends between these groups, I don't see them informing each other. And that's the hope of a musical scene, or discernible movement. It's not that everyone is on the same page, or doing the same thing, or going to the same shows. It's the hope that by proximity, these disparate elements could inform each other.
Proximity magazine is a new arts glossy for the Chicago area that seems to recognize this hope. And reading through it, I could see an attempt to bring together the visual arts community in Chicago for the same reasons I want a more interactive musical community. The potential is there.
I'm falling into the second city mindset, I know it.
So, in light of that, here's to Mahjongg, and the hope that they make us all proud. There certainly a band to be proud about. A band that combines some of the best aspects of Chicago music, pretty effortlessly, while remaining entirely singular. And they're (psychogeographically, if not actually geographically) southsiders, which makes me proud.
Here's to good music, here's to Chicago, here's to summer.
Posts
