By William Goltz
Celebrating its 4th edition with an expanded lineup featuring 90 artists across 13 local venues, Pitchfork Music Festival’s triumphant return to London firmly cemented its growing reputation as one of the capital’s most exciting musical events. Known for showcasing a diverse array of up-and-coming artists across a heady mix of genres, Pitchfork Fest has come to provide a cool American riposte to a British festival scene that appears increasingly obsessed with legacy acts and online ticketing bullshit. Its flagship ‘Dalston Takeover’ event, involving 25 bands across 6 venues in East London in one night remains one of the best tickets of the year and an obvious recommendation to anyone hoping to discover new music in London. Here is the best of what I saw:
My arriving late to Boston indie-rockers Horse Jumper of Love’s set was undeniably a mistake. Touring Europe on the back of their brooding return to shoegaze ‘Disaster Trick’, their distinctive brand of fuzzy melancholy was perhaps more haunting live than on record. While I could console myself with the knowledge that I had seen them once before, walking into EartH Hall for the final chords of their recent single ‘Snow Angel’ forced me to curse myself and know what I had missed. I can only hope they’ll be back soon.
Making my way upstairs to the auditorium-style EartH Theatre for New York art-pop darlings Chanel Beads’ set was admittedly pretty surreal. Watching the crowd come together in this carefully restored Art Deco movie theatre felt more than a bit like attending an assembly in a fictional high school for teenage Letterboxed contributors. Mercifully, however, the music undeniably lived up to the imperious coolness of its audience. The much-hyped solo project of Minnesota-born songwriter and producer Shane Lavers, Chanel Beads is one of those rare scene bands that actually be described as indescribable. Mixing slap bass, synths and digitised flutes should never sound as good as this. Crowds should not normally sing along to a text-to-speech sample of the phrase ‘police scanner’. Listen to ‘Ef’ right now.
It was kind of a surprise that I ended up front row at the Shacklewell arms for Rocket’s set. As the crowd was repeatedly called to move further towards the stage to make space for new arrivals, it seemed like I was the only one who did not know about them. I certainly do now. Pulling heavily from 90s shoegaze and power-pop with chunky guitars and soaring vocals, they are the kind of band that could be written off as derivative if only their songs were not so compelling. ‘Normal to me’ is a song that feels like it’s existed far far longer than it has. I want to gut an old coming-of-age movie and set it again to Rocket songs.
