The cliché that Paris is a village never feels as true as it does when Pitchfork Festival rolls around once a year. This year’s festival felt a bit different, more compact, more focused, more intimate. From spiritual jazz to ’80s synth pop, from garage house to sky-scraping indie rock, here are this year’s highlights.
MICHELLE, Café de la Danse, Monday, November 14
On day one of the festival, MICHELLE leapt onto the stage of Café de la Danse with such theater-kid zeal I worried they might break through the platform. With their black-and-white color palette and outrageous Spice Girls-style choreography, the American sextet greased up the shiny surfaces of Y2k pop with ’90s-girl-band cool, their piercing staccato screams echoing throughout jams like“MESS U MADE.” “SUNRISE” and “POSE” elicited the strongest crowd reaction, but their in-between song banter was the most charming.
Black Country, New Road, Gaité Lyrique, Monday, November 14
There was a sense of nervous expectation as Black Country, New Road took the stage. Most in the crowd would not have seen them since the departure of lead singer Isaac Wood. But once they launched into the opening notes of “Up,” with its rousing chant of “Look at what we did together/BCNR, friends forever,” there was a palpable sense of relief. Touring the new album Ants from Up There, the show affirmed the band could forge ahead with their cinematic, sweeping indie rock even without Wood.
On “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade,” Lewis Evans effortlessly swapped between the flute, saxophone and vocals, occasioning guttural screams from the crowd. The lights were turned on between each song, seemingly so the band could gauge the reaction of the audience. We all stood, obediently still, in awe.
Nation of Language, Gaité Lyrique, Tuesday, November 15
Staying true to their scrappy synth-pop charm, Nation of Language ran through tracks from their two albums Introduction, Presence and A Way Forward, with cutthroat chemistry. Ian Devaney’s Morrissey-esque voice and body-warping movements held our gaze even against a bare-bones stage, as simple and direct as a boombox held aloft in the night sky.
Porridge Radio, Gaité Lyrique, Tuesday, November 15
Following the shiny performance of Nation of Language, Porridge Radio brought us all back down, down, down. Lead singer Dana Margolin’s confrontational intensity moved the crowd to emotional extremes in a set that nestled Wolf Parade’s “You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son” comfortably in between highlights like “7 Seconds” and “Birthday Party.” Their post-punk exerted an almost supernatural emotional pull; the repetitive riff to “Birthday Party” brought me to tears for reasons I can’t readily explain.
Yunè Pinku, Le Pop Up du Label, Saturday, November 19
The entrance to Le Pop Up is right next to the stage, meaning that upon arriving at the concert you’re thrown deep into the audience. This counterintuitive setup allowed for an up-close-and-personal view of the 19-year-old Londoner Yunè Pinku, whose detached and mesmerizing garage-pop seemed to radiate directly from the undulating crowd. On highlights like “Jaws” and “Fai Fighter,” Pinku’s work defied categorization: this was music for raving and misbehaving, chilling or sleeping, alive to the knotty complexities of adolescence and the liminality of emotion.
Arooj Aftab, Eglise Sainte Eustache, Monday, November 21
The church bells of the Eglise Saint Eustache chimed as Arooj Aftab and her band took to the nave to perform the last show of Pitchfork 2022—a chillingly atmospheric opening in an incomparable venue. Aftab has impeccable comic timing; after lulling the congregation into silence with her meditative vocals, she addressed the photographers who were silently carrying out their duties on the front row: “If you want to take a flattering photo of me, please don’t do it from that angle.” The show carried on in a similar vein, the hauntingly melodic recital interspersed with light relief, making jovial swipes at the stoic French audience and warning us that after another glass of wine the music might totally change. Her performance of “Mohabbat” right at the end of the service drew everyone forward, huddled together to savor the intimacy amongst the candlelit pews.
