The 18 Best Moments From Pitchfork Music Festival 2023

Black Belt Eagle Scout’s Head-Thrashing Poetics

At first, Katherine Paul kept things relatively straightforward for her first ever Pitchfork performance; she sang swirling indie rock songs about grief, marginalization, and queer longing with a knowing gaze and a slight smirk, a couple of blue lights roving in the background. But as the set progressed, the guitars seemed to get wilder and more loud; her black hair completely obscured her face as she started head-banging. It was bracing and cathartic, and in a perfect moment, little raindrops were falling down as she repeated “the land, the water, the sky” from her song “Don’t Give Up,” as if she had willed them. —Cat Zhang

Hang Time With MJ Lenderman

Guys rule, and none more so than MJ Lenderman, who rolled up to his set in sunglasses and a t-shirt with a band of dudes that looked like they just emerged from hanging out in the basement. (One of those dudes: Jeff Tweedy’s drummer son Spencer.) Together they delivered a rollicking, down-home Southern affair, playing tunes from Boat Songs plus Lenderman’s new single “Rudolph.” Hearing his wry stories and those golden, deep fried riffs, I imagined floating down a river on an inner tube, a beer in my hand. But I was grateful to be in the sun, smiling watching a sea of guys in baseball hats bobbing along. —Cat Zhang

Friday, July 21

The Smile’s Big Experiment

The Smile have been on the festival circuit for a while now and they have it down to a science. There’s Jonny Greenwood’s right arm, sawing his guitar with a violin bow, or strumming it with the fury of a locomotive coupling rod. Here’s Thom Yorke looking wizardly with his hair down, capable of commanding a crowd simply by being himself. There’s Tom Skinner behind the kit, precise and consistent even when nearly subsumed by Yorke’s wail, and live saxophonist Robert Stillman, whose exits and entrances are practically invisible. The setlists are consistent too: Even the newest song first popped up last summer. But if the live production is a cleanroom environment, that’s because the real work is intellectual: Check Greenwood’s classical guitar-inspired solo on that newest composition, “Under Our Pillows,” or the proggy rendition of Yorke’s solo single “Being Pulled Apart By Horses” that closed the night. Good experiments are replicable. —Anna Gaca