For its 7th edition, the Pitchfork Music Festival, Parisian edition, has once again created the indie musical event of the fall. Beginning careers as well as old troublemakers in styles that want to be "So 2017" have attracted a fairly composite crowd. Focus on 4 of the groups of this 2nd day.
After Sex cigarettes: over low heat
It is a still sparse Grande Halle that welcomes the second group of the 2nd day. As a result, the small mass of fans gathers, huddled against the stage, giving the impression that the band is playing in a small room. The sound system in any case adapts well to the atmosphere that characterizes the American group: in all privacy. Ballads that some find difficult to distinguish. But that others will welcome with open arms, arms that ask to widen further if they also want to embrace the eventual companion who ends up being packed. "K", "Apocalypse" : the songs, of a romanticism over low heat, that Greg Gonzalez and his colleagues have been playing for 10 years on YouTube, give each time a blissful and cajoling pleasure. The performance of Cigarettes After Sex was as sober as the elevation that the songs provide was strong. The barely mobile musicians, without sudden gestures, had a tenderness and delicacy that will melt here more than one and calm the ardor of more than one madman of the drag. The songs do not chant or whistle: they unfold, from note to measure, and suggest a total abandonment to voluptuousness. You wouldn't have a flame to declare?
The rising Canadian rapper: Tommy Genesis
Pitchfork wanted to highlight some talented young artists who are just emerging, including Tommy Genesis, a young rapper from Vancouver who signed with the well-known hip-hop label Awful Records, a guarantee of very high quality. It is a small crowd of connoisseurs and intrigued people who welcome the rapper who directly lays the foundations by jumping into the pit for her first titles. Proximity and big beat, Tommy Genesis does not skimp on eye-contact with his audience to put his lyrics and even if we do not know, we ask for more. The style is old-school, the lyrics dark, the look is worked, no vocoder or frills, Tommy Genesis represents a new part of Canadian rap with androgynous codes with success. We feel the sincerity of her first big scenes but also that of her voice when she addresses the audience, a shy and disconcerting naivety versus the life impulse of her interpretations when she sings. She yells "TOMMY" at the wolf, and we want to scream with her.
Andy Shauf to warm our hearts
What could be better than the young and sweet folk Andy Shauf between two beers to continue smoothly an early evening that started very well? The folk has traveled all over Europe and the United States this year and does not intend to stop there, especially with a stop at the Pitchfork Festival. Accompanied by his musicians including two clarinetists, Andy Shauf composes in front of a tender audience folk and melancholic melodies that aim to make us capsize. The lyrics are worked, refined, and we can recognize the well-known titles The magician or Quite like you from the album The Party released in 2016. Andy Shauf is an artisan jeweler of indie pop, and he handles words with delicacy and precision. We can blame the accuracy of the sound system of the small stage that did not give all the merit of Andy Shauf's compositions that night.
Polo & Pan: more spicy
Change of atmosphere at the very end of the evening, just before Jungle: Polo & Pan, DJ & DJ who often mix with each other in the small posh club of the Baron in the 8th (of Paris, Editor's note). We stop falling into the easy judgment pouring into the primary anti-Parisianism that this brief beginning of overview can possibly arouse and we dwell on the music alone. Enhancing, a little soothing, club and exotic, with an imagery that claims no more than to make you smile and dance. The France has as much fun as she can, and she can do that sometimes.Their latest album " Caravelle" contains very dancefloor bravouures, with the South Americans Mexicali (from El Paso surf music bottled to BPM) or Zoom Zoom (a warm inspiration from Brazil this time). In addition authors of some sung pieces, Polo & Pan will be joined on stage by their 2 faithful singers, Marguerite Bartherotte and Victoria Lafaurie. The fury is a little at the rendezvous, at the beginning of the set, when these 2 ladies dressed in kimono tumble in front of sets made of characters of medieval fables drawn in pencil, with a tendency Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland. With a choré that there again has no pretension other than to make smile. Then follow technoid moments / French Touch that will make the spectators jump at the same time as they are tanned by our 2 DJs, improvising themselves as hosts of evenings a little beautiful, we are again blissful in front of these 2 dungeons that invite to a carefree, an almost naive indolence. Live as at the Baron, Polo & Pan flies away all your worries.
A tropical end to the evening with Jungle
After the frenzied set of the two French Polo & Pan, the jubilant crowd heads to the other side of the great hall to listen to the young but no less mythical Jungle who had the honor of closing the penultimate evening of the festival. They light up the big stage with incredible presence and make the whole Friday Pitchfork dance. The band performs its greatest titles Julia or Time but alsounreleased tracks of the next album that arrives, the rhythms then tend towards something more electronic while keeping this disco-funk paw that makes you tap your foot and nod your head big smile. Jungle succeeded in closing this second night of Pitchfork with a crowd of applause. It's a very nice surprise and we go home totally gaga of this second night.
Text: Piotr Grudzinski and Hélène Chu
Photo gallery: Piotr Grudzinski
