Photography by Marina Malin. Written by Issa Nasatir & Marina Malin.



Believe it or not SOCC DID go to Pitchfork Music Festival Chicago 2024. Unfortunately, due to life and procrastination, we were dragged away from completing this article until now. We publish this after the recent news of the cancellation of Pitchfork Music Festival Chicago 2025. This news follows many other momentous changes to the publication and adds to the snowball that has begun to reveal itself as Pitchfork’s looming downfall. So, From the minimalism of ML Buch, the all-consuming soundscape of 100 gecs, to the revival of Riot grrrl’s Bratmobile, here are SoCC’s favorite acts from this year’s festival we enjoyed a long, long time ago.




ML Buch
Donning black, sequin skeleton pants and a matching sequinned jacket, Danish artist ML Buch provided us the backbone to our day.
Buch performed the minimalist psych-rock she’s whittled her sound down to since her debut EP Fleshy in 2017. She has gradually worked her sound to the bone, anatomically dissecting it until more feeling than noise hangs around her during her sets. In the Chicago heat, the stage was largely abandoned, with Buch surrounded by a cluttered collection of drums and synths at the front of the stage and fellow Danish artist Molina who played drums and synth alongside her. Their synchronicity was fun to watch, playing off of each other like the left and right hands of a pianist on tracks like “Pan over the hill” and the instrumental track “O.”
Buch wandered her way through selections from last year’s acclaimed album Suntub and hits from 2020’s Skinned with time and care. In songs like “Fleshless Hand” and “I’m A Girl You Can Hold IRL,” Buch drawled over lonely synths and guitar, lamenting failed hugs and temporary bodies. It often feels like there’s something missing from Buch’s productions, but in a way that fits into the isolating tone of her vocals and lyrics. She makes you focus on the outlines of the negative space she leaves shimmering in the air.
In the frequent space in and between songs, the silence was deafening, so deafening at times that Rosali’s raging set from across the park occasionally visibly interrupted Buch’s focus. But no one in front of her moved or made a sound afraid to intrude on the sacrality of the magic happening in front of us. Things melted away from our periphery, transporting us to a world of our own as we watched her perform from hers.




billy woods and Kenny Segal (sketch 185)
Maryland artists billy woods and Kenny Segal turned the mood on its head, filling the air with decadent nihilism. woods channeled the heat baking the backs of our necks, thundering with a commanding intensity magnified by Segal’s booming 808s. He hammered lines into our heads with an urgency, snaking his way between poetry and prose, meticulously planting rhymes in folds of rambling sentences.
In woods and Segal’s 2023 LP Maps, woods navigates his way through life in a postmodern world urged along by Segal’s haunting instrumental landscapes. Blending looming late-stage capitalism lamentations with intimate slices of life (“Blue Smoke” contains a step-by-step recipe for a delicious-sounding pork belly dish), woods lyrically explores what we must protect and protect ourselves from. Live, woods amplified the imperativeness of his verses, commanding his audience as a prophet might hypnotize his followers. The crowd swayed transfixed to the boom-bap of tracks like “Checkpoints” and “Year Zero,” the latter containing lines like “I quit looking for solutions/Bought a pistol and learned how to use it” and “My taxes pay police brutality settlements.”
woods made the show as little about himself as possible, dishing out love to each collaborator on the tracks he performed, giving Segal a spot to showcase an unreleased instrumental, and gave skech185, a Chicago artist on his Backwoodz Studioz label, a moment to showcase his gritty raps while woods stood filming in the background like a proud dad.
Among his fans, billy woods is known for hiding his face during all media coverage and many performances, yet the fact he obscures his face is obscured in itself. woods found the perfect pocket between being seen as pretentious for hiding his face and letting his lack of image become his image, allowing his music to speak for itself. Sure, the thought of seeing past the pixels I’d seen online crossed my mind, but that thought evaporated when he walked on stage. I forgot all about it and quickly snatched his sermon out of the air before it flew over my head.




Yaeji
With just an office chair, two dancers, and a mic, Yaeji used the stage to study her past selves through her new semi-stardom. She began with the warm, sunrise-inducing flute and synthesized harmonies of “Submerge FM” from 2023’s groundbreaking With A Hammer. Yaeji slowly raised her arms as if conjuring hope out of midair, attempting to combat the overpowering doomsday message that the song confronts. While most known for her club banger “Raingurl” and a cover of Drake’s “Passionfruit,” her later work has begun to grapple with her identity as a Korean-American girl who spent her childhood bouncing between countries and cultures through a new electro-pop sound. While her Korean-English hybrid lyrics have always been a part of her music, on 2023’s With A Hammer, songs like “Done (Let’s Get It)” and “Yellow” embrace her identity head-on. Between songs, she emotionally reflected on her journey between her first Pitchfork Festival in 2021 and this year’s festival as she came full circle. On her latest single “booboo,” a return to her club bangers, she admits that she wasn’t ready for the popularity that came with “raingurl.” She’s not who she was when she made that music, and booboo is a direct reference to that:
“You know the one time I wrote a banger that goes like (rain gurl sample)
You know that I wasn’t really ready at the time
You know how the growing pains just don’t stop”
Yaeji would break down into tears of gratitude, then just as quickly transform into powerful energy and confidence, dancing with the freedom of someone who has finally grown into herself.




100 gecs
I’d seen 100 gecs once before in Denver last year. I went in not quite a fan and frankly unable to handle the energy they brought to their music. Laura Les and Dylan Brady’s music sounds like growing up online, meshing together anything they found funny when they were 9 and anything they find funny now into a giant brightly colored gooey mess that’s both nostalgic and from 100 years in the future. Yet when seeing them live, it’s hard not to catch on to the euphoria coming in waves off of the crowd and I was hooked from then on.
Anyone can be found at a 100 gecs concert. You might find yourself wading through the stench and sweat and suddenly end up with a 14-year-old in a frog onesie screaming every lyric to “Frog on the Floor” on your right and an unkempt middle-aged man watching in total silence on your left. While Pitchfork didn’t necessarily attract much of their fanbase, 100 Gecs still produced one of the biggest crowds of the festival.
The show was as much a stand-up comedy special as it was a concert. Between songs, Laura Les, barefoot, tiptoed around words, trying to eventually reach a pun that would lead to the title of the next song they’d perform. Behind this, Dylan Brady, the other half of the duo, improvised on a drum machine using sounds like what you might find on Garageband.
The duo worked their charismatic awkward magic, uniting the masses over glitchy, auto-tuned pop tracks like “stupid horse” and “757” with elements of ska, screamo, and really anything else you could name– a sound that helped crown them as the pioneers of hyperpop. I left simultaneously refreshed and exhausted feeling 10 years younger, hoping that “mememe” is to some 10-year-old what “The Hampster Dance Song” was to me.
100 Gecs reminds us that severing ourselves from our childhoods isn’t as cool as it seems. You can act nostalgic and cry about times past, or you can go to a 100 gecs concert and lose it to “Doritos and Fritos.” The choice is yours.



Water From Your Eyes
Brooklyn duo Rachel Brown (they/them) and Nate Amos (he/him) are accompanied by another guitarist and drummer for their Saturday (double check) set, fully succumbing to the Bushwick trash look with their camo cargo pants, oversized bottoms that are too long to be shorts and too short to be pants, and DIY muscle tee that flaunts patchwork tattoo sleeves. The set’s instrumentals reject all conventional song structures, with impulsive sound scapes and tumultuous rifts, taking everlasting detours that make satisfaction hard to grasp. The band’s creativity lies in their exploration of the illusive and somewhat meaningless. I was shocked in “Barley” when Brown was quite literally counting to four juxtaposed against city mayhem and sirens. Their absurdist lyrics are nonsensical and the instrumentals only advance this sound: “One, two, three, four, I count mountains, one, two, three, counter, you’re a cool thing, count mountains.”
I have always admired Water From Your Eyes’ unorthodox approach to their craft, they are a deeply creative duo, integrating a strange sense of play. However, there is a certain elusiveness to them that puts up a front from their fanbase deeply understanding or connecting to them; they don’t want to be figured out. This element of mystery can be interpreted through their abstract sound and sarcastic monotone vocals. Which unfortunately, do not pair well with Brown’s seemingly bored disposition that completely spoiled their set. Granted, Brown was present with an asthmatic disease, however it was hard to exercise sympathy for the artist’s utter lack of appreciation care for their performance. Whether it was due to the sickness or unenthused nature of their music, the indifference Brown presented made me uninterested and slightly bothered by their attitude. Why should I give my time, attention, and support to someone who fails to articulate genuine or full sentences to the crowd in between tracks? Or someone who insincerely speaks about Palestine in the most foolish and ignorant tone: “you knowwwww there’s something like really uncool happening right now… there’s a lotta people being killed like around the world.” As an excited fan of their music, I felt mocked by Brown’s dopey attitude.




Sweeping Promises
In stark contrast to Water From Your Eyes, Sweeping Promises perform humbly. Their perfected hazy sound is met with gratitude and sincerity. Lira Mondal fan girls over Bratmobile, Unwound, and is the first –ever in my press experience– to verbally express appreciation for press writers and photographers, claiming them to be the backbone of music. Mondal and her counterpart, Caufield Schnug don’t take their audience or time for granted. The hunger of Schnug is palpable from the awkward ways he jousts around his guitar and the emotive wailing vision of Mondal’s screams during their iconic “Hunger For A Way Out.” It would be easy to overlook Schnug’s sound by his unconventional bodily awareness and quirky look, and Mondal’s business casual style, but their talent and emotive expressions captivate the audience. Between sincere conversations with the crowd and a heartfelt dedication to Palestine during “Cross Me Out,” Sweeping Promises is as unpretentious as Punk gets, and I will argue that this level of authenticity is Punk in its truest form: it’s refreshing in the backdrop of indieheads. Despite being newer to the scene, Sweeping Promises sets a good example for artistry as a craft and persona.

Hotline TNT
Hotline TNT is a band that is always around. Physically and sonically they somehow fill the niches of obscure DIY while simultaneously scratching the itch of highly meticulous music critics. I’ve seen them perform twice before which may not be a lot, but enough that I felt the urge to say hey to them when I found them hanging out on the green. Their humanness feels so close and humble, yet their talent is extraterrestrial. Barely able to grab on to the lyrics, their instrumentals speak for themselves, replacing the focus of vocals. Their sets are absolutely drenched in noise; it’s hard to make sense of it. Sense or not, Hotline TNT’s abstractness provokes a feeling that makes their sets so addictive. Mostly due to the ambiguity of nocturnal haze, guitarist Lucky definitely takes part in painting this atmosphere. His guitar takes possession over him, as his body falls to the melody and his expressions are almost provocative. As an audience member, I feel like I am imposing on some sort of intensely intimate dance or sucking of souls, as if the snarring and static of his instrument is the blood pumping through Lucky’s body. After sly whispers between him and Will, Lucky makes a sudden collapse to his feet, inviting us into some sonic foreplay.


feeble little horse
feeble little horse was my most anticipated performance of the entire lineup. The band cancelled their 2024 tour due to mental health reasons, making this performance feel all the more special: like a shooting star I just barely caught by being in the right place at the right time. In my head, they might as well be the headliners. Visibly uncomfortable, feeble little horse entered the stage quietly and immediately got to work –that is right after lead vocalist Lydia Slocum placed her idiosyncratic doll by her microphone stand, seemingly for good luck. From “Freak,” “Chores,” “Drama Queen,” “i am smoking cigarettes again,” “Steamroller,” “dog song 2” and more, feeble little horse make up for three record tours worth of music, appealing to long-time dedicated FBL fans like myself. In Girl with Fish fashion, they managed to fit a long set of 16 songs into a very short time frame. After a couple of songs, their nerves seemed to get lost in the blurred nature of their instrumentals as each song got louder and fuzzier. As the shy act dissipated, their guitarist had fun interacting with the crowd teasingly admitting excitement to be opening for Carly Rae Jepsen and Pitchfork’s ratings of their track: “this next song is from an album that Pitchfork gave a 7. So why are we here? Why do they want us?”
Similar to their–10/10– album, the evolution of their set was unpredictable, unapologetic and exploding with refreshed energy. Time and time again, feeble little horse presents their quest for individualism with their breakbeats, DIY aesthetic, fuzzy textures, bursts of adrenaline vocals, clever twists and turns and unidentifiable sounds that inflict temporal dissonance. To hear what I only thought would exist in the confines of my headphones, added a whole new dimension to their sound and my love for feeble little horse. Not only are they quirky with kitten faced tights and a minorly creepy doll lucky charm (Lydia is responsible for all the intrigue and steez of feeble little horse), but also their authoritative superstitions. Before their last song of the set “down,” they prefaced “this is our last song. We play this song at the end of every show and if we don’t, something very very bad will probably happen.” Something bad did not happen but their nerves and superstitions made feeble little horse all the more relatable —disguising their genius creative minds that make them superior to most other groups in the scene (IMO).
Nala Sinephro
On Day 3 a UFO was seen flying over Chicago. It landed on Pitchfork’s blue stage, and when the door opened, Nala Sinephro welcomed us inside. For 45 minutes we flew through an astral soundscape Nala would later release as her second album Endlessness, a ten-movement journey that flows as one. It spirals in and out of dimensions, calling on spacey synthesizers, a vocal saxophone, and fluffy drums to guide us through the galactical goop. Commanding her harp and two synthesizers, Nala telepathically communicated with her band, switching directions with invisible queues met with silent nods in response. The piece followed one repeating bouncy synth passage that often resembled the looped pioneering sounds of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.” But rather than make you get up and attempt your best Soul Train impression, Sinephro’s slower interpretation asks you to retreat into your mind. Improvisationally navigating the soundscape, she followed the music rather than forcing it to follow her, channeling the unmistakable influences of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, the founding fathers of her starry sound. Sinephro played with different rhythms and tempos using the repetitiveness of the core passages of Endlessness to accentuate the irregularities she added throughout the performance. Synth player Dwayne Kilvington also occasionally took the reins from Nala, providing pungent bassy synth solos and relinquishing the bass’ role of simple accentuation. Everyone in the crowd remained in total silence from start to finish, including an older man sitting directly in front of me on the other side of the barrier (I assume her dad) who fell into a deep, peaceful sleep around halfway through the set. I can’t even imagine where his dreams must have taken him.

Bratmobile
There is no hesitation or rejection from the crowd when Alison Wolfe abducts us into the 90s, forcing the crowd to experience the same kicking, dancing, and wildness that Riot grrl came out of three decades ago. Without a doubt, Bratmobile is the most iconic act in the entire festival lineup, even more so with Rose Melberg (of Tiger Trap and The Softies) on guitar left of Alison Wolfe. Representing the feminist punk movement that empowers women to express themselves through music, zines, and activism, their mission is still highly relevant today. Despite the date that pops up on our phone, teenagers, young adults, and parents break any generational boundaries or expectations to embrace one another’s inner wild woman and rebel against our current affairs. Enthusiasm and empowerment radiate off of Wolfe’s screams and high kicks as she quite literally holds nothing back. She is the beautiful and fearless role model that our generation needs–at least the generation of feminists who hopelessly doom scroll Pitchfork’s Review page and whine about their merger with GQ. Performing the iconic “Cool Schmool,” to the relatable “Panik,” about that girl in high school, and covering the rebellious anthem “Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways, Bratmobile reminds us of the power we hold in our hangs, granting us the encouragement we didn’t know we needed. Wolfe is an icon that reminds women to release our inner untamed spirit and express ourselves from the utmost truth. We admire her free-spirited nature, and run wild with it, contorting our bodies to unexplored forms of rebellion and expression. Thank you Bratmobile. Thank you Riot grrl. Alison Wolfe is the ultimate cool girl.









<3
THANK YOU FOREVER PITCHFORK MUSIC FEST!!!
XOXO, SOCC PITCHFORK TEAM




+ this guy, we miss you.