Pitchfork Festival London 2022

Away from the crowded, over-saturated festival seasons of the typical British summer - with heatwaves and dismal rain showers, Pitchfork Festival London drops another fantastic schedule amidst the quiet days of November. Already in its second year, and settling in comfortably within the boundaries of its own identity, the series of scattered gigs across many diverse and interesting venues is a testament to the flourishing express of new music bursting at the seams of 2022. 

 

Rather than listening to your trendier mate’s recommendations, or gauging streaming numbers on “cool” playlists, you could do far worse than attend many of Pitchfork London’s concerts at random to pick up some excellent new musical tips. There’s such a colourful explosion of brilliant acts concentrated in such a short space of a few days worth, alas, that it’s not possible to see all the shows, or be in two places at once. Thankfully, the festival is kind to all divisions of the London map, with concert venues ranging from the Camden Roundhouse in North London to the Albany in Deptford, South East London. 

 

Cambridge Mercury-nominated jazz-prog-art collective Black Country, New Road headline the ICA in Central London; a venue that in terms of vibe is probably the band’s spiritual home. The crowd of young artists seem to know the lyrics of every word (during the songs with lyrics!) and despite losing lead singer Isaac Wood almost a year ago, that band seem extremely tight-knit and rejuvenated playing by-and-large new material. 

 

To the Islington Assembly Hall, where Atlantan rapidly emerging singer-songwriter Faye Webster headlines to an adoring crowd of die-hard supporters (even if it’s too soon for some of them to be wearing christmas hats) - Webster’s music is dreamy, full-on southern USA evoking sounds of drive-thrus, breakfast diners, desert highways and twangy guitar chords. You’ll never see her in a venue this small again. Supporting was the delightful NYC group Michelle, predominantly lead by the four female lead singers colourfully dancing and popping and even paying tribute to their music teacher, also named Michelle, in the crowd. 

 

There’s almost too much edge to grimy Hackney Wick, on a really foggy night in what feels like endless backstreets, but the great venue Colour Factory has the brilliantly lo-fi Okay Kaya headlining a sold out show and charming everyone effortlessly. Deploying an assorted collection of toy figurines onstage, referred to jokingly as her band, Kaya evokes cinematic mumblecore by stopping and abandoning her own backing tracks, and almost politely checking her setlist plans with the crowd. Again, it’ll be hard seeing Okay Kaya play such a small, niche venue on her ascent towards bigger things. 

 

The main headlining Sunday, brilliantly topped by Stereolab last year at the Roundhouse, has ‘powed’ with an all-female all-star bill. Brilliant punk band Big Joanie commence proceedings and brought their own contingent of fans to this indoor “festival”. Following the London threesome was Samia, who has been supporting Maggie Rogers all week. Samia has enough fan fever and rowdy crowd sing-alongs to surge somewhere awesome by next year. Cate Le Bon, enigmatic and avoidant, superbly delivers the eighties’ gothic synths from new album Pompeii - Le Bon is all mood and aesthetic visually, and you only see her let loose and smile when she is brought on by headliner Courtney Barnett during the latter’s set. Barnett has been plugging away with her witty power rock for years now, and it feels a natural conclusion that she should headline an all-female fronted main festival event that originates from Pitchfork. 

To conclude, Pitchfork Festival London 2022 has been a thrilling success - demonstrating diversity in droves whether it’s the locations, the type of venues or the musical genres to the thrillingly up-and-coming acts themselves. It’s a really good week of programming refreshingly trying to do nothing but showcase great artists. You’ll be playing all the albums you’ve learned about here for ages afterwards.

 

 

 

 

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