Taylor Glascock for The New York Times R. Kelly performing at the Pitchfork Music Festival on Sunday.This week: Pitchfork VII and the broadening of indie taste.
Our pop critic Jon Caramanica traveled to sweaty Chicago last weekend for the Pitchfork Music Festival, presented by the influential Web site of the same name, and took the measure of the current indie-music mindset. That mindset, as he relates in a conversation with Ben Ratliff, has lots of time for dance music â€" whether abstract (Andy Stott), airy (Solange), or near-mainstream (Ryan Hemsworth’s DJ set); has a lot less time for guitar bands, some of whom seemed comparatively sallow and full of “antiwit,†as Mr. Caramanica wrote; embraces rappers with original charisma (Lil B) or local cred (Tree); and can now accommodate not only “global-scale cult acts†like M.I.A. and Bjork, but the bona fide pop star and local hero, R. Kelly, Sunday night’s closing act.
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Jon Caramanica on the Pitchfork Music Festival
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST
Tracks by artists discussed this week. (Spotify users can also find it here.)
