When it comes to booking women, Pitchfork has just broken its own record. This year it’s one of only three major summer festivals to assemble a lineup where at least half the acts include women—a feat not one accomplished in 2017. The women at Pitchfork include several under age 25, among them Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, Nilüfer Yanya, and Ravyn Lenae. But don’t dismiss them because they’re young, or assume that their presence is a side effect of some sort of gender-based quota system. All four are powerful storytellers, articulate songwriters, and inventive musicians. Each in her own way balances personal reflection with empathy and openness. They’ve earned their spots at Pitchfork, and even if equity in representation weren’t a problem in music, it’d be a better festival for their presence.
Lucy Dacus Fri 7/20, 2:30-3:15 PM, Green Stage
Julien Baker Fri 7/20, 5:15-6 PM, Blue Stage
Nilüfer Yanya Sat 7/21, 3:20-4:10 PM, Red Stage
Ravyn Lenae Sun 7/22, 3:20-4:10 PM, Red Stage
Raised in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, Dacus put out her first album, 2016’s No Burden, while still all but unknown outside that city’s indie scene. She’s since signed with Matador to release a second full-length, Historian, this March. Her sharply observed music does an extraordinary job bridging the personal and the universal. She describes Historian in particular as a meditation on processing negativity: the end of a relationship, the death of her grandmother, the loss of her Christian faith. She often reflects on difficult situations through a lens not her own, and the hope she carries through her pain, as well as the honesty in her warm voice, invites listeners to heal alongside her. “I think that writing is hugely cathartic for me, whether it’s in the moment or a few years after the fact,” she says. “It’s never too late to find clarity and closure.”
Baker has also stopped assuming that her fans are necessarily part of her demographic. “The people that are at the shows are people that are coming up to me and saying they like my music. Sometimes it’s people that are like myself, they’re queer or they’re female or about my age,” she says. “Sometimes they’re adult males or parents with their young children. So I think after the first record, I threw the preconceived notions of who might be benefiting from my music out the window.”
The soulful, jazzy feel of Yanya’s music, bolstered by circular, swinging motifs on electric guitar, roots it in an era long before she was born. Her lyrics tend to address relationships, but they can also be unexpectedly timely, engaged with present-day social and political conditions. She wrote her debut single, the hauntingly minimalist “Small Crimes,” from the perspective of a thief, and it explores how the fallout from the robbery erodes the humanity of the perpetrator.
