The air is thick with fog. Your ears are ringing. It’s densely crowded, and you spent way too much money on that last beer. It’s worth it, though. Nosebleeds, sweating in the middle of a pit, or somewhere in between, you dropped those dollars because you know all the words to that song, and you crave a communal experience with it. In 2016, there has been no shortage of big tours and live reunions that might have inspired this kind of reaction. Summer has barely begun and already Beyoncé and Rihanna are tearing up arenas across the country, while Guns N’ Roses and LCD Soundsystem have made nice for the sake of the fans (or, let's be real, the paycheck).
We see a lot of shows around these parts—some of them big, many of them more intimate. Some of us keep writing because just being there in the room has left an indelible mark. And so, with 2016 halfway done, Pitchfork staffers took stock of the shows that have stuck with us throughout the year so far.
Jenn Pelly: Rainer Maria // June 12 // Union Pool, Brooklyn
On Sunday, June 12, I left my apartment feeling muted and empty—just so incredibly low. Inside of the Williamsburg bar Union Pool, I tried to cordon myself off against a wall and keep reading the news on my phone. It was the day after Orlando. It felt hard to be in public and it also felt hard to be alone, to focus on anything, to want to be anywhere other than with someone I care about.
My best friend, Pier, was playing a sold-out show with her new band, Crusher, opening for Rainer Maria, the recently-revived emo trio from the late ‘90s. A decade ago, Rainer Maria were one of those bands who I’d see mentioned on the left-hand side of Myspace profiles and listed as precious LiveJournal interests. I probably downloaded a few of their songs on Kazaa. For whatever reason, I never got into them. Honestly, I came to this show for Crusher.
Rainer Maria flipped me inside out. I was instantly besotted, completely mesmerized. Every atom of this music felt expressive, charged, visceral, searing straight into my heart. How I had gone 26 years on Earth without getting into Rainer Maria is totally beyond me. As a girl who grew up with early ‘00s mutations of emo—and became a young feminist as a direct response to the sexism ingrained into my Hot Topic teenybopper years—Rainer Maria is the kind of band that I’d like to believe would have blown open my mind, an emo band fronted by two women, exploding their inner-lives outward. I had waited my whole life to see a band like this.
I felt a whirlwind of emotion. What if I had downloaded Rainer Maria’s albums as a teen? What it my mental roadmap had pivoted towards them instead of some shitheads like Hot Rod Circuit? How many bands have I missed like this, by pure chance? (Then again, how many have I discovered that way?) If you live and die for music, the thought is exhausting: In this life, you will never have enough time to have all of the bands. You can only control the magic of fate so much. But now I have spent so many hours listening to Rainer Maria’s Look Now Look Again and “Tinfoil” (seen below live, years back) that I feel like I’ve known these songs forever. Life is full of surprises, many of them unthinkably devastating. But for an hour or so one Sunday night, there was a moment of personal respite.
Jayson Greene: Esperanza Spalding // April 14 // The Apollo, Harlem
Esperanza Spalding is too talented, too intense, too quotable, too preternaturally skilled. Her bio is an almost-frightening account of precociousness; by age five, she had taught herself to play violin and was already playing with the Chamber Music Society. She was handpicked by Barack Obama to perform at the White House before she turned 30.
What do you do when you’ve burned through every accomplishment and earned every plaudit around you before you hit your prime? You freak out, start to unleash the darker energies you’ve been bottling and rerouting. Her 2016 album, Emily’s D+Evolution, charted this course, and her touring show behind it was at once theatrically cuckoo and impressively poised. When I saw her at the Apollo this spring, she was prowling the stage wearing a handmade paper crown and play-acting out her existential dilemmas on a set that resembled an updated Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. But she was hitting flawless vocal runs while standing on a step stool, playing a fretless bass that she had attached to a jerry-rigged hook on her waist perfectly in tune. The show came complete with virtuosic backup singers, dancers, a fusion-rock band, but she was the blazing sun at the center of it. At the end of the show, she stood at the foot of the stage, singing the hook to “Unconditional Love” over and over again: “We could change the whole story of love / Same old play I’m getting tired of / No matter acting these predictable roles / Just us giving unconditional love.” It felt like a tightly controlled unraveling, and I can still see it burning a hole onto the back of my eyelids when I close them.
Laura Snapes: Christine and the Queens // May 3 // Roundhouse, London
Héloïse Letissier’s debut album was originally released two years ago in her native France, but following Anglophone reissues of the record, the Nantes-born artist has stealthily become one of pop's biggest rising stars. The LP’s extended lifespan has also meant she's had to pad out her live show a bit, adding an extended house breakdown to showcase her and her dancers ‘laser-sharp moves. No complaints: watching them mix voguing, Michael Peters, and Pina Bausch-inspired moves is a pure delight, especially as a member of the choreographically challenged (hi). But at London’s Roundhouse this May, in front of an audience that included Elton John, Letissier danced so hard during the medley that she split her pants. She tied her blazer around her waist, finished the song, chastised the front row for photographing her crotch, and then sprinted backstage, offering a hilarious play-by-play of her trouser-swap over her head mic. It was almost hard to believe that Letissier could ever be a small personality: Six years ago, she came to London, depressed and alone, and met the drag queens who encouraged her to find an alter-ego. And as far as pop alter-egos go, Christine is a purely generous one: a transferable energy that makes everything feel possible. For one night, I could dance. I wept at beautiful “Jonathan,” with its massive projected screen of Perfume Genius’ face and the elegant strip lighting installation. By the end of the night, Letissier’s natural comedy had made me laugh so much, my face properly hurt. “That was the weirdest gig I ever played and perhaps also the best,” she declared. I'll be surprised if I see anything else like it this year. (Other than, you know, the three more times I intend on seeing Christine and the Queens.)
Kevin Lozano: Tim Hecker & Prurient // April 14 // Warsaw, Brooklyn
I had never seen either Tim Hecker or Prurient, but I had an inkling that it would be so powerfully noisy that their sets could induce seasickness or organ failure. A cloud of savory scents was as enveloping as the dissonant tones wafting from the stage; it was pierogis. Of course I had to buy some—many, in fact—and beer. On the tips of my toes I saw Prurient's Dominick Fernow wield two microphones, screaming into each, in what was a surprisingly athletic performance. It felt like an industrial-music pep rally.
When Hecker started, I couldn't even see him—was he on stage at all? I had to assume he was, with that hypnotic noise that engulfed the entire room, just like the dull blue light and fog he employed. I closed my eyes, started to slowly fall asleep standing up. I realized that something had been missing in all the times I listened to Love Streams behind a pair of paltry headphones. On some fundamental level, Hecker makes music that presents a curious question: How many different ways can a sustained noise affect the human body? You can’t feel that when the only receptor is your ears. You’re supposed to experience this as a total physical thing. I couldn't even pick out one song from the next, so I decided to treat the rush of sounds as almost an act of nature. I felt like I was standing in the middle of a large body of water. I swayed to keep myself awake. I opened my eyes an hour later. I took a cab home and passed out, my ears still ringing the whole way home.
Matthew Schnipper: Cecil Taylor // April 14 // The Whitney, Manhattan
The fifth floor of the new Whitney Museum is an enormous room with sweeping river views that, for a few weeks back in April, was filled with Cecil Taylor's archives, and for a few nights, with his concerts. The first night was two sets, one almost solo (with the barely-there addition of Tony Oxley on electronics) and Japanese dancer Min Tanaka; the second with a seemingly ad-hoc group of skronk lovers on strings and horns, along with a freeform poet. It was not very good. So let’s focus on the first, which was very moving. Taylor, in his late 80s now, is physically quite frail and walked hunched, needing help to reach the elevated platform where the piano sat. But his fingers are quick and nimble, as is his brain, which seems to work only by getting ahead of itself. How could someone make improvised music that's as wacky and beautiful as his otherwise? Occasionally, his melodies are cohesive and classic, as though they’re from the Tin Pan Alley era. Then he scurries up and down the keyboard with extreme dissonance. It’s random and lovely. And while you’d maybe expect extreme concentration, his face seems loose, like he was channeling friendly ghosts, and just for variety’s sake, every once in awhile like he was trying to outrun a demon.
Jazz—if you want to call what he plays that (he doesn’t)—is something we have a national consensus on as a truly American artform, and seeing him celebrated by the Whitney felt right. The concert itself was as important as its context, a big room filled with video screens and albums, and all the things that makes a life. Taylor seems like a true packrat and he opened his closets to the Whitney curators who jammed showcases with his stuff. I went back a few days later to see the exhibit, and with some of his papers was an envelope he’s scribbled some notes on. It contained an address in Fort Greene, the Brooklyn neighborhood I knew he lived in. So I jotted it down and took a walk that way. Sure enough, at the end of the block was a semi-rundown brick townhouse. In one of the windows was a handmade sign, barely legible from the sun’s bleach, that read, “Please do not disturb the maestro.” So I didn't.
Stacey Anderson: Young Fathers // April 2 // Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn
I spent a good five minutes at Young Fathers' merch table wondering whom I could give a t-shirt that readWhite Men Are Black Men Too. The blonde gent to my left, while the obvious candidate in my life, did not seem the wisest of recipients, unless I wanted to heap upon him a galaxy of warranted scorn from strangers each time he wore it—unless, of course, those passersby also happened to be attuned to Young Fathers, the terrifically charismatic hip-hop and rock group from Scotland, who despite theirMercury Prize win are still woefully under-sung stateside. Their set at Music Hall of Williamsburg matched their merch: confident in controversial declarations yet openhearted, an urgent torrent of progressive social politics gift-wrapped in thrashing hooks and bodies that jettisoned around the stage like loose atoms. We are together in this increasingly fraught parade, they beseeched us, and we need to believe that the borders of race and religion can be scaled. Here’s our ladder; bring yours. Also, our other t-shirt won’t match your khakis, either.
Quinn Moreland: Bruce Springsteen Plays The River // April 25 // Barclays Center, Brooklyn
I spent a good chunk of 2016 living above a DIY space (Brooklyn's Silent Barn), and while I witnessed many amazing performances there, the best show I’ve seen this year was on the complete opposite end of spectrum. In late April, a friend invited me to catch the final U.S. show of Bruce Springsteen’s The River tour. I hadn’t been to a big arena show since I saw Eric Clapton when I was maybe 12, so my expectations were pretty low. Arena concerts are cool because there is the option to buy $9 pretzels and $12 beers, which is exactly what my friends did after wading through what felt like half the population of Jersey waiting to see the Boss for the umpteenth time. After locating our seats in the stands, we squeezed our way to the pen right in front of the stage and waited patiently for the lights to go down and the first notes of “The Ties That Bind” to begin. Bruce played the entirety of his 1980 classic The River and then the hits, totaling about three hours. There were solos of all types, tons of screaming, crazy signs—the whole shebang. At one point, Bruce crowd-surfed across the pit with more skill than any twenty-something asshole at a noise show could ever manage. By the end, after Bruce played an incredible “Purple Rain” cover (seen below at his Barclays show a couple days earlier), my friends and I grooved with the sort of glee that only “Dancing in the Dark” can induce. I often say that I despise concerts, hate crowds, and am generally a lame person, but after seeing Bruce, my evil Grinch heart melted away. How could it not when surrounded by 18,000 ecstatic strangers?
Corey Smith-West: Thundercat // June 3 // Brooklyn Bowl
Seeing Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner at shouldn’t have been my “favorite show of 2016.” The person I was going with bailed at the last second, my lingering cough suddenly became a cold, I couldn’t afford a single drink, and Thundercat showed up two hours behind his 11:30 set time. Yet, as soon as the bassist dove into The Beyond/Where the Giants Roam’s “Wolf and Cub,” I no longer wanted to be in bed. In most people’s hands, the bass is a backing instrument, a second thought to the vocals or guitar, the arbiter of the groove but little else. Bruner’s virtuosity transformed the instrument into something much greater. As his fingers contorted across the fretboard, he coaxed from it a tone even more expressive than his falsetto. More and more bodies swayed until we were all under his trance. In true jazz form, Bruner and his band were less concerned with playing his biggest songs than pushing them to the their very limits, doubling in size and scope. As I usually do, I used the pause before the encore to post myself near the exit. I watched from one of Brooklyn Bowl’s rows of massive panoramic screens as a clearly drunk Thundercat returned and set out on a sprawling rendition of Fly Lo’s “Mhmmm.” Though I now had two views of the stage, a part of me still couldn’t believe what I was seeing.