Coachella is a music Music Festival (sic). If you want to sit by your tent and chill with your buddies or perhaps hit the bars after the sets, you're in the wrong place. The minimalist camping and its hermetic location leave you with nothing but 130 concerts to go to. And that will be plenty. The festival's brilliant scheduling and stage placement mean you can see almost everything if you're willing to sprint, something impossible at Bonnaroo or Lollapalooza. Coachella is what is -- but even better, it's what will be. So if the lineup looked a little thin to you, it just means you haven't done your homework yet.
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- Day 1
While Coachella's first day generally starts slowly as the Los Angeles masses are freed from their day jobs, LA natives People Under The Stairs began their 3 PM show with ample hip-hop heads to answer their calls for elevated hands. Unfortunately, too much goading for cheers and sing-a-longs and not enough entertaining showmanship left embarrassing holes in their crowd-dependent choruses. The audience only proved receptive when led in a giant crescendo of “aaaaaaaaAAAAAWWWWWWW SHITTTT.” Buttressing classic rap against the peppy twee rock of Cardiff, Wales' Los Campesinos! caused a vacuum at the end of the set, as American Apparel-clad youngsters dodged between the baggy jeans legs of exiting People fans.
Not much older than the crowd, but with three solid releases under their belts, the Campesinos looked a little exasperated lugging their own instruments on stage in the scorching heat. When the family all arrive, they drift for just a second before emitting a 7-piece explosion, the dust clearing to reveal We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed's opener “Ways to Make it Through The Wall.” Lead singer Gareth's vocal mic cutout halfway through the song, silencing his beat-up school boy poetry and prompting him to make murderous faces behind the back of the bumbling soundtech. But second song “The International Tweecore Underground” (2007 single and mission statement of their genre) sees the kids go off as if their parents left them home alone for the weekend. “I never cared about Henry Rollins” Gareth proclaims, initiating a furious glockenspiel and electric guitar 40-yard dash. Their relentless energy in the near hundred-degree heat conducted directly into the front rows, where a pack of five 10 year olds bopped and preened as one of their cool dads looked on approvingly.
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Gareth and Aleksandra Campesino delivering sweet heartbreak.
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On the Outdoor Stage, M. Ward practiced taxidermy on wild animals like “Never Had Nobody Like You” from his album Hold Time, petrifying previously lively tunes. Relying too much on his mediocre backing band, the Portland guitarist seemed content miming for the motionless field of onlookers.
One of the weekend's most aggressive crowds assembled for the electro-horror dance duo Crystal Castles. Thousands punched and fumed along to the poltergeist vocal loops of “Untrust Us” and the serrated 8-bit hooks of “Courtship Dating.” Lead singer Alice Glass, looking a dead ringer for Wednesday Adams, knocked herself to the floor in fits of artistic rage, screaming like a banshee all the while.
Beirut enraptured the crowd with the tantalizing texture of their horn harmonies. Displaying a toothy grin on stage, drummer Nick Petree slipped some syncopation into the drum machine patter of “Scenic World,” resulting in a Baltic hip-hop swagger. Engendering alternating screams and the tight-lipped silence of intense listening, Beirut's crowd seemed impervious to the glitched-out bass of Girl Talk's subwoofer only a tent over.
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Beirut front man Zach Condon shoulders his weapon to hit the juicy, sustained notes of the “Postcard To Italy” chorus.
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Greg Gillis might have gone from playing college bars and cramped clubs to the enormous sprawl of Coachella's Sahara tent, but he still shares the stage with anyone frisky enough to jump the barricades and join him. A tiny, sweaty dot amongst an undulating sea of neon, Girl Talk disclosed new remixes of hipster iPod anthems like Kid Cudi's “Day ‘N' Nite” and MGMT's “Kids” as kaleidoscoping Macbooks and cheeseburgers swirled on the projection screens. Halfway through the set, Girl Talk grabbed the mic and demanded to know “Coachella, can I have just one minute? Do you want more?” Terrified the party could end at any moment, the crowd proceeded to dance their last dance for the next 20 minutes, the injection of artificial urgency working just as planned. Gillis concluded his set by riding an inflatable raft over his adoring constituency, as white balloons rained down in true senior prom fashion.
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Girl Talk's precarious voyage over the Gulf of Coachella
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Closing the evening, Sir Paul McCartney ( “of The Beatles” as I heard one exceptionally young festival goer explain to another) hammed it up, joking with the crowd through a marathon three-hour-plus set. Peppering in the occasional “Band on the Run” or “Eleanor Rigby” amongst his later solo material, McCartney seemed casual, finishing many songs with rough-shod open chord strums. Quickly dropping temperatures had many scantly clad revelers either clawing at friends for body heat or scurrying for their tents, but Paul kept tens of thousands captive until the end, leading a rousing chorus of “Hey Jude,” which cut through the crisp desert air.
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- Day 2
Some write off Michael Franti and Spearhead as that type of feel-good reggae that is more about having a good time than musical virtuosity or political relevancy. In a darkened club, the sound might ring hollow, but surrounded by palm trees in the afternoon sun, Franti's priorities seemed just right. Taking some time off from hustling from stage to stage, Coachella's crowd swayed and smiled as Michael promised, “It's never too late to pick up the phone and call me” and threw up fists of solidarity when he lamented, “They got a war on music and a war on speech/ A war on teachers and the things they teach.”
The kid's choice award for the weekend went to Italian DJs The Bloody Beetroots. Their coke-overdose synths, skittering laser-canon buildups, and wrecking ball bass beats left the under-20s desperate to get just a few feet closer to the speakers. The Beetroots shouted fire in a crowded theater when they opened with their latest banger “Warp,” causing mass hysteria. Even their record label's owner and fellow DJ Steve Aoki wigged out, seizuring about the stage to the winding, nuclear-powered dentist's drill-buzz of their new single. The Bloody Beetroots remix skills have cemented them as the go-to DJs for keeping your song on the dance floors. Their spastic cut-and-paste (and paste and paste) remix of MSTRKRFT's “Bounce” had dancers screaming the song's refrain, “All we do is party,” as if it'd be stamped on their tombstone at the end of the set.
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The work week done, Saturday saw crowds packed tight even during half-hour set breaks.
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Continuing the epic scene at the Sahara tent was TRV$DJ-AM, the duo of Vegas club favorite DJ AM and former Blink-182 drummer and destroyer of all things percussion, Travis Barker. Enveloped in twin LED habitats, AM dropped Justice and Jay-Z, while Barker beat the skins like they cursed-out his mother. Backed with a custom suite of animations to match each song, the crowd was treated to American flags and boxer silhouettes during “Eye of the Tiger” and were tipped off to an impending Daft Punk sample by a visualization of their signature pyramid. To cap what had already been a once-in-a-lifetime show, the screens filled with 5-pointed green leaves, and the real-life Warren G emerged to rap over TRV$DJ-AM's take on the hip-hop classic “Regulators.”
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DJ AM cues up a beat, but Travis shames every record, playing it back twice as hard.
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But then, there was Crookers. Although the world might know them for their air-raid sirens and fidget bass remix for Kid Cudi, Coachella was their platform to declare that they're the next sound, and it's gonna hurt. Storming the stage, their hype man, a suspenders-wearing skin-head, announced “Coachella in the house. Crookers in the house. Now I want you to burn this house downnnnnnnn!” The ensuing mosh pit sent the more fragile fans streaming towards the exits, as the meatheads piled in. Next, their “We Are Prostitutes” remix revved up like a whining jet engine, only to give way to a fiery crash of drum strikes and synth oscillations. It seemed that Crookers had discovered a golden equation to the live DJ show: The synthesizers swell, the drums double in time, the MC screams, the beat drops, the crowd loses their mind for 45 seconds, and the cycle repeats. It's simple, it's dirty, but it worked better than you can imagine.
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- Day 3
Opening the final day of Coachella were British music press darlings Friendly Fires. Although their self-titled debut relies on sleek production and the exacting thud of the bass drum, their live show was all about locking into a groove. Singer Ed Macfarlane pranced about the stage, emphatically annunciating every word, while drummer Jack Savidge filled out the bars with splashy hi-hat and quick-draw tom-toms. Lead single “Paris,” a daydream about success and money solving all of life's problems, saw fans holding hands over their hearts, eyes shut tight as they mouthed the lyrics. The group concluded with a noisy jam to “Ex-Lover,” guitarist Ed Gibson brandishing a futuristic ray-gun to scare a washed-out scream from his black axe.
Swedish pop siren Lykke Li strutted onto the Outdoor Stage taking little note of the heat: black boa, black blouse, black knee high tights, and six dangling silver chains. An additional drum rig allowed her to coo seductively over opener “Dance, Dance,” pound on a crash cymbal, do a little twirl, and end up back at the microphone for a harmonica solo. During “I'm Good, I'm Gone,” Li got low and shook it out swearing, “I know I'll get it back/ Yeah I know your hands will clap,” her exposed, sunkissed thighs contributing to the raucous cheers that rarely waited for her songs to end. “It's time to wake up and smell the Swedish techno coffee,” she insisted before the warm, shuddering bass of “Complaint Department” washed over the audience. Lykke's only foibles occurred during cover songs. Her cover of Kings of Leon's “Knocked Up” seemed emaciated with the southern guitar drawl of the Followill boys, and her crack at Lil Wayne's “A Milli” was such a train wreck it was almost endearing. Retribution was found an hour later, though, when she nailed the backup vocals of her Swedish brethren Peter Bjorn and John's twangy take on “Young Folks.”
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Lykke Li dances undaunted by the 104 degree heat.
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Amongst the hedonism of the weekend, East African hip-hop/soul poet K'Naan's somber tales of global apathy were actually refreshing. Upon the festival's smallest stage, he spoke “Mainstream rappers are yappin about yappin, and underground rappers are rapping about rapping/ I just want to tell y'all what's really crack-a-lackin/ Before the tears rolled down, this is what happened/ Somalia.” An audible sigh, but no release, followed, the crowd locked in contemplation of their own contribution to this dismal world stage. While Coachella is about dancing and spectacle, it can sometimes be intimate too.
Sunday's main stage was packed with talent, but none could match the indie diva antics of Yeah Yeah Yeah's front woman Karen O. Slithering on stage like some Lou Reed nightmare, drenched in mammoth gold sequins, O forcefully slurred her lyrics into an appealing, miffed continuum. Karen growled along to the tribal drum cadence of “Maps,” dedicating the tracks to the significant other's of her band mates and Sunday's Coachella crowd for sticking it out. Matching the gigantic eyeball suspended above the main stage, the hard rock turbo-drone of new single “Zero” was augmented by the appearance of dozens of cornea-adorned beach balls amongst the crowd.
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The menacing smile of Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Coachella 2009 was a year for the bass beat. Young british dance rock bands kept crowds pogo-ing in the sun, and Saturday's DJ lineup will rule the remix scene for years to come. Quieter headliners like McCartney tried their best to compete, but sounded a tad pedestrian compared to Crookers and The Bloody Beetroots. While the electronic and folk rock scenes may be cleaving the hipster community, Coachella 2009 offered a place where flannel and spandex can live in harmony.