Saturday was a short day for me, and mindless fun seemed to be the theme. A couple minor disappointments probably made this the weakest of the three days, but a weak day at Coachella is still more fun than you can even conceive. I started out at Dim Mak's pool party, and learned that Palm Springs is actually quite far from Indio. After I got a weekend's worth of free stuff and glorious train-wreck watching in under an hour, it was time to actually see some music.
TV ON THE RADIO
The first act I saw once I hit the polo fields was TV On the Radio, which rocked the main stage in the late afternoon. There were live horns, which sounded great, and Tunde was definitely on point, but overall, the band's songs just seemed to miss the spark they have on the records. It wasn't exactly a disappointment, as they still put on a great show, but the performance taught me that despite some spectacular songwriting, the band's biggest asset might be their studio production. And that's a pretty difficult thing to replicate live. That said, those who were fairly new to the band seemed to really dig it, so hopefully they gained a lot of new fans.
FLEET FOXES
The theme of incredible bands doing simply decent sets continued with Fleet Foxes, whose sunset performance at the side stage, opposite no one of much note, seemed designed to push these guys' star to the next level. While it wasn't the "bomb" that frontman Robin Pecknold said it was afterward (via his Twitter, natch), it wasn't the show-stealing set it was clearly meant to be. The crux of the blame falls on the poor sound-mixing, as well as the very loud bass emanating from Thievery Corporation's show next door, but the band also seemed defeated as soon as the odds became stacked against them, making a bad situation even worse. Like TV On The Radio, it'd be unfair to call the performance a "disappointment", since these guys still sounded great, but when it was over, you couldn't help but feel like it could have been phenomenal.
M.I.A.
Okay......so maybe this was a bit of a disappointment. At first, it appeared M.I.A. had really come to play, between throwing out thousands of horns to the crowd, dazzling with a light show, and commanding a small army of back-up dancers. But the bag of tricks ran out might early, and all that was left was awkward stage banter, with Maya apologizing for not knowing how to "bring it to the main stage", apologizing that her "friend never showed up" (earlier in the Day, she claimed Lil Wayne would be performing "Sunshowers" with her), and finally claiming that next time, she wanted to be "back in the tents". That's one wish I'm sure will be granted, since the whole affair fell a tad flat, and the DJ in particular tested nearly everyone's patience. Still, "20 Dollar Bill" and obviously "Paper Planes" rocked the crowd, and it had to be better than whatever Amy Winehouse would have pulled out.
THE KILLERS
Irony of ironies: after the fest's hipster favorites all fell short of their hyped marks, the band that many said shouldn't have even been headlining not only silenced the critics, but took their game to a whole new level. Towards the end of their set, frontman Brandon Flowers reminded the crowd that 5 years ago, they were opening in one of the tents. Cut to 2009, where one could argue they've become the official Kings of American Alt Rock. If this is true, then Saturday night was their coronation. The band played a near 2 hr set (lean compared to the weekend's other headliners) that focused on the hits and pulled out few surprises, but won over the crowd the old fashioned way: by playing spectacularly and relentlessly. Flowers, in particular, has come along way in a half decade of performing: where once he may have hid behind a keyboard and nervously spat out his lyrics, he now commands the stage with a brazen mixture of rock god charisma and Chaplinesque physicality. The nifty pyro certainly helped as well. Overall, the performance obviously didn't capture the emotion of Friday, or the WTF rollercoaster of Sunday, but that wasn't the intention. This was a horse of a different color. And in a festival which celebrated rock history on its opening and closing night, it was great to see a band emerging in the now, having just realized their true potential, and ready to make history of their own. Initially, it was difficult to judge if the massive crowd felt the same way, considering I was pressed against the barricade in the second row of people (my friends and I used the surge of people jumping the barricade to dance with M.I.A. earlier as a chance to sail straight to the front), but considering I heard only praise for the rest of the weekend (even from the most jaded, American Apparelled festivalgoer), I'd say the set was just as much of a pleasure for the crowd at large as it was for the sea of folks I was intertwined with. But don't take my word for it, check out my favorite moment of Saturday below to see for yourself (cut to around the 4 minute mark to see Flowers morph into a full-blown rock star for possibly the first time):
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2 comments:
That looks spectacular. Love the mic stand thrust!
I always had faith. Good for them!
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