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| Screengrab via Coachella's YouTube |
Despite attending around a bajillion festivals over the last couple decades, I’ve largely avoided livestreams of fests in progress. I know lots of friends prefer to enjoy Lollapalooza from the comfort of their couch, and given how their booking has devolved over the years it makes total sense to me that most people would want to tune in for the one or two acts that interest them instead of spending 4 sweltering days amongst adults who think spring break happens in the middle of the summer.
Is that too mean? These days, I don’t think so.
In fact, the festival scene is so glutted these days that I’m not certain why most fans of actual music would want to go … and I am someone who has greatly enjoyed a large portion of the fest I’ve attended! But the years have not been kind to the talent pool the majority of festivals have to pick from, so we now get a couple headliners you might be interested in (if you’re lucky) , supporterd by an undercard of acts who are either mostly unknown for good reason, or are currently enjoying a visibility bump via TikTok virality.
Again, I’m trying to be realistic, so I apologize if you’re reading even that as “mean.” But it does help explain how I found myself watching the Coachella livestream over the last 2 weeks, and discovered that those things are actually useful nowadays! My partner is a Coachella fan, having attended the festival for a few years with largely positive memories. I probably would have tuned in for the Blur sets no matter what, but I found myself watching (and enjoying) a few other acts via the livestream as we watched together.
For someone like me, it’s relatively easy to see a stage (even via video), scan the overall set-up, crowd, entrances and exits, estimate the environment, and create the “feel” of the total live situation in my head. So I’m not just watching video, I can imagine I’m there. (And in this case any questions I had about the set-up were swiftly answered by my partner's own experiences there.) As we flipped between sets it is true that many of them seemed pretty basic and boring. (You can dress up a stage all you want, but if the talent isn’t bringing it to the performance, that stage is only going to impress the people waaaaaaay back in the crowd.) But I did enjoy more sets than I expected, so I take that as a win!
So, here are a few random observations arrived at via the Coachella livestream over the last couple weeks...
The Last Dinner Party
I’ve heard so much about this band but was turned off by an album that felt a little flat, depending on its production to amp up melodrama instead of letting the songs themselves do that heavy lifting. But live? HOLY HELL! These cats can bring it, and yes, I now get it. They're fantastic now! They've clearly developed into a raucous and mesmerizing live act after getting some touring under their collective belt. And their drummer makes a HUGE difference to their live sound. It was a good reminder that sometimes when you can’t figure out why a band’s getting tons of buzz, you should keep space in your head to be swayed.
Blur
If you didn’t watch Blur’s week 1 set, and only read the frantic news coverage of about 45 seconds of the set where Damon Albarn discovered that perhaps U.S. audiences aren’t as familiar with “Girls And Boys” as he thought, you missed the bigger story. Blur has been playing a variation of their “greatest hits” set for well over a decade now, so it was a surprise to see set heavy on the guitars and devoid of most “hits.” Even I was thrown at first. But the band booked the gig after they decided to go on hiatus again—given their history, I think it’s silly to say they are truly breaking up .. .again—and my best guess is they either decided to play a set that made them happy or they thought something more BIG NOIZE guitar-centric would appeal to a U.S. Coachella audience more familiar with Gorillas than that “woo hoo” band.
The fact they doubled down, played the exact same set for week 2, and really threw themselves into it leads me to hope it was the set they really wanted to play, especially if they don’t get to play together again (for many years).
Tyler, The Creator
My experience goes far back to the early days of he Odd Future crew exploding onto the scene, but I haven’t seen any of ‘em live for a really long time, so I was curious to see how Tyler had evolved. And this was one set where the stage set-up AND performer were up to the task. The intro film was hilarious, and seeing Tyler explode out of the side of a trailer to start the set was amusing. I confess I didn’t stick through the whole performance, but I enjoyed what I saw.
L'Impératrice
Honestly? I really dug their coordinated Parisian Jetsons disco look.
Lana Del Rey
Another one where the stage was really cool! And since I find Del Rey’s music to be largely a snooze, I did really appreciate how much theatricality she put into her week 2 set. I do understand it’s her lyrics that are the main draw when it comes to her fans, but I have a hard time appreciating fine lyrics in a musical package I find mostly underwhelming. So that’s on me.
Bleachers
I like Bleachers, and have for a long time. And I like Jack Antanoff, despite the constantly shifting perceptions by the critical community over his production style. But this set was so similar in feel to the one he played at Riot Fest two years ago I was a little let down.
Gesaffelstein
I dug the dark beats and I really dug the silver mask/helmet they had going on. Definitely a groovy DJ set I enjoyed dipping in and out of. That said, am I the only one who thought he stole bits of the 1978 Superman Fortress of Solitude for stage dressing?
Clown Core
My partner made me watch them. She was greatly amused by their antics. But I have seen this kind of act SO many times over the years. In fact, are we sure these two aren’t also Lightning Bolt?!
Raye
Hey! It’s nice to see the label will spring for 20+ musicians to accompany her old-school jazzy pop!
Grimes
Whatever technical problems happened during week 1 were taken care of by week 2, and Grimes also had an incredibly funny, self-deprecating intro video to kick off her set, which was less a proper DJ set and more a performance with her doing live segues between preselected, prerecorded mixes of tracks. This is not a negative statement or criticism. In this, she is no different than the vast majority of people DJing shorter festival sets, but I give her credit for at least trying to be entertaining instead of pretending like she was "live mixing" in real time throughout the whole set. But it did look like it would've been a fun set to dance to in the crowd!
