Courtesy of Coachella
It was many things, but it certainly wasn’t a landmark. Twenty years old this year, Coachella may be only one year away from legal drinking age, but as it continues to age into a Frankenstein of elite production values, Top 40-busting lineups, corporate greed, and increasingly bonkers art design and food options, it still can manage to shoot itself in the foot with sound issues, absurd catering to influencer culture, and artists that continue to make meaningless what Coachella stands for as a musical destination. And yet: this year marked my tenth year of attending, officially half of Coachella’s lifespan and a third of mine, and damnit, I’m still thinking about pushing it into the teens as I continue to age out of the surrounding college kids, Instagram models, and at this point, a solid majority of the artists.
BLACKPINK – Courtesy of Coachella
There’s a simple reason for it – I’ve been to festivals across the country and across the sea, and there’s still something to be said about Coachella as a unique experience. That dry desert air, baking you as you finally slip through another lackluster security line (2019 was the year to smuggle all the booze and drugs you wanted in, unless you had the misfortunate of using the yellow entrance Sunday), past the Ferris wheel and the swamped ID check, and finally cresting onto those impossibly manicured polo fields, the bizarre art installations of past and present floating around you or lighting up in the distance, and seeing all sorts of beautiful people mingling around, more or less already fucked up for the day. The commodification of Coachella is certainly complete – where once there only stood the Heineken Dome, now my inbox was flooded by publicists encouraging me to check out the Calvin Klein house (complete with Billie Eilish meet-and-greet), the Marriot Bonvoy lounge, the American Express Card Member lounge. There was even “the Rally Patch,” your classic hangover cure-cum-snake oil with all the essential vitamins, milk thistle and green tea extract you need to flush those 13 Dos Equis out of your system – just slap it on your skin! But the music and the production values are still second-to-none, give or take a couple audio programming mix-ups – an unfortunate side effect of our increasingly digitized concert experience.
Walker & Royce – Courtesy of Coachella
It may be easy to hate, but it’s still an absolute blast for a weekend. Last year I wrote that I wouldn’t have been surprised if Goldenvoice booked Taylor Swift for a headlining slot; it went ahead and did one better and snagged Ariana Grande for the closing set Sunday. I can’t say I’m thrilled half the time the lineup drops every January – more every year, it seems, I find myself increasingly shunted to the dark, grooving confines of the Yuma tent and the weirdos in the Gobi. But there’s always someone worthwhile to see trawling the earlier time slots and the darker recesses of the Mojave, another crazy stage show or surprise guest that spreads like wildfire throughout the grounds. So I’ll keep going, keep sweating, keep drinking, keep writing the 11th and 12th editions and more of this write-up for my Sputnik brethren that continue to finance my ticket – you rock Jom! – and I’ll still spend every work-week afterwards watching YouTube videos of all the sets I saw and didn’t see, and fight a battle with myself to not go again for weekend 2. I’ll win that one, but 2020 is another story.
Amelie Lens – Courtesy of Coachella
I’m probably the only regular iPod user I still know, but this year I bit the bullet and finally kicked out a Spotify playlist to deal with the wealth of artists on the lineup this year that that I didn’t know (there was a lot!). I’m not sure what I was thinking before this year, but the easy access certainly helped to acquaint myself into the more global mood Coachella has been cultivating in recent years. Artists like Mexican norteño band Los Tucanes de Tijuana and Spanish singer Rosalia, K-pop group BLACKPINK and Chilean singer-songwriter Mon Laferte, and DJs like the French duo Polo & Pan and Belgian dungeon-techno purveyor Amelie Lens were just a sample of the variety of international acts that played Friday alone this year. Some were more successful than others: BLACKPINK took a while to acclimate to the massive stage of the Sahara, but once they did, it was bizarrely captivating and unsurprisingly well-choreographed; Rosalia, on the other hand, seemed in command the entire time, mixing flamenco with urban grooves and a crack team of backup dances at the Mojave.
Rosalia – Courtesy of Coachella
Other old favorites were back for more this year, as I’m reaching the point in my Coachella attendance where I’ve seen some artist two or three times. House producer Anna Lunoe has mastered the art of getting people nearing heat stroke to still get their groove on at the Sahara, even as the sun is still hours away from going down. Her countrymen, electro-pop group RUFUS DU SOL, had the prime penultimate set on the Outdoor stage, but at this point their set is something of old hat: workmanlike electro beats, a sea of rolling college girls on their boyfriends’ shoulders, impossibly cheesy lyrics. The magic of their jam-packed 2016 set at the Gobi was lacking, although you wouldn’t have felt that from the crowd, who loved every second of it.
Beach Fossils – Courtesy of Coachella
Lo-fi stalwarts Beach Fossils, meanwhile, are one of those bands you expect to see at Coachella every year, which is why it was surprising to realize I’d actually never had the chance to see them in the past ten years. Although their last album, 2017’s Somersault, is their most polished songwriting to date, their live set was lovably ramshackle, a compelling bit of drunken garage pop that touched all their old favorites. Frontman Dustin Payseur was in rare form, encouraging a mosh pit (yes, to Beach Fossils song), and bantering back and forth with the crowd all afternoon. It’s the perfect kind of afternoon festival set, one that doesn’t take itself too seriously and leans into the simple joy of playing guitar with your friends and a bunch of wasted strangers.
Even better was Kacey Musgraves pre-sunset show on the Main Stage, a sort of coronation for the recent Sputnikmusic Album of the Year winner (and, uh, the Grammys) with an adoring crowd laughing at every joke and bopping slightly to every song. Her backing band was one of the best I saw all weekend, and Kacey herself nailed nearly every single song on Golden Hour (I mean every single one: peep this setlist. If I had to nitpick, the vocal mix could have been a tad higher for the degenerates in the beer garden, and I would have loved to hear some old hits off Same Trailer Different Park, but I guess you can’t fault her for giving the people what they want. And closing with “High Horse” finally answered the question of why that giant disco ball was hanging over her stage. But you could definitely tell this wasn’t her standard Stagecoach (the country music festival that takes over the polo grounds the week after Coachella finishes up) – the crowd got a properly profane tongue-lashing when they screwed up the “yee-haw” call-and-response – “I didn’t say fuckin’ yee!”
After Kacey came a celebration of a different sort, as Anderson Paak & the Free Nationals came on the Main Stage just hours after his new album Ventura dropped. More souful and jazzy than Oxnard, the tracks from Ventura tended to play far better live than his last album, a situation helped by Paak and his band himself, who remain one of the best live acts in hip-hop. The man can sing, he can dance, he can rap, he can play the drummers better than most drummers I’ve seen. The rest of the Free Nationals are ace as well – there are few bands (in any genre) I would prefer to just watch jam all day and night.
U.S. Girls – Courtesy of Coachella
My favorite set of the night, though, was, as usual, an unexpected one. In this case, it was indie-pop group U.S. Girls and their heart and soul Meghan Remy closing the indie-oriented Sonora stage with a rollicking seven-plus piece band bringing Remy’s increasingly experimental arrangements and avant-garde dance moves to life. It’s always hard to tell how an artist will translate live, and even harder at Coachella, where every stage seems to have its own life. The dark, relatively small confines of the Sonora, though, were perfect for U.S. Girls’ funky grooves and intricate melodic interlocking, each band member seeming to relish in Remy going off script and allowing them their own individual moments to shine. It was tough to recognize individual songs, although the hallmarks from last year’s superb Poem were all in evidence, but the joy was in watching Remy and her band lose herself into these songs, dissecting and re-imaging them into new and different shapes. That’s how you do it live.
And, of course, there was Childish Gambino headlining the Main Stage, an act that I had some reservations about – is he really that big to be closing a festival like Coachella – but one that put most of those doubts to rest fairly quick. Few artists have been as confident as Donald Glover on the runway-sized Main Stage, playing to tens of thousands of people as if this was nothing more than another mid-size show for him. Imagine my surprise when I came back here after the weekend to find my man Rowan had already described the set – through the live stream, no less – better than I ever could. I’ll let him take it away.
Courtesy of Coachella
Quick Hits
Kacey Musgraves – Courtesy of Coachella
