Coachella '11 In Review

The 2011 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival may have been my eighth visit to the hot and dusty polo fields of Indio, but there was a first for me this weekend – the first time I hit Friday all by myself instead of with my long-time running buddy Brian Siers – so it stood a bit apart from all the previous extravaganzas. (Of course, one other event helped separate Coachella 2011 from the pack – the brief Saturday night hang-out in the hotel's 24-hour hot tub with a dude who turned out to not have any swim trunks on, which he claimed were “stolen” in some undisclosed fashion.) For other perspectives that include pictures, go here and here and here, but if you want my text take, read on.

So as Friday unfurled, I oddly found myself on my schedule, with only myself as company (aside from the estimated 60+K people around me). I started the day with the U.K. band Hurts, and while their manicured synth-pop was catchy enough, they brought to my jaded mind any number of anonymous mid/late ‘80s British bands (Johnny Hates Jazz, Breathe, Cutting Crew, Bros, fully buttoned dress shirts with no ties, etc.) which, depending on your love for those bands and/or that look, will give you some insight into Hurts. (Of course, I loved 'em.) After that, the Mojave tent entertained the latest version of Stax-era soul (Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears) and Manchester-doom-inspired synth-wave (Cold Cave); as I’m a fan of both those sub-genres, their yin and yang was quite appealing.

From there, I did some sampling: a bit of The Drums (a sprightly echo of other late ‘80s Brit groups), a dab of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (a Wu-Tang-like hip-hop collective that, like the Wu, seemed to have a strong dross-to-diamonds ratio), and a pinch of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart (who have shifted their musical influences from ‘80s bands to ‘90s bands in a not-so-terrible-as-it-sounds fashion). I wanted to see the whole set of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, but the slot quickly turned into comedy/farce: after alternately sleepwalking through his vocals and complaining vehemently about the on-stage sound, group mastermind Ariel Pink stormed off the stage, threatening to end the set. After being cajoled back on stage, Pink proceeded to stand still without singing a note while his band ran through three songs, which as an experience ran the gamut from funny to annoying to boring back to funny. Obviously, while this was unfolding, the exodus out of the Gobi tent to anywhere but the Gobi tent was rich and vibrant, and even when Pink decided to offer up his flat affected vocals, the implosion had long since reached fruition.

I waited for that shit storm to clear by checking out some of the DFA-approved party music of YACHT, followed by the full energetic set of Kele (who sang a mix of solo work and reconfigured Bloc Party tracks). Sadly, momentum was lost by the twenty-minute delay to the start of Marina and the Diamonds, and while she was pleasing in a Kate Bush + Girls Aloud kind of way, her set was cut short due to the old standby of “technical difficulties.” From there, it was off to Crystal Castles for the majority of their set, then over to the last bit of the Aquabats before settling in for a triumphant set from Robyn, who filled the Mojave tent with plenty of should-have-been-hits. On my way out the door after over eleven hours, I heard The Chemical Brothers running through their hits, a delightful soundtrack to my trek to the farthest reaches of the parking lot.

Saturday was the day that Brian finally got into town (5am, to be exact), so together we hit up the early shows in the Gobi tent (The Joy Formidable, Cults, The Tallest Man On Earth, The Radio Dept.) until we ventured out halfway through the set of Glasser, which would have been a better fit for a late-evening come-down rather than a mid-afternoon "intimate" (read: "sleepy") set. We did the walkabout from stage to stage, seeing snippets of performances by Two Door Cinema Club (who should have been playing a bigger stage at a better time, so large was the crowd and so deep was the love), and the Canadian double-shot of Broken Social Scene and The New Pornographers. At that point, we parted ways for a bit so I could watch the last of Yelle (French synth-pop) and the full set of Elbow, the symphonic swooners who commanded the stage like the pros they are from start to finish. Then it was a brief swoop over to see some of The Kills before settling in to Wire, where old folks like me (and not many others) were in abundance. A quick pop next door for the tail end of The Swell Season (and man, does the Oscar-winning “Falling Slowly” still sound fantastic live) set the stage for the real main event for me of the entire weekend: a rare performance from Suede, back together to soak up some of that reunion dough.

But first, some context: I’ve waited eighteen years to see Suede in person. When they toured America on their ’93 debut (that I played over and over and over, enamored with their Morrissey-meets-Ziggy vibe, a perfect antidote to the monolithic grunge and happy house sounds of the time), I had to turn down a “dinner with Suede” promotion that I was invited to due to a snowstorm, and for some reason I couldn’t make their Detroit stop on the Dog Man Star tour, so I had always assumed that I would never see one of my fave mid-‘90s bands. And yet, here they were in front of me, reconstituted (well, all except for the original guitarist on those first two records, a gent named Bernard Butler) and vital, shaking their tits to the hits, to quote one of their lyrics. It was "Animal Nitrate" and "So Young" and "Trash" and "Pantomime Horse" and "She" and "Metal Mickey" and in what seemed like moments, it was over, a deep sweet moment never to be recaptured, exactly what Coachella delivers time and time again. Sure, Arcade Fire closed out the main stage after Suede, and AF brought the hits and album tracks which mark them as the Next Big Thing That’s Already Arrived (if such a thing exists in music anymore), but after the highs of Suede, there was nothing left to do but head for home.

(Again, a brief aside about the “home” bit – Brian and I made for the all-night hot tub after getting back to the hotel, only to find a dude with the demeanor of the Dude already there. We made some idle small talk for a bit, but were rather shocked to find that our new dude friend was starkers. He claimed that someone “stole” his trunks, but we suspect that he was a homeless dude in for a late night dip. But he never forgot his manners; at one point, he did ask if we wanted to go to his side of the hot tub, where the jets were stronger. [We declined.])

Sunday brought early full sets from Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie (and “You got that right, Dave!” which proved to be the catchphrase of the weekend) and '80s revivalists Twin Shadow along with brief hints of Green Velvet and Delorean and MEN. There was also the return of the party people in CSS, the coming-out party for Brit chick belter Ellie Goulding (who could have used a bit more polish), the pounding synths of Health, and the perfunctory and unnecessary reunion of Death From Above 1979. After those preambles, I watched a full hit-laden set from a joyous and vigorous Duran Duran, followed by bits from Chromeo and Phantogram and The Strokes, until the closing one-two punch of PJ Harvey (still going, rich and intense as ever, nearly twenty years into her career) and Kanye West (who had the best show of the entire fest, with fireworks and cranes and chick dancers wearing bird costumes and sparks and Bon Iver and swagga and all that).

And man, that was enough, wasn’t it? It’s always an embarrassment of riches when you watch over 30 hours of music over three days, and so one reaches the saturation point during the course of such a musical banquet. (100 degree days and unrelenting body odor from the fellow patrons doesn't help.) And while the wristband system was new this year, I got in and out of the parking lot with ease, and the venue felt a lot less crowded with some long-needed expansion of the grounds. As always, I was bummed that I missed some acts, but that's what Coachella is: a different experience each year. And while this year wasn't the best, it wasn't the worst. It will never be Altamont, no matter how many naked homeless guys you hot tub with. (I'm hoping that number is zero next year.)