Second verse same as the first at Coachella?
Coachella Weekend 2 starts this Friday, and if you’re thinking about going (or maybe just watching the livestream), here’s what I thought about each of last weekend’s headliners, who will all be back this weekend.
Friday: Radiohead and Father John Misty
The sound cut out three times on Radiohead in the course of their headlining set Friday night at Coachella. And all three times, they just kept playing, clearly unaware that the mains had stopped working after several sudden bursts of feedback and loud popping sounds.
I’m pretty sure a fan to my left summed up the mood when the third song disappeared completely. “My heart just exploded,” he shouted. The good news is, when the PA was working, they sounded amazing, from Jonny Greenwood’s heroic guitar work to Yorke’s haunting vocals.
Once they got it sorted out, the only glitches were intentional as Radiohead made their way through such classics as “Identikit,” “Everything in its Right Place,” “There There” and “Idioteque” before bringing the set to a triumphant,
unexpected close with “Creep,” a breakthrough hit they rarely play.
By the time the whole thing ended, they’d given the audience everything a person could’ve hoped from Radiohead in a festival setting. Father John Misty The was the kind of performance that can make and break an artist at the same time. If you liked what he was doing — and I loved what he was doing — this was all the confirmation you could hope that the Father John Misty persona Josh Tillman adopted for the “Fear Fun” album in 2012 is ready for the big leagues.
The set drew heavily on the just-released “Pure Comedy,” a darkly comic existential masterpiece that may not be the stuff of giant music festivals, especially if you wandered over from the Avalanches’ very funky party. But it worked, in part because the songs are just that good. The other part, of course, is that Tillman is playing a very charismatic and compelling character on stage.
Cast in the unenviable role of replacing Beyonce at Coachella, Lady Gaga rose to the occasion Saturday with a crowd-pleasing set that kept the party people in her corner through some lesser-known material before the knockout punch that was her two-song encore, “Poker Face” and “Bad Romance.” ‘Cause she slays? Of course she does. And she talked a lot, it turns out. But it always felt like she was making a connection. On a very human scale. It felt like we were getting less of the Gaga persona than the first half dozen times I’d seen her, as though Mother Monster had handed the spotlight back to Stefani, who just seemed happy to be headlining Coachella in her first appearance ever at the festival.
Later in the show, she told the crowd, “I’ve been so excited for this next part of the show because I’ve been trying to keep it a secret for so long. I’ve been in the studio” And with that, she shared a brand new single called “The Cure” that she later announced was now available on iTunes. The single had a finger-popping old-school soul-pop vibe and an infectious vocal hook that slipped into her upper register for one note in the middle of the line. Thundercat/Michael McDonald First Thundercat accomplishment: Packing the Mojave tent with party people for a very funky set that was probably closer in spirit and actual execution to improvisational jazz than funk.
Second Thundercat accomplishment: Bringing out Michael McDonald, who appears on Thundercat’s new album “Drunk” (alongside Kenny Loggins on “Show Me the Way,” a soulful highlight of the album).” McDonald got behind the keyboards to revisit his feature on “Show Me the Way” then stayed on stage to sing the Doobie Brothers’ classic “What a Fool Believes.”
Sunday: Kendrick Lamar and Hinds
Damn, as in he really crushed it at Coachella.
Lamar was in command of the stage before he even hit the stage, setting the scene with the first of three ridiculous yet oddly entertaining “Kung-Fu Kenny” videos. Then, he set off some explosions.
And when the smoke cleared, there he was, alone, rapping “DNA.,” the first of seven songs he performed from the justreleased “DAMN.” with conviction.
It was bold, putting the focus on an album people had at most only two days to wrap their head around before he hit the stage. But judging from the crowd, that was all the time most people needed.
If Future’s set on that same stage the night before felt like the weekend’s hottest hip-hop party, Sunday with Lamar felt like the coronation of a star who’s rapidly become the most ambitious hiphop star of any real commercial consequence since Kanye West. Hinds There was part of me that felt like rock and roll was dead — or, OK, dying (there’s no need for melodrama) — after witnessing the crowd react to Future at Coachella a day after Guided By Voices rocked a tiny fraction of those masses in a little room away from all the action in support of Robert Pollard’s 100th release. I call that part of me my soul.
But I was born again on Sunday when I rolled into the festival in time to catch one of my favorite new arrivals, Hinds. It’s not that they renewed my faith in rock and roll so much as they renewed my faith in rock and roll’s ability to thrive in situations like Coachella.
These four women from Madrid play rock and roll with an enthusiasm that can’t help but translate. It’s contagious.