Ah Coachella Day 2. Welcome back kids to my Coachella 2009 series. The journey continues, as I explore the musical styling of some of my old favorite artists, and realize new ones. But I won’t give an arbitrary opening any further. Let’s get to the nitty.

Coachella Lesson #4: BRING A COOLER WITH YOUR OWN DRINKS IN IT! You might not be able to bring in your own drinks to the actual festival, but if you’re camping there, you will likely die of thirst by about 7am, no joke.

Renee, Dan and I hung out all day in the tent, saying hello to fellow campers as they passed by our shade, and charged our phones for the impending day’s madness. As you’ll learn next year when you go, there’s really not a whole lot to do on the festival grounds if your performers haven’t started yet, as you’ll want to save your energy (and lower back) for the rest of the evening. In the morning on the campgrounds, there are fun, childish activities like face painting and similar tomfoolery whilst having fun in the sun.

Around 6, the gang and I headed for the front gates of the grounds, where I met up with my upstate home girls, Alexis A. and Robyn D. We headed straight for the main stage, where we made camp in the cool grass, to await the sound check for TV on the Radio to be completed. While I don’t know what the exact set list for the band was, I had a few notable favorites. The band started off with a version of their first song, from their first album (The Wrong Way- Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes), complete with a horn section that was amazing.

Also on the set list was a faster version of one my personal favorites from Dear Science, Golden Age.

What I loved about this band is how much energy they gave the crowd, and the humor of front man Tunde Adebimpe. During the set he calmly told us whilst we fried in the sun:

“Alright guys, our mission during this set, is to bring the sun down”

And while I don’t have a great clip of it, they also performed Wolf Like Me, the hit single from their second album, Return to Cookie Mountain.  Katrina Ford of the Baltimore, MA band Celebration, came onstage to sing alone with Kyp and Tunde.

After the set, I moved along on my own, and stumble upon James Morrison‘s set in the Mojave Tent. I thought that maybe he wouldn’t be that great live, but the brotha can sing! I got a shoddy clip of If You Don’t Wanna Love Me for your pleasure.

There isn’t a lot to say about them really, but Thievery Corporation was a joy to listen to as well. Have a look at the band performing the end of El Pueblo Unido from their recent album Radio Retaliation.

Ok, but let’s talk about MIA just a bit. This is a girl who was onstage at the Grammys the due date of her pregnancy. This woman has guts. This had to be one of the most intense entrances to date that I’ve seen at a show. Her set can be described by a quote during her show:

“Im probably going to get kicked off the main stage for this one, but fuck it. I ain’t gonna change. “

She played a lot of her hits, including the ever so popular Paper Planes. Then she stressed the security out as much as possible by telling the crowd to come on stage. Disaster. I even saw a girl get tackled off the stage. Why no video you ask? Well I have tons for M.I.A., but Youtube won’t let me upload it. Ill try and have it up for my last piece of my series.

Before seeing The Killers, the nights headliner, I stopped in to get a picture of Jenny Lewis, and a short clip of Atmosphere performing Godlovesugly. I wish I got a clip of him literally saying

OK now all the hot people STFU” along to the beat while singing the chorus.

The best performance of the night went to The Killers. Honestly, at first, I didn’t think they deserved to be on the main stage. But these guys know how to put on a show. The crowd loved these guys, and the effects were great. Heres their setlist for the evening, and snippet of Somebody Told Me, Mr. Brightside, and my friends Bri O., Emily, and Helen N. dancing to Human (I would have recorded my favorite song of theirs, Jenny Was a Friend of Mine, but I was too busy playing air bass):

1.       Human

2.       Somebody Told Me

3.       For Reasons Unknown

4.       This Is Your Life

5.       Joy Ride

6.       Bling (Confession of a King)

7.       Shadowplay (Joy Division Cover)

8.       Smile Like You Mean It

9.       Spaceman

10.   A Dustland FairyTale

11.   Sam’s Town

12.   Read My Mind

13.   Mr. Brightside

14.   All These Things That I’ve Done

Encore:

15.   Bones

16.   Jenny Was a Friend of Mine

17.   When You Were Young

This was definitely a more exploratory night, as I was not afflicted with the massive back aches of the other nights.  Which brings me to Coachella Lesson #4: SIT DOWN EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE! It hurts like all hell at the end of the night if you don’t and it takes away from your experience, which I of course learned the hard way.

I played air bass from Jenny Was a Friend of Mine all the way back to my tent, and slept well; knowing that day 3 was going to bring me on last day of desert adventure. Stay tuned for the final part of my Coachella 2009 series.

Until next time my friends,

~Flak

P.S.  Here are links to Day 1 if you missed it, and Day 3 to continue right along.

I didn’t get it at first. I thought to myself “what is this amalgam of unintelligible sonic bantering?”. But that’s mostly because I didn’t get it. It took me a while to swallow down TV On The Radio’s EP Desperate Youths, Bloodthirsty Babies and actually remains, to this day my least favorite album of theirs. It wasn’t until Return to Cookie Mountain, their first LP, that I realized you cannot approach this band with the typical rubric of rock. To be quite honest, anything TV On The Radio isn’t lent to accessibility and anyone who says they liked any of their albums upon listening to its entirety is probably full of shit. But no indie rock nerd would ever admit that of course. Great bands are great from the beginning and instantly win over an audience with their greatness. This of course, is false. The truth of the matter is that any album worth it’s weight in awesomeness will never be an easy listen. You’ll shut it off half way through and wonder what you were thinking, buying into the hype. That is certainly how I felt. How could I buy into this indie-noise bullshit? I thought I was smarter than that. Well I’m not, but that is completely beyond the point, which is that Dear Science is the best piece of rock this band has come out with yet. That’s right kids, believe the hype…

TV On The Radio posing for behindthehype.com

Dear Science is the much awaited sophomore LP from the David Bowie School of Rock rockers, TV On The Radio. This band has gotten better and better and more articulate and focused with each album release. In conjunction with the album release, of course, they are on tour and played recently at the Wiltern in Hollywood. This isn’t the best venue they could have chosen-as some of you concert-goers may be well aware of-although it was a pretty good show nevertheless. The opening band, Dirtbombs, put on an excellent show and to be quite honest almost upstaged our headliners. TV On the Radio, however came out with full force and established momentum immediately.Dear Science frames that momentum, and the opening song Halfway Home charges forward with a pulsing hook and subdued vocal harmonics. One thing you notice immediately about Dear Science is the stronger melodies. The rhythms are less abstract, the vocals a little more competent and daring. There is a freshness, a crispness about this new album which gives it a liveliness that previous albums lacked. This album is overall much more musical than anything they’ve done before.

That being said, TV On The Radio still do some strange things sonically that can be difficult to duplicate on stage. Given the scope of instrumentation and tools they implement in their songs, their live set was well chosen; they managed to play many of their more popular songs(and do them justice) and avoided songs that may have been difficult to play from a technical standpoint. For instance they avoided many of their songs from their EP, except for “Staring At The Sun”. The most disappointing part of the concert was their lackluster performance of “Wolf Like Me”. The tempo was off and the guitars washed out (partly due to the bad acoustics at The Wiltern). Since this tour followed the release of their new album, they played many songs from it, including “Dancing Choose”, “Halfway Home”, and “Crying”. Overall though, TV On The Radio are great to see live. Tunde, the lead singer jumps flails and thrashes about with reckless abandon. They closed their set with “Staring At The Sun”, a single from their Desperate Youths… EP.

Their new album also displays more subdued, softer, lilting numbers, such as “Love Dog” and “Family Tree” which are minimalist in structure compared to the rest of the album, but are some of the most beautiful songs the band has written thus far. If you are a fan of TVOTR, you will not be dissapointed. the lighter funk-infused elements make this a fun album to listen to and goes down much sweeter than previous albums.It shows a more confident, capable band beginning to apex as musicians. If you are new to TVOTR, I would start off with this album. It’s poppy tendencies and catchy hooks make it a much more accessible album than their previous releases. This album is a little more free from the confines of overly-serious hyper-self analytical waxing that their previous releases (and many bands for that matter) are hindered by.

That being said, this lighter, airy album does not carry the serious weight of Return To Cookie Mountain. No single  holds the gravity and conveys the passion and fervor of “Wolf Like Me”, or “Staring At the Sun”. Production value has taken a front seat on this album and there is a heavier emphasis on string sections that lilt and float along with Tunde’s vocals. Dear Science isn’t the genre-crushing debut that Return To Cookie Mountain was, not the center of gravity in the art-rock genre that their previous albums were, but it’s hard to rock and move with so much gravity weighing you down anyway.