Coachella 2009 Review – Final Recap (Top 10/ Worst 5)

Words/photos by Travis Woods

As those who were there have certainly already formed their own opinions and, conversely, those who weren’t there are, at this point, surely sick of reading about it, my recap of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival will be as mercifully brief as someone as hyperbolic as myself can make it. It was hot, it was electrifying, it was exhausting, it was at times highly overrated while the overall lineup was often underrated, it was chaotic; most of all, even with brains simmering in the heat and livers swimming in too much booze, it was incredibly fun and, most of all, the music was almost always uniformly excellent, even moving.

Also, my day-by-day reviews of Coachella’s three-day weekend for Paste Magazine can be read here, here and here.

Top Ten Performances of Coachella 2009:

1. Leonard Cohen
2. My Bloody Valentine
3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4. TV on the Radio
5. Paul McCartney
6. The Hold Steady
7. Bob Mould Band
8. The Cure
9. Henry Rollins
10. Fucked Up (w/ No Age)

There’s no question of Leonard Cohen’s Friday evening set being the finest of the weekend—his otherworldly baritone sheathed in a ravaged rasp led the massive Outdoor Theatre crowd into the weekend’s most cathartic, devastatingly human moments of artistry and poetics, from the perfect opening lines of “Bird on a Wire” to his closing audience singalong of the immortal “Hallelujah,” performed just as a blood-red sun sank deep into a jagged, palm tree’d horizon and left the sky black. It was nothing short of magic.

Elsewhere, My Bloody Valentine ravaged ears with their monolithically beautiful wall of sound on Sunday night, which could—as was also the case with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ alternately freewheeling and elegiac set, in which Karen O., sliding from breathless coo to blood-geysered shriek, made her case as the most vital frontperson in modern rock—easily have been a Sunday night headliner. The same could be said of TV on the Radio, whose art-damaged swirl of multi-culti musical blurring was a crowd favorite early Saturday evening—the brass-blasted aural napalm of their frenetic performance was powerful enough to justify a headlining slot on Saturday, especially considering the superiority of their show/sound to that of the headlining Killers.

Friday night headliner Sir Paul McCartney (who was apparently in a band before Wings) gets the mid-point spot on the list—he would have been lower had it not been for the raggedly emotional and touching moments of his show, when he stripped himself of the Coachella Stage’s gigantism to reveal his mourning and anguish over the death of Linda McCartney (the 11-year anniversary of her death was that evening), only to movingly push through the pain with “Let It Be” and “Hey Jude,” two songs which, I can now say, become even more touching when you hear thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people chanting the lyrics along with yourself and Macca.

That said, he would have been a lot higher on the list were it not for the traditional McCartney mugging and cheese—at times, his in-between song banter (often quite bizarre exclamations of non-words strung together with real ones: “Coachella! Ah-whoo! Yeah, Coachella. Friday night, I tell you—hey, what are you—ahwaahhooo! Yeoow!”) and overblown moments (“Live and Let Die,” with its fireworks display for every chorus, was just a bit too Vegas for me) were just too much. But he’s a Beatle, and the fact that he has written some of the greatest rock and pop songs in the history of pop music (many of which he played on Friday night), should earn him a spot on everyone’s Best of Coachella 2009 list.

The Hold Steady played the first great set of the weekend, at least out of the ones that I saw. Energetic, engaging and fearless, they deserved a later set-time on a bigger stage Friday night, as did the Bob Mould Band on Saturday, led as they were by a punk rock legend (and it didn’t hurt that their set was one of the most frenzied and fun of the weekend). The Cure scores points for not only being The Cure, but for the sheer, marathon’d energy they packed into their three-hour Sunday night set (which was eventually unplugged by Coachella management), one that was buttressed by a killer setlist and near-perfect, crystalline sound.

He may not have played any songs, but it was music to my ears: the bile-shot hilarity of former Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins’ bitter diatribes and humorous spoken-word political rants were by turns, caustic, offensive and true. Finally, watching hardcore punk act Fucked Up create a near-riot by covering Black Flag’s “Nervous Breakdown” with L.A.’s own No Age was an indescribable sight, one punctuated by the image of blood-soaked frontman Father Damian/Pink Eyes hurling his large body into a swirling and violent pit of bodies as a sacrificial offering, only to hear him promise, moments later, to sign autographs outside the tent if he wasn’t taken to a hospital first.

Honor Roll:

Special mention should also be made of the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Sunday afternoon set. As bathed in notoriety as they are (thanks in no small part to the DiG! documentary film on the band’s volatile and violent relationship with the Dandy Warhols and fans), the BJM turned in a best-of set that seemed to be a conscious repudiation of their reputation, one that sought to make a case for the songs and songs only. And on that score they succeeded, especially on the Dandys-bashing “Not if You Were the Last Dandy on Earth,” which featured Dandy Warhols bassist/keyboardist Zia McCabe on maracas.

I’m not particularly a fan of M.I.A., but her hyperactive and crowd-pleasing set on Saturday night was essentially a headlining show in terms of energy and attitude. The audience seemed to agree, as massive chunks of them disappeared as soon as M.I.A. did.

Top Five Disappointments of Coachella 2009:

1. The Killers
2. Ida Maria
3. X (my fault)
4. Fleet Foxes (Thievery Corporation’s fault)
5. $$

I’ll give them this—the Killers really did seem to try their hardest to put on a stellar headlining set for the Saturday night crowd, and the fervent fans at the very front of the audience seemed thrilled. But when the other two headliners are a Beatle and one of England’s greatest post-Beatles rock bands, the band that wrote “Mr. Brightside” can’t help but sound paltry by comparison. Add to that the fact that the acts who came immediately before the Killers (TV on the Radio, M.I.A.) both turned in superior concerts, and you’re left feeling, as has been suggested to me, that the Killers were simply thrown into the headlining mix to maintain some credibility while attracting a ‘bro-rock’ contingent of listeners.

Whatever the case, and as hard as they tried—seriously, I’ve written that no one worked harder on stage that night than Brandon Flowers—the Killers are a band that, at this point in their career, simply lack the dramatic heft or discography to close out a day at Coachella. Given the retro vibe generated with big sets by Paul McCartney, The Cure, My Bloody Valentine, Morrissey, Leonard Cohen, X, Bob Mould Band, Public Enemy and Booker T. & the Drive By Truckers, would it have been that out-of-place to score a headlining show by U2 or Springsteen?

I don’t get Ida Maria—no, scratch that. I get it, I just don’t like her, sounding as she does like Kate Nash backed with Katy Perry’s band—big, PR-driven bubblegum pop disguised as something deeper thanks to lyrics that move beyond typical drivel like “You and me, boy/ Oh bay-beee…”. And while she’s got big hooks and lots of attitude coupled with some snarky lyrics, her set on Saturday afternoon felt like nothing but a series of punchy, interchangeable (however catchy) choruses strung together with a lot of EQ’d and radio-produced guitars. On the other end of the spectrum, classic punk/rockabilly act X apparently played a frenzied and phenomenal set on Sunday night, one that I unfortunately missed, caught up as I was watching the hypnotizing sonic carnage created by Karen O. and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Two complaints go towards festival management: First, I’ve never put on a massive music fest, but if I did, I would probably avoid placing a quiet, austere group like the Fleet Foxes on a stage adjacent to the main Coachella Stage when a group like the Thievery Corporation is endlessly generating chunky beats and world-tinged tropicalia through the hulking main soundsystem. It only served to make the Foxes’ set sound like the worst remix ever. And second, I know festival prices are high, but having to spend nearly $15 dollars for a cheeseburger and a Coke seems a little excessive, especially considering the fact that one is forced to either pay up or not eat at all (no outside food was allowed entry into the festival, thanks to vigorous pat-downs and bag-searches at the entrance gates).

Those minor squabbles aside, Coachella 2009 felt like nothing but a pure success. Yes, I could complain about the timing—April in the desert is hot—some of the more boggling schedule conflicts (I’m still smarting over missing X and the Silversun Pickups) and technical issues (the Moz couldn’t hear his own monitors; the Airborne Toxic Event’s sound was hampered by a muddy mix) but, in all, Coachella offered up an extremely varied three days of vital and visceral music that spanned nearly all of rock/pop/punk/hip-hop’s past 50 years…seriously when you get to see McCartney playing “Hey Jude,” My Bloody Valentine resurrect whole swaths of Loveless and Leonard Cohen dancing, in addition to a host of new and exciting young bands, all within a 72-hour span, you know that someone’s done something right. And that you’re very, very lucky for having seen it.

April 22, 2009 | Filed Under Coachella 2009, Concert Reviews, Exclusive Features 

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