Another year, another desert-centric endurance test masquerading as a festival. But despite the oppressive heat and surplus of bros, it was still pretty good fun. Here’s a brief run-down of what I saw:
Deer Tick: Raucous country-rock, lead singer crowd-surfing abilities deserve kudos.
The Avett Brothers: Rock ‘n roll cellists FTW! Very energetic, very impressive.
Dillinger Escape Plan: When you’re dying of hay fever and ready to drop from heatstroke and lack of sleep, DEP provide the perfect adrenalin shot to keep you going for hours to come.
The Specials: No Ghost Town, but skanking in the sunset to “A Message To Rudy” was one of my festival highlights.
Them Crooked Vultures: Scintillating. Three rock gods, all competing to be the most badass- what else could you possibly want?
LCD Soundsystem: Too much babbling from James Murphy, and the new material fell a bit flat, but All My Friends was as brilliant as ever.
Vampire Weekend: Meh. OK, I suppose.
Fever Ray: Atmospheric, laser-heavy weirdness from Karin Dreijer-Andersson. Vocals too low in the mix, but still very cool.
The Almighty Defenders: The Black Lips/King Khan super group are wasted in a 1pm slot, but their happy-clappy revivalist gospel-punk still provides a fun start to the day.
Portugal The Man: I like these guys, but I can’t reallydeal with two-hour guitar solos at 2 in the afternoon.
Camera Obscura: Workmanlike as always, but there’s no denying “Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken”
Beach House: Not their best show, but the beefed-up drums and added volume come across well.
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes: Sound was mediocre, but fantastic to watch. Need to see them in a more intimate setting.
Faith No More: EPIC. And Mike Patton was blatantly the best front man of the festival.
Muse: Still think their last couple of albums are balls, but “Plug In Baby” and “New Born” made me so incredibly happy.
Tiesto: Ravin’ it up like it’s 1999.
The Middle East: Pretty good music to lie on the grass to in the early-afternoon sun.
The Soft Pack: Didn’t leave much of an impression, to be honest.
Owen Pallett: Some of his material remains too obtuse to work in a festival setting, but his more melodic pieces came across wonderfully. Lewis Takes Off His Shirt remains as sublime as ever.
Deerhunter: Bit dull. Definitely not a festival band.
Jonsi: Incredible. A bit more stripped down then I was expecting, but his backing band were superb, his vocals were as breathtakingly ethereal as ever and the sun setting over the mountains proved the perfect backdrop to the ear-shattering post-rock climax.
Phoenix: Only caught a few songs, but my interest was certainly piqued. Will have to check them out properly sometime…
Pavement: Excellent. They’re one of those bands that on the surface appear to be slapdash, but are actually pretty tight, and they looked like they were enjoying themselves too.
Thom Yorke: To be honest, I think my enjoyment of this was more to do with Flea’s awesomely funky slap-bass than the melodramatic whining of the wonk-eyed one. Although that said, there was one loop-dependent solo song I really loved.
Gorillaz: Bit of an anti-climax, really. None of the 3D frippery or big name guest-stars you’d expect, it seemed a bit of a shoestring production for such an innovative band.
No comments:
Post a Comment