Coachella strays from indie roots, moves toward electronic music

The sun set on the Empire Polo Club in Indio around 7 p.m. last Sunday. Almost on cue, Jeff Mangum, lead singer of Neutral Milk Hotel, began singing: “What a beautiful face/ I have found in this place/ That is circling all round the sun,” from the
song “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.” I’d waited for most of my adolescent life to catch Mangum live in action and, at Coachella, my wish was finally granted.

The setting was perfect for Neutral Milk
Hotel’s alt-folk set – the sun was creeping down behind the mountains, creating
silhouettes of the palm trees that lined the Empire Polo fields. The stunning art
installations that were dotted around the grounds were beginning to light
up: The scene was picture perfect. Yet no one watching Neutral Milk Hotel had their cameras or phones out.

Earlier, before the band’s set started, Mangum asked the audience to keep their electronics turned off for the entirety of the set. The screens on either side of the stage were also turned off. The camera crew who worked around the clock to stream the festival live on YouTube was not present.

“Let’s just be together right now,” Mangum said.

Everyone cheered and sang each word of every song in a mesmerized trance – myself included.

In an era when hashtagged videos and Instagrammed photos are uploaded as fast as Internet speed allows, Neutral Milk Hotel’s set felt more 1960s than 2014 – it was a welcome change of pace. Yet, just as Neutral Milk Hotel’s set wound down to a close, the main stage boomed with the bass of Calvin Harris’ opening song, bringing hoards of concertgoers right back to the present.

For me, this moment was a perfect microcosm of the festival as a whole. The early days of the Empire Polo Club saw Pearl Jam perform a concert as a protest against Ticketmaster, providing the foundations for the location as a feasible spot for a music festival; its beginnings were rooted in boycotting the corporate mess the music industry had become. Yet this year, Coachella’s largest crowds were reserved for big industry artists such as Pharrell, Lana Del Rey, Lorde and Calvin Harris. Despite being great musicians in their own right and musicians I definitely enjoy listening to, I find it hard to label them as anything less than top-40 superstars.

It was telling that Calvin Harris’ main-stage performance at around 8 p.m. drew a larger crowd than Sunday’s headliner, Arcade Fire, and the largest main-stage crowd since Tupac’s hologram in 2012. But this is 2014 and music is heading further and further away from the indie music that shaped the festival and into electronic music territory – people want to dance, see pyrotechnics and be wowed – bands like Neutral Milk Hotel were merely fulfilling niche interests.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the eclectic mix of artists on show, but I tried to stay away from the big-room electronic music that drew the festival’s largest crowds. I did spend a lot of time at the Do LaB and the Sahara tent, two stages known for their EDM heavy lineups. And two of my favorite sets this weekend, Darkside and Big Gigantic, were most definitely electronic groups. But they were different in that their music fused together electronic and live music, creating more synthetic sounds, conducive to what I’d like to see at a music festival like Coachella.

If I really wanted to see Calvin Harris, I’d have gone to the Electric Daisy Carnival – a festival tailored exactly to that genre of electronic music, but I was at Coachella. That, to me, meant exploring and catching bands I’d always wanted to see but hadn’t yet had the chance to, and discovering oddities that had been booked in the middle of the afternoon. Bands like Neutral Milk Hotel barely ever tour, and for me to justify missing them in favor of Alesso (playing at the same time), who tours and DJs at raves periodically every year, would have been difficult.

I went into the festival with a very clear game plan, and I attempted to stick to it for the most part. While I might have missed Gwen Stefani and Nelly perform with Pharrell, I did not regret it one bit, as I saw what was quite possibly the best live set I’ve ever seen in Darkside – an ambient electronic group I wasn’t missing come hell or high water.

Dave Harrington and Nicolas Jaar, the two members of Darkside, performed a 48-minute set of guitar-infused electronic music that was moody, atmospheric and utterly mind-blowing when you realized that they played only four or five actual songs, jamming and improvising in between and fusing the set into one continuous song.

While people were watching Calvin Harris – who I heard was fantastic – I was enjoying Big Gigantic and watching them perform Aloe Blacc’s “I Need a Dollar” with the 34-piece Shadow Hills High School marching band. And I guess that’s the beauty of Coachella – I truly believe that the way I did Coachella this year was the best way to do it – there’s too much going on to ever find out.

Favorite set: Darkside

From the minimalist lighting and smoke that created shadows of band members Jaar and Harrington, to the buildup and eardrum-crushing bass that followed – the set was perfect, and the only complaint would be that fans wanted to hear more. The chemistry between the two was apparent to all those who were watching. The songs were built up slowly to a crescendo and flowed seamlessly into one another. Even more impressive was that Jaar and Harrington managed to include moments of improvisation, allowing either Harrington’s guitar-playing or Jaar’s DJing to take center stage at different points. Those who are prepared to miss Pharrell should definitely take solace in the Gobi tent.

Most underrated set: Woodkid

Woodkid’s set was on the other end of the spectrum compared to Darkside’s bare-bones performance in that it was set up with a horn section, a drum section and a truly stunning visual display. To those unfamiliar with the music of Yoann Lemoine (Woodkid), it would be the ideal soundtrack to an epic movie, but it was interesting to see how well Lemoine managed to tailor his set to a music festival, creating faster, more danceable edits of his beautiful cinematic songs. Another reason to see the entirety of Woodkid’s set is to beat the hordes of patrons rushing to see Flume, another impressive Friday set – who was directly after and caused the Gobi tent to overflow.

Most overrated set: OutKast

It may be the easy option, but OutKast’s set was disappointing for fans hoping to view a performance befitting a group that has shaped popular music over the last two decades or so. One would hope that the set was underwhelming due to rustiness – OutKast has not performed Stateside since 2002 – rather than a lack of enthusiasm. But it seemed like Andre 3000 was disinterested as he walked around the stage with his back turned to the audience. Perhaps the group will have figured out the kinks and flaws of their performance in time for this weekend. It would be a shame for all involved if OutKast didn’t wow in person the way they wowed on records.