3. Review: Coachella 2022

I’m currently staring at five pages of notes and capsule reviews compiled over last weekend, when we broke out the projector and settled in for three straight nights of livestreams from the Coachella Valley. Somewhere along the way, however, I lost sight of what I truly appreciate about this event: watching artists from across the globe strive to show off their best stuff at the biggest content curation festival in the world, from the comfort of my living room. No sunscreen or specially acquired festival outfits required. No anxiety-inducing crowd crushes to navigate. Bathroom breaks at my leisure. Snacks and supplements galore. Couchella 2022.

The livestream for Coachella is historically a mess, but I’m sure I’m getting my money’s worth, regardless. Here are some random thoughts and notes from the performances I watched.

The Livestream

It’s pretty clear that the Coachella creative team had no cohesive concept design for their interstitial segments on the YouTube streams this year. Brief ‘documentary’ clips with superfans and those who have built careers around the festival play out in weird, fetishistic ways, and the overwhelming mood is that the last few years were a tragedy to anyone who was yearning for Indio in the spring. Poorly animated dancing cacti set to stock music loops are one thing, but interspersed with twee Scrabble and jigsaw puzzle bumpers and incessant ads for hair care products nearly made the moments between actual performance footage nearly unbearable. On top of that, most of the short artist interviews were dull and lifeless. A lot of time was spent on ensuring viewers understood the diversity of performers at Coachella in 2022, and for as well and good as that is, so little time was devoted to actually discussing their work that every artist was disenfranchised by the whole tepid exercise. 

The Performances

Friday

Ari Lennox – caught the last half of her set while getting the projector set up. I don’t know any of her songs beyond “Shea Butter Baby,” but she appears to be a consummate professional.

Carly Rae Jepsen – Canadian national icon, natch. Bullshit that she was regulated to the tiny Mojave stage, but the crowd seemed primed for her in a way that was generally unmatched throughout the rest of the weekend (cheers to the dude screaming “CARLY SLAY JEPSEN!” right after her first song). Felt like I detected a bit of a drawl in her vocals early on, but it didn’t translate into a full folk outing on her new single like the artwork for “Western Wind” might have suggested (big Folklore vibes) – instead, that track was pure SoCal indie pop. Carly always seems to be having a blast with her band on stage, and it was wonderful to see that in this performance as well. 

The Marias – yikes to the Britney Spears cover, but I was pretty into the rest of the set. According to their Spotify bio, the lead singer and drummer live on a commune in the Hollywood Hills, and yeah, they sound like they live on a commune in the Hollywood Hills. 

Slowthai – CRJ’s set seemed plagued with in-ear monitor issues (or, at the very least, she kept adjusting them throughout), and it was clear from the jump that things weren’t technically working for Slowthai’s set – honestly, it felt like a lot of artists were plagued with tech issues throughout the weekend. It also seemed like a majority of the crowd was there for whoever was up after, so he got rude and lewd and (wisely) stacked the front half of his set with bangers, including several tracks from the A-side of TYRON (“Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury” braggadocio hits different on a sea of confused faces under the Gobi tent). Broke a wireless mic by slamming it against his forehead, absolute nightmare fuel for a sound tech. Closed his set, shirtless and frowning, with a solid performance of “Doorman,” then commanded his DJ to play Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” in its entirety. Legend.

Arcade Fire – so, full disclosure: I didn’t realize Win and Will were different people until I hit up their Wiki page during their set. It’s been a very long time since I’ve given any kind of shit about this band. My wife turned to me at one point: “You mean to tell me that Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem aren’t the same band?” Well, I’ve never seen them in the same place at the same time. Reflektor has been brutally (rightfully?) memoryholed, “Everything Now” and its ABBA worship are maybe the peak for this group, and I doubt I’ll muster the energy to be any sort of excited for their upcoming album. 

Lil Baby – at this point we’re just waiting for Harry, but I liked the set design here. 

Phoebe Bridgers – [snoring face emoji]

Louis The Child – this is when the psilocybin capsule started to kick in. Their Spotify bio says they’ve only recently started doing “live production” for their sets, which is hilarious. Hiring the whitest kids you know to DJ your foam party, I guess.

Harry Styles – Harry Fucking Styles, man. An icon-defining performance. Have to imagine that touring has taught him to keep his vocal register low; he successfully avoided every falsetto riff until his duets with Shania and saved the pipes to go off on set closer “Sign of the Times.” The whole thing was just completely infused with joy, and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about the trailer to Baz’s new Elvis biopic that we saw before Ambulance the other day, how dour and traumatic it all seemed… it was delightful to marvel in performance and spectacle and really fucking solid songwriting. Anyway. Always hitching up those pants, so many sequins. I love the new tracks, can’t wait for the album, and the four-track finale of “Late Night Talking” to “Watermelon Sugar” to “Kiwi” to “Sign of the Times” was sublime. This is Harry’s House, we’re all just living in it.

Saturday

Wallows – boring, competent, unengaging SoCal indie pop with the guy from 13 Reasons Why.

Emo Nite – I’m sure I know someone who is legitimately upset about this, but then again, I appreciate the bit where two dudes in Dickies shorts and bowling shirts emblazoned with the words “WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE” across the front play OG versions of My Chemical Romance songs for a sizable crowd. Which begs the question: why wasn’t Ye’s abandoned Sunday night slot offered to MCR? The mid-2000s shift where pop-punk and EDM began to collide was mostly awful, but the apex of that joint venture was Fall Out Boy’s “Young & Menace,” a track likely underplayed at emo ‘nites’ across this godforsaken country. In conclusion: Papa Roach is not emo.

Japanese Breakfast – the gong is fun! Band sounds just like the recordings, vibe lost after two songs.

Cuco – I’m bored. 

88Rising – a bit disjointed but a solid sampler of the 88rising roster. Really enjoyed Milli’s energy and I support any song about mango sticky rice. 

Rina Sawayama – my wife: “it’s giving Evanescence.” As for myself, I hold fewer roles in higher esteem than being part of a duo back-up dance crew for a pop star. Can imagine few things as exhausting as that requirement for constant movement. Rina’s lead guitarist has significant Soccer Mommy vibes.

Caroline Polachek – watched her perform the TikTok song.

Brockhampton – all good things must come to an end, indeed. Saturation heavy set for the OGs – not really my favorite parts of their discography, but allows for a slew of Dom verses (solo BH albums ranked by most excited to least excited for: Dom, Matt, Joba, Bearface, Merlyn). Still going hard on “DISTRICT” even though it always sounds like a clusterfuck live. We had tickets to see them locally before their tour was canceled, bringing the count for ‘albums we’ll never see toured’ to four (Roadrunner, Science Fiction, Notes On A Conditional Form, Radical). Fingers-crossed they’ll stream the entire week two performance as well, with some later-era cuts.

Disclosure – heard the Sam Smith song and the Khalid song.

Flume – set intro might as well have been baby’s first power electronics set.

Danny Elfman – 50 Shades OSTs > Nightmare Before Christmas OST.

Rich Brian – I respect Brian because he’s willing to go out on a huge, empty stage and put steps in across the entire square footage.

Megan Thee Stallion – earning her rap bonafides on the Coachella stage, if that’s even a thing anymore. A clean, consistent, and strong set with really smart stage design and tons of energy.

Billie Eilish – “NDA” and the beat-heavy When We All Fall Asleep… tracks go super hard. I imagine trying to dial in Billie’s mic gain is like flying an airplane for a sound tech. Billie has restructured conventions of pop whether or not you’re a fan of hers; where her 2019 set was left-field reinvention, this year’s set was the establishment of the new pop benchmark. Somehow tracks from both albums are seamlessly blended into the set list; “You Should See Me In A Crown” into “Billie’s Bossa Nova” sounds impossible on paper but is executed flawlessly here. The whole Gorillaz bit was a minor fiasco and derailment of the set’s momentum. “Happier Than Ever” is a blast to watch Billie and Finneas rock out to (*sibling magic*), but the AV team went a bit batshit with the video effects here. 

Sunday

Yola – absolute grooves in what I can only imagine to be the unbearable afternoon heat. 

Run The Jewels – [extremely Bernie voice] “yeah, okay.”

Beabadoobee – I haven’t seen a lot of live footage of Bea & Crew, mostly stage performances from the pandemic (like her release concert for Fake It Flowers), but my initial thought was “yikes, they seem pretty stiff up there.” A few tracks in, however, I had to second-guess myself – everything was dialed-in musically (although, both guitars were criminally low in the mix, super unfortunate), all players posturing on stage with some sort of gen-z ironic detachment, which makes sense given the heavy 90s influence on Bea’s songs since her debut LP. “Talk” is a great track that has some sort of earworm in the chorus that reminds me of a late 90s Christian alternative band/sound (I want to say Switchfoot, but I’m also pretty sure that’s not it at all). 

Vince Staples – maybe my favorite set design of the weekend. Vince is so unafraid to engage with and clown on his audience, demands they know who they’re seeing and what they’re in for. Constantly underrated, always incredible. “Norf Norf” has been stuck in my head for days.

Maggie Rogers – switched over for the last segment of her set, and was genuinely blown away. I’d listened to Heard It In A Past Life when it was released, but never came back around to it afterwards. Lots of Lilith Fair/Sarah McLachlan energy in the set, which is honestly what I’d want more of from Coachella instead of buzzy dreampop bands on the poster because of the algorithm. Also immensely fascinating to me: Rogers is currently enrolled at Harvard Divinity School, "studying the spirituality of public gatherings and the ethics of power in pop culture."

Dave – big sincere energy; I have to guess this is one of his largest crowds outside of the UK. Brought a kid up on stage and seemed genuinely impressed that he knew all the words to his song. Hopefully this Coachella showcase continues to support his visibility stateside. 

Doja Cat – if any one performance were to be considered “the greatest” over the entirety of the weekend, it would be this one. Doja Cat is unstoppable, a consummate performer, never shying away from the mic even as she busts out intense choreography for song after song. I would be surprised if a headlining slot wasn’t in her future come next album cycle. 

Swedish House Mafia X The Weeknd – we fell asleep at some point during this. The Weeknd is always solid but it felt obvious that everything for this slot fill was considered last minute; his Super Bowl performance was leaps and bounds more entertaining than this. Also, if you’ve made it this far, you have to now deal with my final dad joke: Swedish House Mafia is just a euphemism for IKEA Department Managers. There. Couchella 2022 wrapped. 

2. Review: Standard Grey "Particular Sites and Species" (2022)

Earlier this year I made a commitment to myself to listen to more new music in 2022 from Bandcamp, over Spotify. 

This was not necessarily a New Year’s resolution. (The ‘resolution,” if there ever was one*, was to leave more capsule reviews on Bandcamp release pages for albums I enjoyed, and with regards to that I have resolutely failed.) Instead, I was giving myself a challenge to actually listen to more of the hundreds of albums I wishlist on Bandcamp annually, never actually getting around to sampling. I started to do this more at work, on administrative days, when I’d be glued to my computer regardless to perform a dozen-plus required tasks. 

Standard Grey’s Particular Sites and Species, released in late January 2022 on Belgian label Audio. Video. Atmospheres., arrived in the dead of winter, just as I was committing myself to my Bandcamp routine. I remember being immediately engrossed within the early tracks, replying to emails under fluorescent light, soothed by the burbling textures and sweeping ambiance. But at work, on call for support at a moment’s notice, the volume was kept low, and I was listening with wired EarPods at a very low volume.

This had become something I knew I’d have to adapt to – listening to harsh noise through EarPods. There were certain artists I knew I wouldn’t be able to fuck with over earbuds; I wasn’t going to be sampling the latest high-frequency squelches of Slit Throats or a frenetic Incapacitants reissue, those would wait until I could strap on decent cans and listen at a comfortably immersive volume. But wall noise with foundational low-end and tape saturated slop? Hell yeah. It was like discovering a sweet spot, sounds I knew I could sample at low volume over earbuds, that I could always give another listen to with the Audio-Technica’s if I found myself intrigued. 

Besides that, maybe part of what comes along with age is knowing just exactly what it is I want to hear, in any given moment. I like being surprised, but something sonically has to grab me up front and make me want to listen more closely. I’m getting to the point where I can’t justify myself engaging with art if I’m not enjoying it, no matter its ‘critical acclaim,’ no matter how many people I follow on Instagram are raving about it in my Stories feed. While I reserve this stance most strongly for television (where if I can’t identify a good reason to give a shit about anything I’m seeing by the end of the pilot, we’re done here), I’ve been applying it to music more often. I’ll eat crow on an album or two throughout the year after giving it a second shot, but I usually know within a track or two, or five to ten minutes into a noise wall or ambient track, if I’m down to invest in the album as a whole. 

That said, revisiting Particular Sites and Species with real headphones now presents a sonic pallet far more sinister than previously determined over EarPods. The previously tranquil ‘burbles’ and tape-warped drones, suddenly in full fidelity, are viscerally organic and technicolor in scope. Both “Idling I” and “II” have malicious intent coursing through their runtimes, juxtaposed with field recordings of birds in the former track, and sharp, rustling movement in the latter. 

“Disappearing Shore II” has a cinematic scope, evoking horror amongst its layers. As sounds akin to giallo synths swell and fade, the track ends with the gentle crackle of raindrops. Or perhaps the runout of a decades-old vinyl record, needle skipping back into a locked groove ad infinitum. Whatever the source, Standard Grey has rendered it clearly; the mire of tape saturation that could be heard throughout their 2021 release Handling (Modern Concern) is rarely present. Contrasted with the echoing, hard-panned drones of “Wraiths” (from Recent Tape Works/Measurement, 2020, Falt), which eventually give way to summoning bells and chimes, whispers swirling and nails scraping across every surface, everything on Particular Sites and Species has a natural familiarity to it, yet is composed to evoke something closer to an assemblage by Joseph Cornell than a collage of found, manipulated sounds. 

The tape concludes with the nearly 18-minute title track, everything prior a precursor to the consummate voyage of this body of work. The listener is pulled along through streams and mud, unwittingly moving deeper into a forest of caustic soundscapes. A brief solace arrives just after the 6-minute mark – a low drone like a cello refocuses the track and propels the listener into its second half. All sense of calm is temporary, however, and by the 11-minute mark this drone has dissipated into a crumbling, boiling morass. There’s little to grab ahold of here, until another texture moves to overtake; high frequency whines give way to a vibrato blanket of feedback, competing with familiar samples from earlier in the track until everything slowly begins to fade to black, sinking deep into the mire. 

The physicality of sound can be overwhelming, at times; these days, my body often feels on the edge of nausea, and often I have to pause to catch my breath during a particularly immersive listening session. I have a lot of admiration for those who can throw on a HNW release during a car ride; the vehicle my wife and I share has so much engine noise at certain speeds there’s no way I can determine what sounds are coming from the speakers and what’s happening under the hood. But at least, in those moments, the sonic violence is consistent, and feels controllable. A lack of dynamics can act like a weighted blanket, keeping you pinned to the ground. Standard Grey has no such interest in static exercise. It’s clear that the real horror is in not knowing what’s coming next, the sudden bait-and-switch of composition and emphasis. The natural world provides enough for the curious listener to be in awe of, raptured by its blithe terror. 

[*Just today while guiding my stepson through a 5th grade English lesson, I learned that a phrase like this (additional information about the subject of a sentence that is completely unnecessary, identifiable by the commas surrounding it) is called an ‘appositive,’ which is a word I had genuinely never heard before. California English language curriculum in the late 90s was severely lacking in the grammar department.]

1. Review: The Armed "Adult Swim Festival '21" (2022)

No topic is broached more often in my household (that I share with my wife and stepson, and two cats) than that of health, in all its permutations. Mental health, certainly; more intensely and intentionally now as we summit the mountaintop of accumulating stressors from the last two years. But physical health as well, and especially for myself, as a recent medical diagnosis has caused a very sudden and radical shift in my daily routines. Specifically, with regards to my diet and the amount of physical activity I engage in. 35 years of getting to eat generally whatever I wanted nearly whenever the hell I wanted to with impunity was a pretty solid run. I shouldn’t complain as much as I am, or appear to be; eventually, it was bound to catch up to me.

Meals and food interconnect with my relationship to live music in so many of my memories. From the concerts I attended in college that always ended at a 24-hour Denny’s, to the countless burritos consumed in solitude all the way across town after band practice. Shows in bars with terrible vegan food. Shows in bars with incredible vegan food. Hanging out with bands at In-n-Out after a show. Going out for meals with touring friends after load in, before doors, or breakfast the morning after before they’d hit the road to the next town. Et cetera. It felt, in the first days after the diagnosis, like the end of an era.

So now I find myself considering my physical health, in the kitchen, fully preparing myself a meal on a stovetop multiple times per day, and I should note that this (particularly in the evening) is the time I can best devote to Deep Listening To New Music I Want To Experience At A Particular Volume™ (often with Audio-Technicas’s on, but also more often than not with that little bluetooth adapter thing attached to it, which is probably from an audiophile perspective negligible if I’m just streaming shit off Spotify but, you know, it’s the isolation/’noise cancellation’ that does the trick). I’d been feeling in a rut with new music come mid-March – nothing was really clicking for me, and I found myself often gravitating towards new harsh noise or ambient releases over almost anything else. Nothing popping up in Spotify new releases or my Discover page on a Friday morning was sparking any sort of inspiration or extended interest. At least, with noise, I could allow the textures to wash over me while pushing frozen vegetables around in a pan.

But – it’s the end of Q1, and the running list I’ve kept of all the new music I’ve listened to has a dozen albums on it that I’ve claimed to have loved, released since the start of the calendar year. I figured it was high time to go back and spin them again. Top of the list: The Armed Adult Swim Fest ‘21, a 4 song live recording of four songs from their incredible 2021 LP Ultrapop. 

And I’m like maybe 15 seconds in, already loving with the sound of the toms banging aside my skull, realizing I’m about to be adding these tracks to a playlist titled “FITNESS” or “WORKOUT TUNES” so very, inevitably soon, thinking about how goddamn healthy The Armed are. It was frustrating. When was the last time I threw around a guitar onstage, thrashing away at it? How depressing and desperate would that look now, disease eating away at my chest and arms? Seeing photographs of aging rockers and then – like a lightning bolt – realizing they’re only maybe often ten years older than me? Every band I loved in high school and college is getting back together. Some are very exciting to me. Others just look like gangs of annoying dads out to collect for their families, and I don’t begrudge them for it, but… yikes. They might as well be my peers. Youth and all its potential for ‘rocking’ was now far beyond in my rear view mirror. 

The fidelity of Adult Swim Fest ‘21, a live set, is some of the most chaotic devotion to guitar hard-panning I’ve ever heard; probably not since As Cities Burn’s Come Now Sleep (2007) have I been so invested in the stereo aspect of a recording. Beyond the guitars, so much noise and feedback piles up; the low-end is pummeled with bass kicks throughout the entirety of opener “All Futures” that by the time they drop out near the two-and-a-half minute mark the pulse you feel in your eardrums is nearly indistinguishable. A perverse choir of vocals is sublimely mixed into this maelstrom, 4 masterful tracks executed in full in just over 12 minutes, and without error. The Armed are health. They are fitness. The screaming distortion is the sound of weights crashing against each other in perpetuity, the guts and the grunts and violence of workouts.

Second track “Masunaga Vapors” is a S-tier Fucked Up joint with every guitar tone phased out into oblivion, putting anything labeled ‘hardcore’ to shame in its wake. Just standing on the genre’s grave, doing reps. The temporary relief of the groove that “Bad Selection” rides through until it explodes with sheets of searing feedback through its final chorus isn’t akin to a cooldown; you’d be better off holding a plank until your knees buckle. This isn’t Planet Fitness. The bodies creating these sounds were not crafted on gym equipment sweat upon by the masses for ten bucks a month. And this isn’t some “how much you bench?” meathead bullshit. This is the work of science and medicine and sport. A dedication to counting and analyzing and sweating and testing and peak human performance. 

All of which comes to a head in the closing track “An Iteration.” Are you feeling the burn yet? What made you think there was time for a water break? You can drink when you’re done; for now, we’re doing laps. Yes, the pain you feel is weakness leaving the body. Exercise. Exorcize. 

I’m not made for the pit, not anymore. I didn’t attend a show in over two years, and in just the past few months my wife and I have ventured back into those crowded, loud rooms I haunted weekly in my late teens and throughout my twenties. Our churches. Our sanctuaries.

Our gymnasiums. 

The ideal venue for The Armed would be a high school gymnasium. Platform stage with the basketball announcer’s PA set up for vocals. Unmic’d guitar and bass cabs cranked, cymbal crashes careening off the basketball backboards, feedback bouncing off the retractable bleachers. The unlikely villains of a high school movie that ends with a Battle of the Bands. It would likely sound horrific. It could, potentially, sound inspired.

[Pauses to import “The Armed - Adult Swim Festival '21 - 04 An Iteration (AS Live).wav” into Audacity, adds “Large Hall” reverb preset]

I bought a pack of earplugs last week just to keep in the glove compartment of our car. 

I’m not as frustrated with new music now. This EP had something to do with that. I do my Deep Listening™ on walks/forced constitutionals, contemplating residential architecture and residential landscaping, trying to keep my pace consistent; listening at moderate volumes because absolute shitheads drive like absolute shitheads through the suburbs. Movement. Forward motion. Building new routines to keep this vessel of mine functioning.

 I did a workout with my wife yesterday that kicked my ass but actually made my body feel potential. Not the electricity skimming around every song by The Armed, charged with static, rippling shredded Muscles and full command over Person and Instrument and Sound and Texture and Intensity. Not quite that. But something, pointing in that direction. 

Got to fix this body. Too many places to go and bring earplugs to.