Last weekend I felt inclined to trade the exceptionally temperate weather of San Diego for the hellish heat of Indio and more music in three days than any human brain could possibly process. When I wasn’t fending off heat stroke with gallons of water and an undoubtedly toxic amount of sunscreen I was knocking band after band off my musical bucket list. Despite the fact the event organizers seemed rather keen on booking all my must see bands at the exact same times I managed to at least get 20 minutes per band which is just enough to really get a feeling for them. So now without further adieu, here are some best of’,s from this monster of a music festival:
Best Bassist – This goes to Gbenga Adelekan of Metronomy. Some bassists in the know out there might be like “Who the f@#$ is that? Why didn’t Thundercat win?” too which I would respond Thundercat was a tad bit too high at his performance which was characteristically chilled out whereas Mr. Adelekan came out on stage in the 104 degree afternoon sun and took the crowd by storm. In the tradition of Metronomy’s past bassist Gabriel Stebbing he played mainly with a pick though I have to say he is a great finger style player as well and his bass lines took that classic Metronomy electro-alt-dance-funk to a whole new level live.
Best Performance – The Hives lead singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist captured the attention of every single apathetic hipster and baked bro in the entire crowd within a millisecond of stepping on to the stage. There was no looking away from this performance which featured its fair share stage dives, ninjas, spinning guitars and vocal chords pushed beyond the limits of any natural range. To give someone who has not seen The Hives in the flesh, one moment Almqvist has the entire crowd of as many as 10,000 festival goers lying on their backs and within an instant he has the crowd back on their feet jumping in almost perfect unison causing what can only be described as a man-made earthquake. At the end of their mainstage garage rock power set he jumped out into the crowd without any sort of security around him and ran all the way to the sound guy and gave him a high five. Did I mention the band pulled off all their stunts while wearing tuxes and top hats in the scorching 104 degree weather?
Most Talent – This definitely has to be split between the back to back sets of the looping innovators tUnEyArDs and Andrew Bird. Using looping pedals (for non musicians they are a compact recording device one can use to record music live and instantly play it back) these two brilliant musicians crafted entire soundscapes of choirs and orchestras with nothing but their voices and whatever instrument they could carry. In the case of Merrill Garbus of tUnEyArDs she combined these pedals with her deep raspy jazz voice and her energetic onstage drumming to build a massive full band sound out of herself a bassist and two sax players. Andrew Bird on the other hand brought the full band with him so he used the pedals in tandem with his brilliance on the violin to create a massive sounding string section by building concept upon concept. These two performances made most of the other bands look like immature teenagers trying to hammer out some semblance of music in their parents’ garage.
Best New Artist (to me at least) – I have got to give this to Annie Clark of St. Vincent. Now mind you her band did not have an actual bassist, however I know a brilliant guitarist when I see one. I had not heard a guitar tone like hers since my days as an avid White Stripes fan. Not only does she give an intense onstage performance but she also does music like nobody else with her mix of fuzzy guitars and an alien sounding ambient vocal space. It also helped that I’m a sucker for weird guitars and her funky off set Harmony guitar won my heart before the show even began. Kudos to my gal pal who dragged our group away from the Shins and to catch the start of her set.
Next week I’ll be talking about some of the issues I had with bands *cough* the Black Keys *cough* and the inhabitants of the music festival as well as some other fun and not so fun things that happened so stay tuned.
bassrespect 