My Coachelly post

There are many things that happened at Coachella worth writing about, but I am just putting the most interesting stuff to me.  For example, OFWGKTA performed, and I think that is awesome, but I have nothing particularly noteworthy to say about it otherwise.


Lil B announces his new album is called "I'm Gay"!

No one is entirely sure why exactly, but people have ideas.  Some people are saying it is using gay as a synonym for happy.  Some people are saying it is poking fun at how serious rappers take themselves.  Some people are even saying it  is some sort of critique on language in general.  Either way, I think it is really clever.

The National performed!

At first, I wasn't really feeling their performance.  It was good and all, but the vocals were restrained.  Like, The National is a band that is very precise in their sound, they don't flail around wildly on stage.  I feared They were going to adhere to that too much live.  However, it is almost like they knew that and purposely started out holding back.  Over the set that quickly changed and it began oozing emotions, much more than on their album equivalents.

HEALTH's performance!

First of all, let me point out the member of HEALTH that is center right in the photo above is wearing a Paperrad shirt, so cool.  Anyway, there performance was really great, even though the Coachella footage editors were adding blue static to the live footage.  It was really distracting.  But it made me really want to see them live.  They played some new content, and one of the songs kind of worried me because it was not very noisy sounding.  I am not too worried though because on record it will probably be noisier.  All of their songs that I knew sound slightly noisier on album compared to live.

Animal Collective didn't play their hit singles!

A lot of people are kind of pissed about this, but I am not really.  Maybe I would be if I was there, but it is to be expected with Animal Collective.  In fact, it is kind of a relief that they would play an experimental set, at Coachella of all places, after releasing Merriweather Post Pavilion.  Even though I love MPP, and I am in fact listening to it now, it made me worry that AnCo was going to simplify their sound.

Anyway, here is the only new song I have heard online, I really did not look around a whole lot to find more.  It sounds somewhere between MPP and Strawberry Jam; with the kind of rapid style of instrumentation from SJ, but the laid back ethos of MPP.  Or you could just hear for yourself:

That's all I have for now!

New Antlers song / Lightning Bolt

So, I heard the new Antlers song on Pitchfork (haters gonna hate).  I am not sure what to think.  I am totally aware that the Antlers can't just keep making the same album over and over again, and slowly getting worse at it, so it is not like I was expecting it to sound like a B-Side of Hospice.  Hospice has a very unique sound, and it is so conceptually driven, that I don't even think the Antlers could make a "sequel".  I am sure Silberman does not have it in him emotionally to write a sequel.

Anyway, regarding my opinion.  I could criticize the hell out of this song if I wanted.  I could say it does not have an identity, and relies too much on tried and true emotionalist methods.  Crescendos?  Check.  Falsetto? Check.  Mesmerizing drum loops?  Check.  Overall, I could say it reminds me of a a throwaway track by Radiohead in the Amnesiac era.

But, if I said any of that, I would obviously just be bitter that the song did not speak to me the same way Hospice did the first time I listened to it.  All of those aforementioned thoughts did run through my mind, but deep down, I actually really like the track.  I cannot contrast an entire album with one track, and for all I know, Burst Apart could have just as much of an impact on me as Hospice.  It does in fact sound like an Antlers song while simultaneously sounding nothing like a Hospice song, which is really all I can ask for from an album that is following up something so critically acclaimed.

In other news, I have been listening to a heck of a lot of noise rock lately.  Mostly HEALTH and Lightning Bolt.  Where the hell has Lightning Bolt been all of my life?  I feel so glib having never listened to Wonderful Rainbow before, despite all of the critical acclaim.  Tomorrow on my radio show "Charlie Sheen", I will play a HEALTH song, and the next Wednesday I will play some Lightning Bolt, assuming a bunch of other stuff does not hurl itself at me.  I feel like HEALTH is more entry level, and I am trying to not scare away potential listeners by playing "BUMPshheeuhtlkTHKTHKBUMPzshzhsk" completely out of the blue.  I want to slowly guide listeners to the potential beauty in noise, and not just hurl it at them. :)