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!

Music News - LCD Soundsystem, Panda Bear, OFWGKTA and more!

LCD Soundsystem releases a new mp3!

James Murphy is confirmed for the Brett Favre of music!  As if we didn't already know from this and this.  Seriously though, how are you just going to have your farewell show and then immediately come back?  It is clearly a publicity stunt, because Jim didn't even give himself enough time to see what it is like being retired.  I hope this backfires on him, because I don't know about you guys, but I don't like being toyed with.

Panda Bear releases "Tomboy"!

Panda Bear released Tomboy and I think it is pretty dang good.  I don't think anyone expected it to live up to Person Pitch or Merriweather Post Pavilion, including myself.  But if you disregard the blogosphere hype machine, it is actually a really decent album.  I can't say it is as good as Person Pitch or MPP, but it exists on a different realm than those albums so it is perfectly excusable.  I have only listened to Tomboy twice now, but it didn't speak to me the same way that even Avey Tare's Down There did.  But I loved Down There and everyone else are just haterz.  Maybe it will grow on me though.

Anyway, the blogosphere is having an Existential crisis with Animal Collective right now.  They do not know whether to embrace them, because they are still making decent albums, or to move along to newer and more soindiewtf things.

Overall, as long as Animal Collective are making good albums, I don't care about indie cred.  Although, I can't help but be a little worried that they are releasing albums at a pretty quick rate.  That hasn't proved to be much of a problem, just something in the back of my mind.

OFWGKTA announces tour!

Unfortunately, it is on the East Coast only.  I am convinced that Portland is probably one of the last cities they will visit.  OFWGKTA has tried to distance themselves from their fans that will probably make up a majority of the turnout here.

And finally, my mentor for a class was in a sledding competition this weekend.  Here's the video:

No one really got hurt, but my mentor Mark said someone bruised their coccyx.  Oh well.  They won, because most people didn't even make it to the end, let alone jump over the pile of snow that is meant to stop people.