Coachella 2009: Lykke Li swoons in the sun; The Cure goes on sans speakers

Day 3, April 19, 2009, in Indio, California

By Soumeya Bendimerad
Published: April 20th, 2009 | 3:25pm

By the third day of the 10th annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Empire Polo Field seemed less like a place to see live music than a self-contained city whose citizens knew just where to find the necessities of life: water, sunscreen, cold beer, shade, where to charge a cell phone, where to cool off, and of course, where and how to make the most of the music.

Sunday completed a weekend of legendary acts on stages small and large, including the revered British shoegaze pioneers of My Bloody Valentine, groundbreaking rappers of Public Enemy, the infamous Brian Jonestown Massacre, the veteran punkers of X, and headliner the Cure. Rather than overshadow the other acts, the effect in most cases was to bring the whole thing to a new level.

Venus Zine favorites Vivian Girls took their cool, messy act to the stage early in the day and impressed fans with rapid-fire two-minute songs and jangly, loud guitar. As if in response to critics who mistake their purposefully nonchalant musicianship for lack of skills, the ladies traded instruments near the end of their set and played musical chairs with guitar, bass, and drums in their Aislers Set–meets-Pavement-meets–the Shirelles act for a few more songs. Los Angeles’s No Age mounted the stage next to hype the crowd, which included Chloë Sevigny. Drummer Dean Allen Spunt’s voice was strong as he pounded the beat and guitarist Randy Randall encouraged the crowd to remember that “we’re all fucking swimming in the same fucking water,” as the duo created sonic waves for the listeners to swim in. (They later jumped into the audience themselves.)

The next time slot had many appealing acts — poster artist Shepard Fairey, known for his Obama campaign poster and OBEY propaganda, was scheduled for the Sahara stage, hardcore act Fucked Up was following No Age in the Mojave tent, and Okkervil River was taking on the main stage. I settled on French electronic artist Sebastien Tellier, who, unfortunately, disappointed his late-afternoon fans, who waited eagerly to dance but instead were met with a short set with poor sound and a jumpy Tellier.

Leaving that tent for the outdoor stage improved matters, despite the absolutely sweltering heat for the crescendo of Swedish singer Lykke Li, followed by Antony and the Johnsons. Li, whose lovely voice was reminiscent of Björk’s earlier solo work, swooned and swirled around stage, at times singing into a bull-horn, and played a set that was equally poignant, personal, and playful. Antony took the stage next for a short, but incredibly sweet set. His face fully made up, Antony crooned to the crowd while the Johnsons added strings and guitar to compliment the singer’s electronic samples. Even crackling feedback from an overheated P.A., which sent ugly noises over the songs, did little to fade the trance he held over the crowd but, unfortunately, it did cut the set off 15 minutes early.

This held a silver lining, though, as it allowed me to catch two of the finest women in rock: X’s Exene Cervenka and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O. Cervenka and the rest of X sounded tight, wild, and punk as hell despite their ages. The seminal punk band showed appreciation for its dedicated audience by playing a pre-determined, all-request set. On the main stage, Karen O was holding court as she gave the audience the treat that has come to be expected from watching the Yeah Yeah Yeahs live. A giant eye hovering over the stage watched over the audience as Karen O led her band with emotion and energy and dedicated the set to love as the sun set over the final day of Coachella.

As the sun set and the temperature dropped, people gravitated towards the giant metal Serpent Mother, a large-scale sculpture made by the Flaming Lotus Girls, a group of about 100 mostly-female volunteers in San Francisco. In daylight, it was hard to see how the cold snake could be seen as remotely maternal, but when night fell and it was lit up with licks and bursts of flame, lovers, friends, the weary, the tired, and the cold huddled around the sculpture to lie by its warmth or simply gaze into the fire. Many of the tents were cleared of equipment in the early evening as one of the final acts, My Bloody Valentine, prepared to take the stage. In kitten heels and a red dress, Bilinda Butcher helped create a loud, body-stirring wall of noise with her guitar and ethereal voice. The band, surrounded by stacks of amps facing the audience, went through songs from its classic 1991 album Loveless and ended with the song “You Made Me Realise,” a more-than-15-minute crush of music that sounded like a glacier cutting its way across a continent.

Like Paul McCartney’s final act Friday night, the Cure closed down the main stage of Coachella well after the festival’s midnight curfew. In an intimate and lovely ending to a weekend that saw so many incredible acts, Robert Smith led the audience in a sing-along of many of his most beloved songs, including “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Jumping Someone Else’s Train,” even after the main power was cut off from the stage. It was a fitting lullaby to put to sleep an astounding weekend of music.
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For more photos from day three of Coachella visit Venus Zine’s Flickr page