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Coachella Day 2: Lady Gaga, Moderat, Car Seat Headrest and more

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Lady Gaga, performing at Coachella 2017.
Photo: Erik Voake

Car Seat Headrest No matter how diminished the profile of indie rock becomes at festivals like Coachella, there will always be teenagers who pick up guitars, form bands and aim for stages bigger than the one at the local coffeehouse. Car Seat Headrest is the latest DIY-to-Pitchfork success story, and on Saturday afternoon it demonstrated why the Virginia foursome isn’t another floppy-haired crew churning out reheated riffs from 1990s college radio. Though frontman Will Toledo’s croaky, disaffected delivery threatens to disprove that, he and his bandmates make up for the indie artifice with complex song narratives and structures, punched up with moments of melodic ardor. On Saturday, they didn’t attempt to cram their 10 best songs into a 50-minute set. Instead, they chose seven numbers and let nearly every one build, release, breathe, meander a bit, regroup and then fade out. None demonstrated this as well as their single “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales,” which economically employed the power-chord moments so they were something to be anticipated and then celebrated. The band’s execution of another favorite, “Fill in the Blank,” sounded outright glorious, with spare but strategic use of upper-register riffage.

Car Seat Headrest

Car Seat Headrest

Thundercat The profile of LA-born Stephen Bruner has grown with the release of this year’s delightful Drunk, all but guaranteeing a Coachella set. And while his jazz-like take on R&B and soul had a few onlookers inside the Mojave tent grow restless, Thundercat used his ace card five songs in: veteran soft-rock hero Michael McDonald. While his appearance at the Southern California fest might’ve only struck an ironic chord just five years ago, today’s more earnest and less-embarrassed Coachella meant he had a shot at woo-woo-wooing over a new generation—and he’s off to a good start, if the cheers he received from a largely millennial audience are any indication. He played his keyboard part on “Show You the Way,” just as he does on Drunk. But then he and the Thundercat trio unironically landed the Doobie Brothers classic “What a Fool Believes,” with McDonald sticking around for a third song, Thundercat funk fave “Them Changes.” After the melodic and guest-appearance bait, Bruner and his exceptional players—keyboardist Dennis Hamm and drummer Justin Brown—played some of his strongest material, even peppering in a sequence from “Them Walls” by rapper Kendrick Lamar, with whom Thundercat has heavily collaborated. It was enough to hope for a Thundercat cameo during Lamar’s Sunday headliner set.

Tycho You might have read a Tycho show review in the Weekly about five months ago, when the Northern California act played Brooklyn Bowl. Its live show hasn’t changed, but it does transform into something even more magical when it takes place outdoors as the sun is setting. An already transcendent and high-sensory experience becomes even more so. While there was less dancing Saturday evening at the Outdoor Stage—many festivalgoers chose to take in Tycho’s mellow grooves by grabbing some grass and closing their eyes—the quartet’s pristinely executed lullaby keyboard melodies and chiming post-rock chords nonetheless washed over and assuaged onlookers needing a midday reset.

Moderat Live electronic music was hardly in short supply on Saturday—the aforementioned Tycho, Spanish texturalist Nicolas Jaar, transporting and exploratory act Floating Points (whose early Saturday afternoon set I only partially caught thanks to traffic/parking delays, but from the brief majesty I heard, it begs to be sought online)—but Moderat’s nighttime set might have been the most stimulating. Drawing from a slew of electronic inspirations, from German and Detroit techno to synth-pop, the trio (Sascha Ring from Apparat and Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary from Modeselektor) moved a mostly full Mojave tent by judiciously augmenting emotional tones and consistently pounding out hypnotic rhythms, from percussive breakbeat displays to minimal 4/4 beats that sounded downright tribal. Adding dynamic to the variety of moods and intensity levels was Ring’s vocals, a subtle but transfixing production element and an occasional tunefulness that never approached EDM’s pander zone, but also didn't hesitate to bleed a bit.

Lady Gaga The pop queen might have had the toughest job of all the performers on Saturday. Not only did she represent the first straight-ahead pop (and second-ever female) headliner at a festival known for its indie credentials, but she wasn’t necessarily playing to her fanbase, as Beyoncé had originally been scheduled until a surprise pregnancy forced her to bow out, long after the fest had sold out (she’s slated to make it up at the 2018 edition). And I can only imagine her apprehension once she emerged onstage and looked out at what had to be the largest crowd in Coachella history. But Gaga showed no fear as she launched into opener “Scheisse” and threw herself into an exhaustive 80-minute performance that had the confident ringleader leading dance routines, crawling on the stage floor, venturing out into the crowd, playing both piano and guitar (and, during “Just Dance,” a keytar), hitting a wide range of notes and belting out skyward vibratos, and gabbing with a receptive crowd that likely could have listened to her talk all day. While rumors of guest appearances (including one from “Telephone” collaborator Beyoncé herself) never materialized, she did debut a brand new song, “The Cure” (a curious trick from someone launching a tour behind a new album, 2016’s underperforming Joanne). It was hardly a classic Gaga performance—production was reigned in (though aided by the massive wrap-around Coachella main-stage screens), songs were shorn, vocal parts and lyrics were clipped—but it was a forceful, entertaining one that largely thrilled and retained its jawdroppingly enormous audience (if the 20-minute exodus out of the main stage area was any indication). A big win for both Coachella’s booking gamble and Gaga herself.

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