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- Coachella Week
- Jello Biafra as wild as ever at LVCS
- 5 thoughts from Saturday's Band of Horses concert
- The Postal Service puts its stamp on the Cosmo
- Five thoughts on Of Monsters and Men at the Cosmopolitan
- The xx equals makeout music on stage
- 5 observations from the Beach House show
- Andrea's Sunday festival notes
- Spencer's Sunday festival notes
- Electrifying Yeah Yeah Yeahs close out four nights of great performance
- How to Destroy Angels’ live show emphasizes art over rock
- Foals go heavy on sonic tension at House of Blues
- Andrea's Saturday festival notes
- Spencer's Saturday festival notes
- 5 observations from Vampire Weekend's Cosmo set
- 5 things I wrote in my notebook during Spiritualized
- Andrea’s Friday festival notes
- Spencer's Friday festival notes
- New Order slays monster crowd at Boulevard Pool
- Purity Ring's special effects win over Beauty Bar crowd
- 6 thoughts from Tegan and Sara at Cosmo
1. Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden has a catalog filled with interesting electronic compositions (see: 2003’s Rounds, for example), so it’s disappointing he’s opening Thursday’s show at the Cosmopolitan’s Boulevard Pool with a DJ set. Few in the late-arriving crowd even seem to realize the background-y sounds are anything more than a pre-show playlist, evidenced by the utter lack of applause (as in, not a single person claps or cheers) when Hebden finishes and leaves the stage.
2. And the award for best pre-set song ever goes to … Hot Chip, for arriving onstage to Harold Faltermeyer’s theme song from Fletch. Fun and fitting. I’ll have a steak sandwich … and a steak sandwich.
3. Smallish crowds and unseasonably cool temperatures aren’t ideal ingredients for a pool-deck dance party. The synthy U.K. band’s typically high-energy production feels a bit muted in its first-ever Vegas visit tonight, far from the full-on fan wildness I witnessed at Hot Chip’s 2007 and 2010 Coachella performances.
4. On the flipside, the sound tonight is crisp and clear, a positive development following reports that 1. Hot Chip’s Saturday Weekend 1 set at Coachella 2013 lacked dynamics and 2. volume has been low for some of the Cosmo’s Coachella week shows. Tonight’s music could be louder still, but sonic issues are at a minimum.
5. The show’s musical highlight comes midway through, when Hot Chip segues from “Flutes” into “Over and Over.” The first, a building seven-minute cut off 2012 album In Our Heads finally puts most bodies in motion, and the transition into the latter, the 2006 hit that put the group on the map, is sly and subtle.
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