Sunday: April 18th
Artists Featured

Owen Pallett
Deerhunter
Sunny Day Real Estate
Jónsi
Phoenix
Atoms for Peace
Gorillaz

Coachella 2010 In Photos: Friday
Coachella 2010 In Photos: Saturday

Saturday: April 17th
Artists Featured

Camera Obscura
White Rabbits
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
The XX
Faith No More
Muse
Die Antwoord
Devo

Coachella 2010 In Photos: Friday
Coachella 2010 In Photos: Sunday

Friday: April 16th
Artists Featured

Deer Tick
Yeasayer
She & Him
Gil Scott-Heron
Them Crooked Vultures
LCD Soundsystem
Fever Ray

Coachella 2010 In Photos: Saturday
Coachella 2010 In Photos: Sunday

Radiohead recently put on a gig at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles to raise money for Haiti. Being only 1,300 capacity – it was a rare experience for anyone that was lucky enough to be able to go. Because the venue was so small, concert goers were treated to an intimate setting, and a unique live experience from Radiohad.

The band took the stage at 8:30, as Yorke and Greenwood quietly approached the stage as they kicked the show off with “Faust Arp.” Without any stage set up, they were covered in shadow as they set the mood for the rest of the show. The whole place was quiet, and as Greenwood plucked the last string, you could hear a pin drop, as people were in awe. Yorke slyly told fans to “sing along to this next song, I might have forgotten the words” – as he kicked into “Fake Plastic Trees.” From here on out, Yorke made it obvious this show was for the fans that had come to participate in this charity event.

Because the band lacked any stage set up (compared to previous tours) – it really felt like the band was just up there jamming in a practice session. It was very fascinating to see, and throughout the night they would have their fare share of slip-ups. But these moments actually enhanced the experience, as you were getting to witness the band play loose – and even *gasp* a little bit sloppy. But moments like this were few and far between, and when they did screw up, the band made sure to kick it back into gear and jump back into the song in perfect sync.

One of the more endearing moments came when Yorke announced the total earnings that were made for the event. “Gross, fuck me. $572,754 dollars. That’s over half a million dollars alright”. At one point in the show, he jokingly asked the audience how they got the money to pay for this gig. “So, what did you do to get the tickets? Borrowed money from dad? Blackmailed your boss? …Sold your bike?” As the crowd was yelling out various answers, it was clear that Yorke had a great time playing with the crowd in between songs.

The setlist was twenty-four songs total, and was close to two hours in length. Although the band did not debut any new songs (besides “Lotus Flower” which was played at Thom’s solo shows) – the live show seemed to serve as useful tool, as the band got to take a break from recording the new album, as they played through songs spanning almost their entire discography (debut album Pablo Honey was not represented). While the show was auction based – and as was to be expected, celebrities came out in masses to see the event, there was actually a good amount of “middle income” fans that paid the minimum to get in. These same folks waited in line ten plus hours – excited at the prospects of seeing their favorite band in such a small venue. The show was more than worth it. Whether you were there just for the show, donating to Haiti, or both – the event was a joyous celebration, and a unique one at that.

*Wanted to also give a special thanks to Marc Nguyen for taking some of the photos used in this piece.

Setlist:
01 Faust Arp [Thom and Jonny]
02 Fake Plastic Trees
03 Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
04 The National Anthem
05 Nude
06 Karma Police
07 Kid A
08 Morning Bell
09 How To Disappear Completely
10 A Wolf at the Door
11 The Bends
12 Reckoner
13 Lucky
14 Bodysnatchers
15 Dollars & Cents
16 Airbag
17 Exit Music

Encore #1:
18 Everything In Its Right Place [Thom Solo]
19 You And Whose Army?
20 Pyramid Song
21 All I Need

Encore #2:
22 Lotus Flower [New Song/Thom Solo]
23 Paranoid Android
24 Street Spirit (Fade Out)

Yeasayer Set
01 “The Children”
02 “Tightrope”
03 “Ambling Alp”
04 “Madder Red”
05 “I Remember”
06 “O.N.E.”
07 “Many Waves”
08 “Red Cave”
09 “Wait For The Summer”
10 “2080″
11 “Sunrise”

Photos by Anika Mottershaw

Photos by Anika Mottershaw

I had never seen a stage so cluttered as that of the Barbican on the night the London Symphony Orchestra and Grizzly Bear collaborated. Before laying my eyes on the stage it hadn’t quite computed with me that we would be seeing the full orchestra on show. I had expected a stripped down affair, similar to Grizzly Bear’s performance with a string quartet on Letterman earlier this year. I was in for a lot more than I had bargained for.

The stage was so packed support act St. Vincent was forced into a tight area slightly off the centre of the stage and nearing the edge, leaving her little room to maneuver. Nevertheless she slid and writhed around to the music in the little space afforded. Annie Clark has been touring as St. Vincent all year. This happens to be the third time I’ve seen her, and she’s had a different setup each time. On the first occasion she was the sole figure on stage and provided a spellbinding performance in an intimate venue, the second time she was accompanied by a full band which packed more of a punch, but perhaps lost some of the elegance of the songs. This time she was accompanied by only one other musician, who switched between violin and guitar, and her trusty looping pedals. The stripped down arrangements of the songs were nice enough, but would have been more suited to a smaller venue; a lot of the atmosphere was lost in the cavernous theatre.

When it was time for the headline performance, the London Symphony Orchestra sidled on in orderly fashion, took up their positions, and patiently waited for the arrival of Grizzly Bear. The four young men shortly followed them on to the stage, sharply dressed for this special occasion and took up their positions, lined up across the front of the stage. The music began without a word and the orchestra instantly made themselves known, providing a bed of strings to back up “Easier,” the opening track from 2006′s Yellow House.

The surprising thing about the arrangements for the night is that they were generally quite subtle and only fortified what are already a very strong set of songs that Grizzly Bear have in their catalogue. Only on a few occasions did they really wrestle the attention away from the band. On the singles from Veckatimest “Two Weeks” and “While You Wait For The Others” the orchestra took a break and let Grizzly Bear play as they would on any other night, except accompanied by additional grand piano played by Nico Muhly, who also composed the orchestral arrangements for tonight’s show.

The band members themselves were all on exceptional form and in fine spirits. They seemed honoured to have been presented the opportunity but not awkward, they thanked everyone profusely and even joked about the fact that the crowd clapped too early at the finale of “Knife” meaning that the special orchestral ending had to be abandoned. Musically, the band were tight, particularly the singing, which each member played their part in. Lead-singer Edward Droste’s vocals never wavered in quality from the powerful “Central and Remote” to the delicate cover of The Crystals’ “He Hit Me.” The real star of the show though was Grizzly Bear’s exceptional drummer Christopher Bear. Even with dozens of other performers on the stage, the majority of the night my eyes were focused on him. Just as the conductor led the orchestra, Bear truly is the maestro in the Grizzly Bear live performance, keeping perfect time and incorporating fascinating rhythms into their performance without being superfluous.

The main set finished with a stirring performance of “I Live With You” which flowed brilliantly into the beautiful “Foreground.” The band exited the stage, but the orchestra remained in their seats, making it obvious that an encore was planned, and left me wondering why they even bothered to leave. It did mean that the crowd could could give them a standing ovation, which was deserved. The single song encore bookended the night neatly with Yellow House‘s closing song “Colorado.”

Once the band left the stage for the final time, the crowd was free to spill out into the foyer of the Barbican and beyond, to gush about the virtuoso performance they had just witnessed, to compare notes about what worked and what didn’t, and to debate about which song was the highlight. On a night when nobody can have been entirely sure what to expect, Grizzly Bear can rest assured in the fact that nobody leaving the Barbican that night was left disappointed.

Set list:

Grizzly Bear

Easier
Cheerleader
Southern Point
Central and Remote
All We Ask
Knife
Fine For Now
Two Weeks
Dory
Ready Able
While You Wait For the Others
He Hit Me
I Live With You
Foreground
——————-
Colorado

St. Vincent

Marry Me
Jesus Saves, I Spend
Actor Out Of Work
Oh My God
Save Me From What I Want
The Party
Marrow
What Me Worry

To the untrained eye, Oh My God singer Billy O’Neill seems like everything your parents tried to shield you from when you were young. His brash, violent, feral onstage persona looks more like a vision from a bad acid trip than soulful crooner. It’s that kind of juxtaposition that defines the Oh My God live show.

Subtlety is simply not part of the Oh My God live show. O’Neill may attract the most attention, but the driving force behind the sound is keyboardist Ig. The electric-shriek emanating from his instrument is an unlikely counterpoint to the shockingly pretty sound of O’Neill’s Michael Stipe-esque vocals. There’s perhaps no more earnest singer working today. O’Neill infuses each song with a different emotion, from the intentionally half-hearted delivery on the word ‘boring’ during the chorus “The Unbearable Pageant” to the raging confusion of “Fools Want Noise.”

One of my main concerns going into the show was how the new band members were going to work with the band. Very well, it turns out; these certainly aren’t ‘rent-a-musicians.’ The onstage camaraderie plays like the kind developed over years, not mere months. New guitarist and vocalist Zach Verdoorn sounds great backing O’Neill, and new drummer Danny Yost keeps a steady beat.

Oh My God is on tour again behind new album, The Night Undoes The Work Of The Day. About a third of the show is made up of new material; more than any other individual Oh My God album. New songs that felt somewhat limp on record come to life in this setting. The rhythm of “My Own Adventure” sounds a lot more danceable live. “Baby There’s Nothing Wrong (You Just Gotta Go To Work)” comes off better in this setting as well, seething with a wrath that was more understated on the album. Sounds pretty raging, yet those are only the ‘lighter’ songs.

The band hit top gear about midway through the set. Upon introducing “Facewash,” O’Neill states, “Here’s a question all of you have the same answer to.” It’s not so much the power as the attacking of social taboos that beat the audience into submission. The frontman addresses topics such as the US’s continued presence in Iraq. However, O’Neill serves these issues with a sense of humor. He possesses a unique ability to not take himself so seriously, an ability highlighted by his pink short-shorts worn over bright red pants. Every attack on your sensibilities is delivered with a wink and smirk. Behind his juvenile behavior belies intelligence, which comes through best on the stage banter.

I’ve been to a lot of shows in the last several months, and the ones that stand out to me in hindsight are the ones that brought the audience into the performance, which is precisely what Oh My God performance accomplished. One cannot simply observe the band play, rather they are dragged into the show willingly or otherwise.

Openers:
Anthony Gravino
Curb Service
Heyokas

Setlist:
• The Unbearable Pageant
• Fools Want Noise
• Action!
• Two-Hand Touch
• Baby There’s Nothin’ Wrong (You Just Gotta Go To Work)
• My Own Adventure
• Bring Yourself
• Torture
• Facewash
• Liberal
• My Life Is A Warfare
• Get Steady
• One Thing Leads To Another

Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space was never meant for the studio. Spritualized’s 1997 opus is an album with more scope, ambition and magnificence than almost any album in the past twenty years, but the studio version that was released was only an approximation of what Spiritualized really intended the record to sound like, as proven by their performance of the album in its true entirety at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The fact that they extended 70 minutes of studio material into a 96 minute epic live performance is just the simplest way of explaining how the album was was proliferated for the stage.

At 8.30pm on the dot, the stage started to fill with the various musicians who took part in the evening. On stage the band formed a semi-circle, no single member taking centre-stage, each one with an equally important role in maintaining and energizing the music. Behind them were three groups of people, from stage left to right there was a gospel choir, a brass sextet and a string ensemble. In total 32 performers, those on stage left; the choir and J. Spaceman, were dressed in all white whilst the rest of the performers were dressed entirely in black, another simple yet effective way of adding a theatrical nature to the exhibition.

The eponymous opening track of the album capitalized upon the Royal Festival Hall’s state of the art sound system, exploiting its full potential as the strings, brass, voices along with the band themselves brought the song into glorious existence. Once this subsided the stage was drowned in darkness shortly followed by the build up into the rambunctious “Come Together,” which saw the audience fastened to their seats, eyes glued on the stage like a collective group of rabbits frozen in the headlights of an oncoming 18-wheeler. Each song was embellished and transformed by the inclusion of the additional musicians, each group got their time to shine and together they took the performance somewhere far beyond the reaches of the average gig. The evening was so unique for a rock concert that after the ear-splitting crescendo that rounded off “Electricity”, which falls exactly in the middle of the album, I half expected that an interlude was about to be called. Fortunately this was not the case and Spiritualized marched onwards towards the resounding conclusion. Each song was transcendent and picking highlights is almost impossible from a gestalt performance such as this one, but the delicately elegant hymn of “Broken Heart” deserves to be mentioned, as it was the moment when the lump in my throat was most prominent. Spaceman’s crushing vocals cut a harsh tone against the soft and sweeping strings and grandiose horns, together describing the feeling and emotions of a broken heart with brutal accuracy.

Finally the album closer arrived and combined everything brilliant about the evening and the project into one 18-minute amalgamation that sustained the audience’s captivation throughout. At the conclusion the audience was on their feet in an instant giving the standing ovation that was so genuinely deserved, and that they probably would have given after each individual song had they not been so eager to hear the next one.

There was no need to provide an encore for on such a momentous evening, but Spiritualized obliged anyway, tacking on a spirited performance of “Out of Sight,” from Let It Come Down, to the delight of the capacity crowd.

The Royal Festival Hall was the perfect location for this performance–the audience seated while the band put on a show that was far cry from most live concerts wherein bands play a random assortment of songs from their back-catalogue one after another. Spiritualized’s portrayal of their work was much more than that; each song was dependent upon the preceding to set it up and then bled perfectly into the following one. The narrative of the album was kept sacred by the silence that was observed on-stage between each piece. On this night Spiritualized proved that it doesn’t take a multi-million pound stage or a technically brilliant light show to put on a life-changing show, all you have to do is focus on the songs and let the music itself be the spectacle.

This years Coachella Festival was moved up a couple weeks to beat the late April heat. While the heat was still there, it didn’t stop concertgoers from having a good time. Here are the photos and videos the 130BPM staff took at the California based festival:

Friday:

M. Ward

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band

Leonard Cohen

Saturday

TV on the Radio

Mastodon

Sunday

Lupe Fiasco

Peter, Bjorn & John

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

My Bloody Valentine

- Brent Koepp

 Last night, at the Independent in San Francisco, Green Day took the stage for the first time in three years to rehearse new material from their upcoming album 21st Century Breakdown. The show also served as a trial run, as the band plans on playing the full album front to back for their upcoming world tour. The band played over a two hour set which consisted of numerous older songs in addition to 21st Century material. Pictures are from Green Day Authority as well as the setlist, which are after the jump. 

21st Century Breakdown is out May 15th via Reprise. 

Green Day, The Independent, San Francisco, April 8th, 2009:

 Setlist:

Welcome to Paradise
21st Century Breakdown
Know Your Enemy
Viva la Gloria
Before the Lobotomy
Christian’s Inferno
Last Night on Earth
East Jesus Nowhere
Peacemaker
Last of the American Girls
Murder City
Restless Heart Syndrome
Horseshoes and Handgrenades
Drama Queen/Static Age
21 Guns
American Eulogy
See the Light
——————
American Idiot
Jesus of Suburbia
She
Christie Road
J.A.R. (Jason Andrew Relva)
F.O.D.
Longview
Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?
Brain Stew [abandoned]
Going to Pasalacqua
—————————
Macy’s Day Parade
King for a Day
Minority

Videos:

Green Day – Desperate

Photos from Green Day Authority.

-Brent Koepp and Ryan Nichols

Photos courtesy of Anika Mottershaw.

Most are sold out, but if you want to see what’s left or just take a look at all of the photos, check them out at the ‘Under The Influence: Beastie Boys Artwork!’ blog.

-Evan

(Kevin’s launch into the drum kit at the end of the set)

Photos courtesy of Anika Mottershaw.