Pulp. Coachella.
Wednesday
Judging by some of his Tumblr posts, Bondy’s next album will be nothing but static and the sound of wind blowing through a phone receiver. It will be a multimedia experience, tied directly to videos of him driving, clouds moving, and palm trees swaying in the wind.
I very strongly approve.
Let us know when we can back this project.
Our P.R. director’s weekend was way better than this. Hopefully yours was too, no matter where or how you spent it.
We couldn’t get to Coachella this year, and we probably wouldn’t have gone even if we could have. But what our P.R. director could do, and did do, was hit up a few shows on the east coast instead. And since we’re not selfish, we thought we’d share that experience with you.
Our P.R. director Joy has known about The Felice Brothers for quite a few years now, and to make a gross understatement, has been to a number of their shows. By this point, she gets to ride around in their van sometimes and has even drunk-texted them with song requests. It’s kind of silly. (Don’t try it at home.) But no matter how many times she’s seen them, it’s always nice to see them again, so she packed her pajamas and went to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, for their show on Apr 20.
The Felice Brothers are notoriously on and off, which is part of their charm. Some shows they come out strong and carry it all the way to the end, other shows they seem to get through solely on the sheer power of their will. Regardless, they almost always pull it off, and this time was no exception. It was the Night of the James-Ballad, as the band demonstrated a remarkable amount of polish and cohesion with some of their older material. Even the audience delivered a shockingly on-key singalong to “Whiskey In My Whiskey”. It was the kind of show that can remind someone why they liked a band in the first place. Joy definitely lit her lighter and unironically held it aloft more than once.
We’re not really sure how much we should say about the afterparty, except it involved a Diamond Doves singalong on a piano in the Low Anthem’s attic and a tour of Brigham Brough’s home recording studio. Needless to say, Joy was quite impressed. When it was all over, she caught approximately two hours of sleep and headed to the bus station for Day 2 of the event: a second Diamond Doves show in New York City.
We first encountered The Diamond Doves when they were Elvis Perkins’s backing band, then kept seeing them opening for other acts and doing session work. Almost everywhere we’d go, there they were. Over a year ago, Joy finally became acquainted with them while they were touring with The Felice Brothers, and as such, the Apr 20 show was much like a long, slow acid flashback. However, the Doves have matured quite a lot over the course of that year, and are now a very solid band in their own right. So it was more than worth the sleep deprivation and lengthy Greyhound trip to see them twice. They killed it, back to back, and did not stop. Susan Sarandon, who was in the audience, apparently agreed, and we are not about to argue with her.
Oh, and another special someone showed up.
We called it. (Joy loves being right.) As always, we were completely charmed. And hey, if you like Elvis Perkins as much as we do, you may want to keep an eye on your local record store sometime later this year. Possibly on a solstice day.
So, Coachella Festival, eat your fucking heart out. This was a truly lovely experience, and we’d do it again if we could.
(If this recap was not satisfying enough for you, friend and colleague Jennifer took all these lovely pictures of the second night. You can also help The Diamond Doves record their upcoming album, if you’d like. And here’s an album from The Felice Brothers’ drummer, in case you missed it.)
I recently spent four days in Indio, CA at the Coachella Music Festival. It was an incredible experience, where I camped with some very gracious people and saw lot of incredible live music. Having never experienced anything like this before, here is a list of what I learned about myself and the…
Coachella as learning experience! We’re not really sure what we learned from this whole thing, so the author has a leg up on us.
Lissie. Coachella 2012
Regardless of whether or not you liked Catching A Tiger, Lissie Maurus just never stops being cool. If you’ve never heard her cover of “Bad Romance”, thank us later.
