Coachella 2008-
The Bird and the Bee
Inara George knows how to sweeten people up. The lead singer for Los Angeles band the Bird and the Bee sings sanguinely, but her message hits hard: Be her fucking boyfriend, now! Sure, there are lush melodies and dreamy pop synths to go along with such an urgent cry for coupling, but at the heart of the Bird and the Bee’s innocuous pop is a heartfelt, sometimes stinging, lyricist and angelic-sounding vocalist who has a caustic wit.
Extraordinary keyboardist Greg Kurstin, who has worked with Lily Allen, the Flaming Lips, Beck, Kylie Minogue and hordes of others, is no schlump either. The duo met while working on George’s debut album, but their shared love for electro-retro pop and bossa nova ’60s Astrud Gilberto-style vocals motivated the two to collaborate on a jazz-influenced pop project.
The Bird and the Bee’s first EP, Please Clap Your Hands, with catchy ditties like a cover of the BeeGees “How Deep Is Your Love” and “Polite Dance Song” caught the attention of TV soundtrack wizards, landing the latter on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, and from there things sort of bloomed.
The band’s eponymous debut immediately gained the ears of industry insiders, particularly with the sassy single “Fucking Boyfriend,” which topped the dance charts after a remix by Peaches. From there, commercial radio came knocking for the original with their little censor beeps in tow. A dastardly fun word couldn’t hold these peppy pop players back. Now, despite the song being nearly two years old, it’s been picked up by the soundtrack peeps for the new Judd Apatow flick Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which probably won’t hurt a bit. And Coachella audiences will get to shake it to George’s soothing, hip vocals under the scorching sun. Just be sure to remember your manners.
The Cold War Kids
Cold War Kids’ Coachella performance may just be the closest you get to a religious experience during your three-day trip to the Indio rock mecca, unless you’re one of those happy pill-popping glow-stickers over at the DJ tents. But if you’re not, be sure to catch the biggest thing to come out of Whittier since, um, nothing.
The earnest swamp gospel rock of Cold War Kids can’t help but convert nonbelievers. And, yes, they do live up to the hype. For anyone who has ever heard “We Used to Vacation” or seen them play “Saint John” live, you have felt the rapture.
They’ve been sequestered in their music studio recording new music for their much-anticipated second album for most of the year, with just a select couple of gigs to try out new music. So expect this to be a huge draw (read: stake your place out during the show prior if you want even a glimpse, and do not give in to the temptation to wander).
And even though they’re probably sick to hell of the Jeff Buckley-esque “Hang Me Up to Dry” and other Robbers and Cowards goodies, since they only have one album to shout out so far, we assume they’ll give it up good, and you will want to be able to say you were there when the kids went from being deep introspective musicians to becoming full-blown rock stars. Can we get a witness?
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
Stephen Malkmus is a man of many words — sometimes they’re nonsensical non sequiturs, but nonetheless there are plenty of lyrical stunners thrown in there. The former Pavement front man — who sometimes records solo, sometimes as the leader of the Jicks — brings the older, really hip uncle presence to the cool kids’ desert vibe like no one’s uncle we ever met.
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks’s newest release, Real Emotional Trash, will surely be the Portland band’s biggest since the 2001 days of “Jo Jo’s Jacket” and “Jennie and the Ess Dog.” But with Trash, Malkmus (this time around backed by Sleater-Kinney’s Janet Weiss on drums) is already getting radio airplay with the track “Hopscotch Willie,” a seven-minute exploration that may be his biggest post-Pavement, jangly-yet-heavy hit to date.
But it’s just laying the ground work for “Gardenia,” the glad-happy Malkmus memory of a gal who has curb appeal but maybe lacks some essential cooking skills to be the whole package. “Well you are a gardenia, pressed in a campaign journal, in the rucksack of an Africana candidate of my reform.” Yeah, we know! But he makes it sound so pretty!
For Pavement fans aching for a Slanted and Enchanted revival of what came to be known as the Milwaukee Show — the band played three songs from each Pavement album, in chronological order, for one night only — well, there’s just no telling. The desert is a magical place, so keep the fingers crossed, but don’t drop that $8 beer. That would be trash to get teary about.
Vampire Weekend
The buzz band at this year’s Coachella, the one everyone will be looking to discern whether they’re really worth all the hype, the one everyone will say aren’t because no one would want to be too enthusiastic and undermine any too-cool factor they’ve been building heretofore in their lives, is Brooklyn’s Vampire Weekend.
Plus, no one likes it when young whippersnappers are actually good at this rock thing.
But bottom line, these Ivy League kids are good. They combine African rhythms (they call their sound “Upper West Side Soweto”) and New York hipster irony (bassist Chris Baio is Chachi’s nephew!) into addictive little rambles that sound like a mix between the Kinks, Paul Simon’s Graceland, and Fela Kuti.
From the first few beats of “A Punk,” you will be sucked in, regardless, so stop the struggle. You will come out swinging, but they will win you over with irrepressible hooks and Congolese soukous beats in “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.” They were the first band to ever make the cover of Spin magazine before even releasing an album for chrissake!
From Coachella they head to Great Britain for a string of sold-out shows followed by a jaunt through Europe before ending up back in America only to leave again for Japan’s Summer Sonic festivals and the U.K.’s Reading and Leeds festivals. Yeah, they’re going to be huge.
So, if we had to come up with an answer when they sing, “who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?” in one of their little ditties, we’d have to bet nearly everybody, soon enough.
Published: 04/23/2008
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