It’s here, it’s here! But don’t buy your plane tickets yet, RVA music fans–I’m not at all sure this year’s Coachella lineup will be worth the thousand bucks or so you’ll have to shell out in order to attend.
It’s here, it’s here! But don’t buy your plane tickets yet, RVA music fans–I’m not at all sure this year’s Coachella lineup will be worth the thousand bucks or so you’ll have to shell out in order to attend. But let’s start by accentuating the positive: squinting to read the fine print, we see some pretty awesome acts, including Flying Lotus, Squarepusher, and a Raekwon/Ghostface Killah collaborative set on Friday; FKA Twigs, Run The Jewels, and the reunited Drive Like Jehu on Saturday (plus Swans, but we assume you got your ticket to see them at the Broadberry in March before it sold out); as well as Brand New, Jenny Lewis, Lil B, and Mac DeMarco on Sunday.
As for the headliners, other than Friday’s reunion set by Ride, Saturday’s Belle and Sebastian appearance (not my thing, but I recognize that it’s a big deal), and Sunday’s performance by St. Vincent, not too much in the headlines to get stoked about. AC/DC is a particularly big surprise that makes me feel like Friday night’s final set is going to take me through a time tunnel to Monsters of Rock at Castle Donnington in 1984 or something. My uncle is stoked, I guess. Jack White on Saturday is just a classic rock snob move for slightly younger classic rock snobs. Dudes who still complain on the internet about sampling and whether singers write their own songs are stoked for this one.
Drake on Sunday leads the charge for the youthful insurgents waving the flag of hipster R&B, and there’ll be plenty of that stuff this Coachella weekend with, uh, The Weeknd taking second-from-top status on Saturday night. If you dig those two, you should also be paying attention for Azealia Banks on Friday, as well as the aforementioned FKA Twigs set.
There’s way too much more on this lineup to get through in one article, so if you want to see the full lineup without squinting and/or using a magnifying glass, head on over to coachella.com and click “expand” on the newly released tour poster to read the names at a decent point size. Tickets go on sale tomorrow at noon Pacific, aka 3 PM Eastern Time–set a reminder on your iPhone.
