Coachella Day Three - Enter the Sandstorm (36 Chambers)

Photo by Stephen Glicken

Coachella is the perfect length for a music festival. Two days is kind of a tease and four days is a gauntlet that destroys your body, but three days? Pretty, pretty good. That is, of course, assuming that a gigantic fucking dust storm doesn’t hit during the Wu-Tang Clan’s set and nearly destroy yours and everyone else's good time.

More on that later. Maybe it’s just me, but even for a perfectly timed three-day event, the final day of a festival seems a bit melancholy—it’s almost over, you’ve exhausted yourself in the pursuit of having a good time, and in all likelihood the final headliner kind of sucks. As a teenage Bonnaroo attendee, I learned “Night Three Headliner” was actually code for “Jam Band,” but apparently “Night Three Headliner” was Coachellaspeke for “Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

Still, there were splotches of brilliance to be had through the (quite literal) storm. DIIV performed an early afternoon set, showcasing the taut panache of last year’s Oshin. I saw the band perform nearly a year ago, and the main takeaway from watching their evolution is that DIIV mastermind Zachary Cole Smith absolutely oozes charisma, hasn’t gotten his hair cut in a year, and in another record's time, the band is going to be doing Vampire Weekend numbers.

The happy challenge that DIIV will soon face, it seems, is figuring out how to expand their sound to fit those bigger rooms without fundamentally warping their Bushwicky aesthetic. Jessie Ware has tackled a vaguely similar issue with ease, taking her great but largely inorganic debut Devotion and translating it to the stage by lacing herself with an ace live band that carries with it a minimum of stadium-soul schlock. Ware’s presence on the Mojave tent was good-naturedly magnetic, as she joked between songs, hit every single note, and managed to keep the crowd eating out of the palm of her hand. It may very well be soon that she manages to join the storied ranks of such British songstresses as Adele, Lily Allen, and Kate Nash.

After Ware it was time for Grimes, who performed her trademark discursive dance-pop with two backup dancers who did weird stuff, had kinda shitty sound, and did nothing to dissuade my opinion that she’s done nothing to advance herself beyond the station of a human Emoji.

If Grimes is an Emoji ripped from your iPhone and thrown on a stage, J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. is a figure so sedentary he actually might have moss growing out of him. The band was somewhat late to their set on the Outdoor Stage, but the audience—easily one of the older groups I found myself in—seemed to understand. Dino Jr. can still shred, no matter how much J. Mascis resembles one of the Ents from Lord of the Rings.

One of the unequivocal highlights of the day was Vampire Weekend, who are proving astoundingly adept at being one of the bigger little bands in the world. Theirs was a set full of deftness and whimsy, the fivesome ripping through old classics as well as working through new material from their soon to come third album Modern Vampires of the City. The new tracks sound fantastic, effortlessly winning the crowd over with a charm that seemed genuine and unsmarmy, despite the overt Boat Shoe Vibes the band gives off. It’s sort of impossible to hate them.

Photo by Stephen Glicken

My evening culminated in a thunderous performance by a reunited Wu-Tang Clan, featuring every single living member of the Wu (and Redman!) helping perform their classics, largely drawing from 36 Chambers as well as culling from a smattering of the group’s solo work as well as the indelible “Triumph” and the not-particularly-indelible –but-still-very-fun “Gravel Pit.” Assuming the role of de facto frontman for the group, RZA managed to communicate exactly how much power he must feel at any given moment in time, managing to make me nearly believe that he himself had dipped his iron fists into at least 15 or so of the 36 chambers and summoned the colossal sandstorm that was whipping the audience in the collective face. It was a hell of an event, the likes of which seemed like it had heretofore only been experienced on Tattooine, taking the Wu's light show into the next dimension, and making every word rapped by the Wu feel like a command for the listener to survive at all costs. It was a powerful set for those who braved it (or didn’t jump ship to go see the Red Hot Chili Peppers next door), culminating in RZA announcing that there would be a new Wu-Tang album coming out sooner than we think. The Wu might be entering the “Classic Rock” stage of their career at this point, but performing live at least they seem comfortable enough to relish their well-earned place in the canon rather than asking us to join them on yet another plane of existence. Sometimes, you’ve been elevated enough.

COACHELLA DAY THREE FASHION REPORT
A child was seen wearing a blue spandex onesie in a particularly un-self-conscious manner.
The grown men next to me at Tame Impala was wearing leopard-print jeggings.
Also spotted at Tame Impala: a neon yellow trucker hat that said “SWAG” in block letters.
Fedoras: everyone was wearing them. Are they the West Coast equivalent of the bucket hat?
Face Paint: this was approaching “Not Okay” levels during Day Three.
As far as I could tell, the only person younger than me at Dino Jr. was a kid who looked about eleven who was wearing a t-shirt that said “Too Tough to Die.”
The Rave Crowd was working very hard to keep that longstanding bastion of stupid called the “Spirit Hood” alive.
I saw two people wearing t-shirts that looked like Buzz Lightyear’s suit.
Dust was also a fashion trend, I guess.

Drew Millard likes bands that start with the word "The." He's on Twitter - @drewmillard