Fever Yay

I, like many other writers for the Arts & Culture section, attended Coachella last weekend. Now my brain feels fuzzy, it's nearly impossible for me to keep track of my things and traffic makes me feel more anxious than usual. As I walk around the USD campus, seeing crowds of people makes me feel extremely hot and hearing loud music instigates headaches instantly. This is what happens when a festival sells out and everyone that didn't get a ticket sneaks in.
When I think about my Coachella experience I picture thousands of people walking with linked arms from tented stage to tented stage and my boyfriend and I barely avoiding getting trampled by hurried and overexcited fans of Phoenix. When I go to music festivals I expect to be able to walk in an easy breezy way to whichever band I want to see. I expect to be able to find an open space to sit without being stepped over. But all in all, these were minor setbacks considering the bands I saw perform.
I had the most fun at Vampire Weekend, who kept me dancing throughout their entire set at the Outdoor stage. I also enjoyed Grizzly Bear, Beach House, Bassnectar, The Dead Weather, Phoenix, a little Passion Pit, a little Muse, a little Spoon and a little Tiesto (very little Tiesto). The show that impressed me the most, however, was Fever Ray's.
Fever Ray is the solo project of The Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson. While researching my column I learned that Andersson, who creeped me out by wearing a white mask and using a voice transformer to sound like a man, is a mother of two. This makes me even more obsessed with her music and lyrics, as such creativity truly could only come from someone who has experienced motherhood and is as cool and intriguing as she.
Fever Ray's Coachella performance was unreal. She played around 11 p.m. in the Mojave tent, which remained quite hot after the sun had gone down. Though she started a bit late, she started powerfully with a humming drone repeating itself while two aqua green laser lights pointed straight to the back of the tent, which at this point was filled with fog machine fog. As the music picked up and turned into a song, the lasers spread out and formed a lit up sea of moving clouds on the roof of the tent while gold-lighted vintage lamps turned on and off. The bass was the loudest I heard all weekend and the theatrics of the show were Coachella's most captivating, in my opinion.
When people ask if I will go to Coachella next year, I hesitate to give a "yes" answer. If Goldenvoice gets their act together and expands the festival's boundaries I will most likely attend. It's hard to enjoy oneself when surrounded by an overwhelming amount of people, but at the end of the day it truly is all about the music, and if 2011's lineup is hard to resist amazing, you'll see me at the Polo Fields.