okay party people, let me tell you first off that i missed out on a lot of awesome things by not being able to make it to three full days this year at coachella. all i keep hearing about is, ‘bjork was amazing’, ‘rage was crazy’, ‘the klaxons went OFF’, etc. i also missed out on a lot of stuff by being there for only one day, and having the unfortunate inability to be in two places at once. apparently regina spektor was incredible, but there as hot chip to consider (more in a minute). and i love peter bjorn and john’s album like crazy, but how often do the new pornographers play live, with the unbelievable neko case on hand? yes, tough decisions were made, and even the one day i was there, i missed out.

but WAIT. that doesn’t mean i still didn’t see several of my favorite bands all in one day alongside some seriously surprisingly great ones, and that if you didn’t make it all, you still didn’t miss out in a MUCH bigger way than i did. i’ll enlighten you on the radness in ascending order of my experience:

the fratellis didn’t do it for me when i heard the album, but the live show was enough fun to make me give them a second chance, which is hard for any band to do, so good for them. and ipod picked the right song for their ad, that’s definitely the catchiest one.

new pornographers are not a big, showy, theatrical group, but they write incredible pop songs, neko case has probably the most amazing female voice i can think of, and ac newman is a pretty funny frontman. they didn’t blow the roof off of anything but they sounded excellent and it was good to see them after wanting to for a couple years.

arcade fire‘s new album is awesome, and sounded great live, but we just didn’t have the energy to push to the front of the truly massive crowd that gathered to see them, and so enjoyed their set mostly via the jumbotrons. really not the way to see this band, as everyone who got closer put this as their top pick of the whole weekend, but shit, i saw them at the troubadour on their first tour so i’m not sweating it.

lcd soundsystem does this great thing live where they almost play rock covers of their own songs that sound so abstract and calculated on the album. ‘daft punk’ and ‘yeah yeah yeah’ and ‘movement’ completely explode in the live setting, so despite this being our last show of the day i still managed to dance more than my little body thought it possibly could.

hot chip should be honorary first place for band that most surpassed my expectations. i really enjoyed the warning so i was expecting a good show, but those five nerdy white british dudes fucking BROUGHT it. at roughtly the hottest point in the day, in a tent crammed with people, we lost every speck of inhibition and danced our asses off to these guys. they were energetic as hell and obviously having a blast up there and like LCD, they took their tunes and put them on 11 for the crowd. i will not be missing any future hot chip live shows in LA, i promise you that right now.

the decemberists, well, you could have guessed that one. my friend joe said that morning at the camp site, ‘are you just going to see the decemberists and masturbate all over the place’, and i responded, ‘joe, you enjoy coachella in your way, and i’ll enjoy it in mine’. the actual set was of course far more enjoyable and less messy than that, even if they got off to a slow start with the first two tracks from the crane wife that were good but not as perfectly performed as when we saw them at the wiltern last fall. you could tell they really got into playing to a big crowd further into their set though, and being close to the stage really paid off. prompting dance circles and pogoing for ‘the perfect crime #2’ had the crowd suddenly energized and loving them, and closing with ‘the mariner’s revenge song’ was brilliant, getting everyone swaying back and forth in unison to the sea chantey bridge, and a crowd of thousands to scream like madmen at the appearance of a giant paper mache-looking whale costume at the climax. where some performances at coachella are intense, beautiful, energetic, danceable, or pure spectacle, the decemberists were simply the most fun set i’ve ever seen at coachella, both for a crowd of good-natured fans and a band that obviously just enjoys putting on a silly stage show. fucking great times. can’t wait to see them again this summer at the bowl with a symphony backing them up. that sould be goddamn transcendent.

i only wish i had been able to find some live mp3 recordings from the show to share, but instead i’ll just have to post a sidenote pay day song from the album i’ve been rocking most at work this week and the band i most wished had made the bill this year: mark ronson’s version of maximo park’s apply some pressure off his album, um, version. more trumpets in rock music, i say!