One thing that’s been nice about Coachella: Most of the outstanding performances so far have served as a nice corrective to my complaints about the male-white-semi-corporate-oppressive nature of current alt-rock. I saw four terrific performances from lady-powered bands that almost made me feel a tiny bit less despondent about the gender balance of rock right now: Portishead (who I saw Thursday night), the Breeders, Tegan & Sara, and Santogold all made me happy to be there, to the point where I didn’t even worry about when my last sunscreen application was until after each of their sets. (And yeah, it’s probably not much of a surprise that 50% of them first appeared on my personal radar back in the ’90s.) Video and brief writeups after the jump.
More frequently these days, we like to round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. Under consideration today are three