Getting right down to brass tacks for this sixth edition of Klap’s Koachella, because frankly I’m still in the process of scraping my brain off the desert floor for what was one of my favorite Coachellas in recent memory. The weather? Pristine – apparently Friday was the coolest of the festival, but it was appropriately scorching in the afternoon (yet without reducing me to a puddle) and blessedly refreshing as the sun went down and people started generating their own pharmaceutical heat. The food? Better than ever – some of the samples this year included gourmet pop-up restaurants from celebrity chefs like Roy Choi and Kris Morningstar, an absolutely filthy hot dog stand, and old, artery-clogging standbys like my one true love, a heaping mound of garlic crab fries. The crowd? Eh; you win some, you lose some. But the drawing point remains as on point as ever – the artists by and large killed it, whether or not you supplemented your experience with any number of mind-altering substances that surely resulted in some sort of medical tent record, given the lax security I experienced in relation to past years. The best treatment for post-Coachella depression is reliving it.

Waking up for the first day always leaves me giddy, largely because you never know how thoroughly security will search you on that maiden voyage through one of the festival’s many clogged entrances. For this year, my group and I had assembled a number of cleverly disguised flasks, like sunscreen bottles that actually contained eight ounces of SPF 90 proof whiskey. These had the side benefit of making it appear like we were really fucked up when people caught us chugging suntan lotion deep in the Sahara tent. My one close call actually occurred today, as I decided to hold two plastic flasks in my sweater as I walked through security. When the guard asked me to shake it, I did, yet he persisted in poking the curiously shaped lump I was holding on to. He asked me what it was, and I looked him in the eye and gave it to him straight: “A flask, sir.” Perhaps the heat was already getting to him – he said, “oh, ok,” and let me pass. An early assist from festival security? The weekend was looking up.

Catching the end of Brooklyn indie pop band HAERTS (continuing both the traditions of bands misspelling and leaving on caps lock when naming themselves and Coachella nailing up-and-coming bands with a deviously early set time), I then hustled over to the Gobi tent to see Cloud Nothings. I had heard their live show was killer – while it may have lost something in the translation from crowded club to a cavernous daytime tent, Dylan Baldi brought the riffs and the hoarse screaming with relentless, sweaty energy. The real MVP, though, was drummer Jayson Gerycz, who punished his kit with an authority that was even more impressive given the heat pulsing through the roof, and who made “Wasted Days” a suitably titanic closer.

I paid my respects for thirty minutes at Lil B’s set on the Outdoor Stage, a prime time slot that was either a testament  to the Based God’s impressive powers or proof that Goldenvoice organizers have a pretty good sense of humor. After I received the proper amount of out-of-key benedictions I headed over to the Mojave tent and Sylvan Esso. The Durham, North Carolina electro pop duo released one of 2014’s best albums last year, and the sound translated well to a festival environment. Singer Amelia Meath has a bouncy, confident energy and a don’t-give-a-fuck stage presence, which paired well with producer Nick Sanborn’s intense focus. Her absolutely sick sequined gold platform boots were also very impressive. And while the new song they debuted near the end of their set was perhaps the gnarliest beat Sanborn has crafted yet, the entire set felt very much like a proper dance party without the typical bro-down of other electronic-oriented sets at Coachella. In a word: refreshing.

Where Sylvan Esso fit the aesthetic of the Mojave perfectly, The War on Drugs had the opposite problem. For a band that has staked their reputation on dense riffs and waves of atmospherics, the Main Stage seemed like the ideal place for them to showcase my favorite album from last year, Lost in the Dream. Yet for whatever reason, it didn’t play quite as well as it would have on, say, the smaller field of the Outdoor Stage, or when I saw them early last year at a small club in Los Angeles. The crowd was widely dispersed over the vast terrain that fronts the Main Stage, and while the setting sun was the perfect backdrop for Adam Granduciel and company, the energy just wasn’t in the crowd. The guitar solo for “An Ocean in Between the Waves” still tore at me, and there was nothing lacking about the rest of the performance per se. It’s just hard to shake the feeling that the organizers did the band a disservice at that stage.

Backed up by sparse percussion, synths, and a backup singer, Swedish artist Lykke Li put on a master class in restraint in the first nighttime set at the Mojave. While she stuck mostly to cuts from last year’s stellar I Never Learn, the packed crowd was way into it, singing along to most every track. Her cover of Drake’s “Hold On We’re Going Home” was arguably better than anything the rapper did himself at his closing set Sunday night. I followed that by heading over a few yards to the Gobi tent to catch London producers Gorgon City. I had been lucky enough to catch them at the tiny Heineken dome last year at San Francisco’s Outside Lands; here, however, the tent was overflowing with people, requiring me to climb on the back of the handicapped rent to get even a glance of the producers. All reports indicated they rocked their set; I aborted the plan after a couple songs to catch the relatively accessible set of Caribou.

If you’ve never seen Dan Snaith and his band live, I obviously recommend it – there’s little I can do to describe the way his band, including a drummer who has stolen the show every time I’ve seen them. His set at Coachella was not much different than what he was been performing on his Our Love tour, which was certainly not an issue, but it couldn’t keep me longer than thirty minutes as I wanted to check out the new set from Tame Impala, who were the second-to-last set on the Main Stage. I’m still not sure if I made the right decision – while the Australian psych-rock band’s set at Coachella 2013 was one of my favorites that year, their performance this year was unusually muted. Again, I’m not sure whether this was the Main Stage effect – louder, brasher acts generally play better there, a fact confirmed for me Saturday night. Tame Impala’s newer songs fit in quite well with their older material, however, drawing generally favorable reactions from the considerable crowd. For a band that has a reputation for a live show that grabs you, this was a set that seemed curiously content to let the drugs do all the heavy lifting. To be fair, the light crew killed it here.

Wearing a mask that made him look like an extra from the Fallout series, Flying Lotus closed the Mojave with a dark, trippy set. Steven Ellison mixed while suspended in a cube over the screen, which was illuminated by stretching, swirling projections of lights and visuals designed to unsettle. It was a varied, gripping set, made all the more interesting by the set design, the appearance of the Grim Reaper himself, and Ellison finally taking off the mask at the end of his set to thank the fans. While I heard AC/DC actually wasn’t half bad at their headlining set on the Main Stage, Alesso did his generic Swedish house thing at the Sahara, and Squarepusher got weird at the Gobi, not one of them made me regret staying for all of Flying Lotus. It was only Friday – we weren’t dead yet.

Quick Hits

• Quintessential British shoegazers Ride making a triumphant reunion stop at the Outdoor Stage. They still have some live kinks to work out, but their material was well received and sounded as fresh as anything else at the festival.
• Raekwon and Ghostface Killah performing nearly the entirety of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx as the sun began to set at the Outdoor Stage, likely in honor of that record’s 20^th anniversary arriving later this year.
• The Yuma tent once again lived up to its reputation as Coachella’s round-the-clock club, providing a lovely lounge area – often occupied by festivalgoers lying down trying to process the drugs coursing through their system as the bass vibrated their bones. I caught the end of Erol Alkan and the beginning of Jon Hopkins, two distinctly different sets that set the tone for the kind of merciless house I would be enjoying with the air conditioning for the next two days.
• Todd Terje bringing down the criminally under populated Gobi tent with their live debut in the United States, which included an appearance from former Roxy Music frontman and general cocktail lounge enthusiast Bryan Ferry.

Day 2

Day 3