Toward the end of No Doubt's Saturday night set on the main stage at Coachella — a show that was the subject of almost endless rumors about the possibly astronomical fee the disbanded group must have commanded for a pair of one-off shows — Gwen Stefani offered the lone detectable lie of the night. After knocking out 10 quick push-ups and before launching into “Just a Girl,” the 54-year-old Orange County native remarked, “We're absolutely in the future right now.” A nice thought, perhaps, but it was difficult to compose with the onslaught of nostalgia that defined their set, the rest of Saturday's bill, and Coachella post-COVID-19.
Earlier this spring, much was made in the press about the festival's slower than usual ticket sales. Typically, the first weekend usually sells out within hours of the wristbands being made available, all before the lineup is even announced. this year, it took almost a month. Last week, Advertising sign reported that only about 80% of the 250,000 tickets available for both Coachella weekends had been sold.
With that in mind, Coachella is betting this year's lineup on a certain longing for the past. The festival, of course, welcomed AC/DC and Guns N' Roses as headliners, but these bands evoked the past by raining it down on the crowd. No Doubt, in contrast, veered towards sentimentality, playing soft-focus footage of their early days playing on stage. And Billie Eilish, in a surprise DJ set Saturday night on the Do Lab stage, spun some late 2000s/early 2010s pop hits. Shows like these can get stuffy, especially when they're scheduled close together on the other, but it was not necessarily scanned as retrogressive. As ubiquitous as Tyga's “Don't Speak” or “Rack City” were when they came out, they still sound weirder, more enticingly otherworldly than much of the music coming out of the big stages.
At times, this celebration of the recent past got weird. Sublime's late afternoon set on the main stage on Saturday was well attended and the band sounded sharp and committed. But Sublime's music is a strange vessel for Jakob Nowell, who took over as frontman for his late father, Bradley. If Jakob, Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson find their concerts meaningful or even just fun, I sincerely hope they continue to play together. But the group's music works best when it's shed any lingering sense of self-consciousness, an atmosphere inherently impossible to maintain when Jakob Nowell ad-libs, “I love this part,” before singing the end of “April 29th, 1992 (Miami). ” It was hard for me to watch the set without thinking about death—but I'm just one Californian among many.
