Coachella Weekend 1 Wrap: Bjork, Chromeo, Dinner Party Deliver Standout Sets

variety.com:

Jeff Miller There’s no question that the most-talked-about performance of Coachella weekend one was Frank Ocean’s festival-closing, wildly uneven set.

But that’s unfortunate seeing as the desert gathering, often seen as a state-of-pop-music coming out party, had an enormous amount of interesting and often great stories and sets over the course of three days.

The biggest takeaway, trend-wise, is that international music has clearly cemented its place in the pop stratosphere; Friday night’s headliner Bad Bunny performed nearly his entire Friday headline set, including the intros and interstitials, in Spanish, while K-Pop superstars Blackpink blew away haters with a tightly choreographed, jaw-dropping Saturday night performance.

Coachella has been undeservingly slammed by its early indie-rock devotees for focusing on track-rappers and pop lip-synchers, but walking the field this weekend showed there was a heavy-duty emphasis on “real” musicianship — be that the lovely harmonies of supergroup boygenius, the inventive art-jazz of Hiatus Kaiyote, multi-instrumentalist FKJ looping instruments to build into fully-realized tracks while audience members picked up their jaws from the floor, or even producer Porter Robinson playing his beat-heavy bangers with a full-on live band.