It’s difficult to understate how much anticipation there was around Frank Ocean’s headlining set at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Sunday, April 16.
The elusive hip-hop star hadn’t played a live show since 2017.
Ocean had been announced as a Coachella headliner in 2020 only for that year’s festival to fall victim to the pandemic.
Just the rumor that Ocean might be the surprise headliner of Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival at Dodger Stadium in 2019 sparked disappointed fans to boo Drake, the actual headliner, off the stage.
So yeah, there was a lot of expectation about Ocean’s return to Coachella. But did he live up to the hype?
Nope.
On Sunday, Ocean delivered one of the most confounding Coachella headlining performances ever, his unquestionable artistry derailed by a series of inexplicable choices. By the time the set was scheduled to start at 10:05 p.m. the field in front of the Coachella Stage was as packed as it had been for Blackpink and Bad Bunny, who headlined the previous two nights.
Standing there they waited. And waited some more. And some more.
Finally, at 10:54 p.m. the lights on the field went dark. Over the next 10 minutes, 25 hooded figures started to walk in a circle on stage. A random, single bass note was heard at one point. After 10 minutes, nearly an hour after the show should have begun, the music finally started.
And it was very good, with “Novacane,” a single from Ocean’s 2011 debut mixtape, finally kicking off the show as fans cheered. “Come On World, You Can’t Go!” followed, a newer track, making its live debut, and then “Crack Rock,” a song off his 2012 breakthrough album “Channel Orange.”
Yet as solid as that sounds, the show still lagged in curious and unnecessary ways – breaks between songs that killed momentum, the distance created by performing nearly the entire show obscured from the audience inside the video screens, only a railroad car-sized opening at the bottom of the massive screens through which to occasionally see him.
After “White Ferrari,” Ocean walked out to greet the crowd.
“It’s been so long,” he said of his absence from live stages. “Everybody talks about how long it’s been, but I have missed you.”
He continued to talk about his late brother Ryan, who died at just 18 in a car crash in 2020, reminiscing about how his brother would drag him to the desert to Coachella, and the good times they had there seeing artists such as Rae Sremmurd, who’d played earlier Sunday on the Outdoor Theatre Stage.
It was sincere and sweet and yet the mood quickly vanished in the awkward stops and starts that plagued his set. After “Chanel,” for instance, Ocean handed the show off to a DJ to play for almost 10 minutes. Good for her. Less so for fans who wanted to see the star himself perform.
“Godspeed,” a lovely piano ballad followed, and then an almost punk-rock number, “Wise Man,” had an unexpected energy. But by then, Ocean had lost the crowd, many of whom headed for the exits.
On at least two songs near the end of the show it was obvious that Ocean was lip-syncing to his tracks, singing without a microphone as he danced and walked the stage. At the end of the Isley Brothers cover “At Your Best (You Are Love)” Ocean exited off stage at 12:21 a.m.
Someone came on the PA to announce that because of the curfew the show was over. The field was eerily quiet – no fireworks, no cheers, only one nearby fan shouting an expletive at Ocean’s strange, unsatisfying performance.
The Icelandic singer Björk played the main Coachella Stage before Ocean and managed to deliver her typically quirky performance with much more emotionally satisfying results.
At Coachella, Björk played with the Hollywood String Ensemble, singing orchestral arrangements of songs such as “Stonemaker,” “Hunter” and “Isobel.” She was dressed in the avant-garde fashion she always wears, and color-changing drones lit the sky above the stage in choreographed movements on some songs.
The audience was thin – many more people packed the field for DJs Chris Lake + Fisher – but by the time her main set wrapped up with “Hyperballad,” those who’d spent time Björk were richly rewarded.
Colombian singer-songwriter Kali Uchis performed at sunset on the Coachella Stage and it was a star-studded affair. Within the first 15-minutes of her turn, she launched into the bilingual hit “Telepatìa” and brought out special guest Tyler, The Creator to perform the song “See You Again.” Though they had some technical difficulties, it was still a fun moment.
Uchis hit the crowd with her track with Daniel Caesar, “Get You,” and brought out Omar Apollo to live debut the song “Worth the Wait” followed by Uchis’ boyfriend Don Toliver coming out to join her on “Fantasy.” Ulchis kept the vibe of the set playful as she strolled down to the pit and sang “Moonlight” with the fans pressed against the barricades.
As the day rapidly turned into night, Bangladeshi-American music producer Jai Wolf gave the crowd in the Sahara Tent a much needed ethereal, electronic DJ set. As part of the Foreign Family Collective, Odesza’s independent record label, Wolf falls within the realm of nostalgic and whimsical.
“Man, it feels good to be back,” Wolf shared just before wrapping up his final track, “Indian Summer,” a single off a project for Foreign Family. “Thank you Coachella, so much, it’s good to be back after six years. This is the biggest show I’ve ever done and I can’t thank you enough.”
In 2017, Wolf played an evening set in the Gobi Tent, but graduated to the Sahara. Standout tracks included “Want It All,” “We Will Meet Again,” “Moon Rider” and “Lose My Mind.” Wolf had an interesting setup, showcasing the lyrics on screens for each of the songs and he had fireworks during his performance.
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