You gotta love Coachella’s oft-pant-wetting annual lineup announcement. Not for the assortment of awesome on offer (as non-attendees we try not to think about that) but its strict hierarchical billing with its ruthless but simple font protocol. Popularity/relevance/critical acclaim is directly proportional to font size.
So judging from Muse’s SHOUTY SLAP IN THE FACE BILLING we can glean that they’re ten times the band Yo La Tengo are. Across genres we can assume that 2ManyDjs and The Dead Weather possess equal cache in their respective fields (“Mashup brother DJs” and “Bands with Jack White in them”).
We can also assume that the Aussie contingent (The Temper Trap, The Middle East, Kate Miller-Heidke and Sia) are blips in the American music landscape but slightly more significant than LA Producer/DJ Pablo Hassan. And finally we can surmise that “Thom Yorke ????” (literally) is bigger than almost anything except animated primates and 90’s nostalgia.
Entertainment Weekly has the scoop on Thom Yorke’s enigmatic billing: “His reps tell the Music Mix that he intends to perform with the same backing band he assembled for a handful of Los Angeles dates last fall – Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, producer Nigel Godrich, and seasoned session hands Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco. Yorke never got around to naming the new band back then, resulting in some mysterious marquee displays around L.A., and now he’s decided to stick with the same question marks to indicate those guys’ presence.”
Get that bib out and prepare to salivate below…
Title Image by Ronald Martinez via Getty
