Just Like Heaven Festival // May 4, 2019
Heavenly.
Anyone who knows me for a while will eventually learn that I went to Coachella 8 times. This fact comes up more organically than you might think, believe it or not - around the time that the lineup is announced, or when some performance becomes a larger cultural moment a la Beychella. I went for the first time in 2004 when I was 19, and for the last time in 2013 when I was 28. Things were different then - this was prior to the festival having synergistic tie-ins with clothing stores promoting “festival ~lewks~,” or an excess of Instagram influencers. I’d like to say it was “more about the music” then, but honestly, the Palm Springs parties, cultural appropriation, corporate influence, and desert fashions existed then too. Besides, people have been complaining about Coachella since it started, and too much of it starts to sound like someone sharing their underlying belief that things were better back in their day. Coachella was a huge part of my identity for a while. It changed a little, and so did I. I got older, and the lineups were less my taste, and my youthful tolerance for standing in the sun all day and camping in the dirt wore thin.
Goldenvoice must have realized that there were other people like me, who had aged out of Coachella but would commit to a one-day affair, particularly one by the ocean. When the Just Like Heaven festival was announced, people on Twitter cracked wise about how the similarities to late-aughts Coachellas were a transparent effort to get older millennials to relieve their glory days. But hey, the formula worked. Have a listen:
For me, the bands I cared about were either bands I still like and have seen recently (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Grizzly Bear, Beach House) or bands I’d seen deeeeeep in the past (The Faint, The Rapture, Passion Pit). I couldn’t miss the chance to see all these bands and relive my festival days with other like-minds.
I’ll admit that the festival was not without problems. Tickets were hard to come by, with tiered pricing. The festival grounds were accessible only by shuttles, which complicated things (though it sounds like it was more of an issue for Friday attendees). Still, once we arrived we were in great spirits remembering how fun it is to go to festivals. With a lineup this stacked, we were definitely busy, but got to see full sets from nearly everyone we cared about.
I *never* listen to this band anymore but their set was one of my faves.
The Queen Mary Park is simply gorgeous. Long Beach in the background. Great place for an event.
Grizzly Bear were a little low-energy, but they’ve got some great songs.
The only “disappointment” was Passion Pit not playing one of my favorite songs of theirs, Moth’s Wings, but maybe my twilight memories from 2010 can’t be touched. At the end of the night, shuttles were plentiful even for those of us who opted not to stay until the very end - our aching feet a reminder that we’re not as young as we used to be. You gotta hand it to them - Goldenvoice had their audience pegged.