Kevin Bronson on April 19th, 2010

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Who: The Big Pink at the Mojave Tent
In 3 or Fewer Words: Falling like dominos.
I’ll Forget All But One Song By the Time I Walk Back to the Main Stage Because: The Big Pink, one of the U.K. bands that did not fall victim to volcanic ash-related travel problems (they’re on a seven-week U.S. tour), has released but one album, and, like a lot of the festival’s one-album wonders, the dearth of a catalog makes a 45-minute set hard to sustain. The Big Pink’s synth-gaze on steroids, driven home by oppressive strobes, got tedious at times as folks filtered in and out of the half-full tent. Maybe it was my fatigue from three days of traipsing – as well as valiant but unsuccessful attempts to get into the seriously overcrowded Florence and the Machine and Julian Casablancas tent shows – but the assault of samples, sequencers and distortion failed to get much of a rise out of me. The exception, of course, was the Big Pink’s single “Dominos,” whose cascading effects and explosive chorus are measured on the Richter scale. That set-closer was a keeper, and in the end it was worth the wait.
What I’d Tell a Friend Who Was at Thom Yorke: I’d have been with you had I not been on the rail for his show at the Echoplex in October.
– K.B. Photo: Scott Dudelson