There was perhaps no one more highly and anxiously anticipated at Coachella this year than Frank Ocean. The 35-year-old has not released an album since Blonde, in 2016, and has not performed live in over six years. His headliner set at Coachella, originally slated for 2020, was delayed by Covid and then pushed back again. A refusenik and a renegade whose enigmatic public presence toggles between achingly tender and, more often, highly elusive, Ocean is beloved for two albums’ worth of nostalgia-tinged, genre-defying music. I encountered several people over the weekend for whom he was more or less the reason they bought tickets to the festival.
Those fans, as well as a good fraction of the festival who stayed for Ocean’s weekend-capping set on Sunday night, had their patience tested. There were warning signs of something amiss, namely the last-minute cancellation of a planned YouTube live stream for his show. The main stage screens still showed test visuals at his 10pm start time, for which people began staking out good spots an hour beforehand. By the time the show started an hour later, “Come on, Frank!” was a common refrain.
After Bad Bunny’s conscience-minded party on Friday and Blackpink’s campaign of pop bangers on Saturday, it seemed fitting – even genius, given his avant-garde bona fides – that Ocean’s performance would deconstruct and then upend expectations of a headliner set. There are certain conventions one expects for the night’s biggest slot: command of the stage, interaction with multiple sections of the audience, stage banter peppered with gratitude, a familiar and beloved hook to ease in the newer or less palatable material, choreography or the evidence of preparation.
Ocean’s set had little of that. The show opened with eight minutes of hooded men in military fatigues walking in a circle. The vast majority of the performance took place in a room outfitted to look like Nasa’s mission control cut into the massive wall of screens. Ocean rarely left the sanctity of the bubble for the actual stage; I was decently close to the front on one side, and didn’t see him for the entire 80-minute set. Instead, I viewed him on the big screen, filmed in a shaky-cam, closeup style, along with his band and crew, that evoked the feeling of a documentary produced in real time.
For awhile, this only heightened Ocean’s mystical stature, a flex of hype and under-exposure. He did not appear on camera or on stage for his first number, Novacane, for which the crowd sang every word. Dressed in a blue puffer coat with the hood drawn up, it took several minutes to even get a full glimpse of his face. The staging flouted the presumed seamlessness of a stress-tested set, instead showing the seams, the who and what it takes to put on a show. The camera would often pan around Ocean’s control room, taking in musicians and sound techs and other cameras; copious mirrors produced the effect of endless, looping equipment. More than once, Ocean took long breaks to consult with earpiece-wearing official someones; a 10-minute interlude DJ-ed by Crystalmess showcased a twerking security guard.
Eventually, the deflection felt less pointed than personal. When Ocean did acknowledge the audience, it was to dedicate the show to his late brother Ryan Breaux, who died at 18 in a car accident in August 2020. “I want to talk about why I’m here because it’s not because of a new album,” he said after an acoustic version of Pink + White. He recalled one of his favorite memories, seeing Rae Sremmurd at Coachella with his brother – “I know he would’ve been so excited to be here with all of us.” Every pause after that – and there were long ones between each track – held the weight, for me, of profound grief.
Those pauses were but stops on a rollercoaster. There were moments, such as a tricked-out version of White Ferrari, when I believed it was the best concert I had ever seen – Ocean’s voice is, as ever, nothing short of sublime, even chill-inducing. His remixes – he barely played any track straight, to the frustration of many in the audience – ranged from gorgeous (an ethereal Godspeed, his falsettos on Bad Religion) to surprising (a bouncy take on Solo) to outright inaccessible (a rock remix of Wiseman.) The highs – and when Ocean is good, he is transcendent – were chased by moments of confusion, such as when he handed over the show to a boy playing his “inner child” or simply lip-synced to Nikes and Nights, not even bothering to hold a microphone.
Or, most confusing and shocking of all, when he walked away after a cover of the Isley Brothers’ At Your Best (You Are Love) and announced, offstage, that he’d been informed he’d hit curfew and the show was over. People stayed put, believing it was maybe a bit even after the lights came on. It wasn’t, to the shock of many. With his first headliner set, Ocean did achieve the rare thrill of true suspense – what was he doing? Where was he going with this? The highs were high; it’s a shame the end felt so bitter.
