Jersey bands set to rock Coachella

The lineup for the 2009 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, set to be held April 17 to 19 at Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif., was announced today (Jan. 30), and it looks like there are a few rockers with Garden State ties set to take the stage and make Jersey proud during the first big music festival of 2009.

New Brunswick-based band the Gaslight Anthem, which found itself at the receiving end of plenty of critical praise in 2008 thanks to its album "The '59 Sound" and indie rock trio Yeah Yeah Yeahs, featuring Englewood native Karen O on lead vocals, will both be taking the stage during the festival's third day, which will also feature performances by alt-rock icons such as the Cure, My Bloody Valentine, Paul Weller, X and Anthony and the Johnsons.

In an interview with Metromix Jersey Shore last year, Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon described the rest of the country's reaction to his band's distinctly Jersey sound.

"They seem to like it a lot. It seems like they're interested because it's something that they don't have," he said. "I can kind of understand that because we were on tour for a while with the Bouncing Souls and they kind of would talk about that a lot. People would get so excited out in Michigan or something like that.

"I don't know; there's a certain quality about bands from New Jersey, I don't know why. Maybe it's just that (attitude of), 'If I don't see beyond the fences, I'm not going to get out of here.' You have this like dreamy quality, too, but like this working-class thing that goes on here -- especially in Central Jersey, in Freehold and those kinds of towns. I think it puts a weird spin on people."

Gaslight Anthem and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who are currently at work on a new studio album, will find themselves in fine company at Coachella. Other artists set to rock out in Cali for the annual extravaganza include Paul McCartney, Leonard Cohen, Public Enemy, Morrissey, Amy Winehouse, the Killers, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band and the Ting Tings.