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Coachella 2007: Reunions and Indie Acts Under the Desert Sun

Day Two: Saturday

Pity the daytime bands at Coachella. On a day like Saturday, when the temperatures topped out at around 103 degrees Fahrenheit, only the most heat-resistant and die-hard fans could brave the shadowless sunshine at the outdoor stages or the sauna-like conditions inside the packed Gobi and Mojave Tents. The DJ-centric Sahara Tent, ironically, provided some of the best shelter from the heat. While perhaps 100 people danced to Steve Aoki and DJ Heather's daytime sets, another 500 lay sprawled on the grass, gladly soaking up some house beats instead of more blazing sunshine.

On the main stage, the ever-adorable Regina Spektor apologized for our discomfort. "I'm sorry it's so fucking hot!" she declared. "Are you guys holding up okay?" Spektor was engagingly quirky as always, using microphones and wooden chairs for percussion and twisting her voice from sexy to cartoonish and back again, but the truth was, we weren't holding up okay. The heat was smothering. I found a patch of shade in one of the food vendor areas, from where I could sort of hear Hot Chip doing "Over and Over" and mixing a cover of New Order's "Temptation" into their own very New Order-ish "No Fit State." The Mojave Tent was packed for their entire set, and how there weren't mass cases of heat stroke, I'll never know.

Even more fans crammed their way into the Gobi Tent to hear Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello do his Bob Dylan impersonation as the Nightwatchman, Morello's solo acoustic side project. Listeners' reward for braving the heat and claustrophobia: a duet of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" with Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell. Morello and Farrell restored the song's censored verses about poverty and social injustice, and turned it into a big anti-Bush sing-along.

By 6:15, the temperature had returned to more humane levels, and I was able to brave the heat for most of Kings of Leon's set. Their transformation from hayseed hipsters to rock gods is more or less complete, but it's hard to say whether they're a better band for it. The crowd was loving every minute of their trademark fusion of garage rock and backwoods boogie, but I couldn't help noticing how every last note, right down to Caleb Followill's yowlp of "go, guitar!" before the solo on "Black Thumbnail," was identical to the studio tracks. Their set evoked great classic rock acts of yore without ever quite feeling like the real deal.

Next up on the main stage was the Arcade Fire, a band whose last appearance at Coachella two years ago was already the stuff of legend. Could they top that career-defining performance? Only three songs into their set, Richard Reed Parry was running around the stage knocking over instruments, Win Butler was pushing his post-surgery vocal chords to their limit, and the answer was a resounding "Yes." The Arcade Fire play music not so much as if their lives depended on it, but as if the act of playing music was the most life-affirming thing imaginable. By the set's finale, as Butler waded out into the crowd so they could sing the chorus of "Rebellion (Lies)" into his mic, the Montreal art-rockers had left little doubt that they would be Saturday's highlight.

Of the evening's remaining acts, only one even came close to matching Arcade Fire's exhilarating energy. Playing to a packed Sahara Tent, James Murphy and LCD Soundsystem delivered a set that was equal parts punk, disco, and shoegaze wall of sound, climaxing in galloping version of "All My Friends" that was pure headrush. Following in their wake, fellow New York dance-rockers the Rapture sounded as shallow as a Wild Cherry cover band.

The evening wound down to a bizarre commingling of sounds: Dutch trance DJ Tiesto on the main stage and the Damon Albarn-fronted supergroup the Good, the Bad, and the Queen at the Outdoor Theatre. Whoever thought of putting these two acts on at the same time blundered badly; Albarn and company's slow, dubby tunes were no match for the background roar of Tiesto's pounding, robotic beats and arpeggiated synthesizers. [keep reading...]

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