So maybe there should have been more breathing room between the Crowded House reunion show on the main stage and Rage Against the Machine’s headlining slot. Like two days.

The New Zealand pop quartet painted lovely pictures in the early dusk, harmonizing their way into the hearts of the throng gathering in anticipation of the festival climax. It might have come off as totally pastoral had not Neil Finn done the courteous thing and name-checked the bands that would follow. That sparked chants of “Rage, Rage, Rage” — to which Finn could only reply, good-naturedly, “It’s gonna be good. Go have a drink in the tent … There’s still time.”

The folks up front waving the colors of New Zealand stayed put, of course. They’d waited a decade for their heroes to re-emerge, and they couldn’t have been disappointed with the aplomb with which Crowded House delivered their hits. And when Finn’s microphone cut out during “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” he didn’t have to ask the crowd very hard to help with the vocals. They filled in, very likely as they have been doing for the past 10 years.

[Guest blogger Margaret Wappler thinks every band should toss drumsticks into the crowd after their set. Also, shout-outs to cities. Those are good.]

Cansei de Ser Sexy, Sub Pop’s Brazilian delegates of juicy dance-rock, chased after the rainbow of glam-hipster band fame every second of their performance. Purple unitard on Lovefoxxx? Uh-huh. A preponderance of bandanas and/or glittery scarves on every band member? You know it. Paris Hilton dancing on the side of the stage? Afraid so.

And check out this unholy amount of self-referencing: Lovefoxxx told the audience that she’d just met Hilton and then she proceeded to play “Meeting Paris Hilton.” And somewhere in Williamsburg, we’re pretty sure, an Urban Outfitters went up in flames.

Other stunts of the band’s aerobicized set included a souped-up cover of L7’s “Pretend We’re Dead” and a new song that showcased CSS’s sometimes-underrated songwriting chops. They closed with a scintillating trinity of CSS hits, including “Artbitch,” their ode to merlot-swilling gallery flies.

In her introduction to the last song, “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death from Above,” Lovefoxxx said, “After Coachella, let’s go to my house. I’ve got some condoms and we’ll make love.”

Hmm. … I’m actually a lot more interested in some air conditioning at this point.

Coachella snapshot: A worker douses the crowd at the Do Lab in the center of the Empire Polo Field.

Photo by Kevin Bronson / LAT.

[Guest blogger Chris Barton has a thing about quiet crowds.]

While the Klaxons were exploring the rhythmic possibilities of an air raid siren in the Mojave Tent, Sweden’s José González was, against all odds, performing to a rapt crowd at the Gobi Tent.

Like Cat Stevens without the “Peace Train” homilies, the slight and scruffy González performed atop the stage’s drum riser, accompanied at times by conga and a young woman who offered a few gentle pats on a cowbell as well as an occasional vocal harmony. As the sun slowly set behind us, González’s breezy renditions of “Heartbeat” and “Stay in the Shade” needed little else beyond his honeyed voice and delicately finger-picked guitar.

Until, of course, the bass rumbles from the DJs spinning in the geodesic dome at the tent’s mouth elbowed their way to the front of the tent. Every coffeehouse troubadour knows the feeling.

Photo by Chris Barton / LAT.

Officials put the crowd total at 60,000 for each day of Coachella, though the grounds seemed more crowded Sunday. Maybe it was just the bigger-than-usual (for the time slot) main stage crowds for afternoon sets by Explosions in the Sky and the Roots.

Of the 16,000 campers at the festival, 30% were from outside the U.S.

[You don’t have to beat the bushes to find people who are beating up on Bush, as guest blogger Jeff Weiss is the latest contributor to find.]

If a common sentiment emerged from the hip-hop acts that rocked this year’s Coachella, it’s opposition to the Bush administration, with everyone from well-known political firebrands like the Coup, El-P and Pharoahe Monch to relative newcomers like Brother Ali and Lupe Fiasco. The latter dedicated his anti-imperialist screed, “American Terrorist” to a roaring crowd. But perhaps the highlight of the bunch was the Philadephia hip-hoppers, The Roots, a group less known for their subversive sentiment.

Indeed, the showstopper of the Roots’ 50-minute main stage set was a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,” with soul singer Kirk Douglas handling vocals and bursts of psychedelic guitar and funky drums buoying the noise. The rest of the Roots set was less explosive and incendiary, as the band rattled off a series of covers ranging from funk classics like “Jungle Boogie” to “Push It” to “Egyptian Lover” to “Award Tour” to even Mims’ “This Is Why I’m Hot.”

Fiasco’s set earlier in the day was similarly captivating, with the Chicago-bred MC displaying an energetic stage presence, flinging water on on-lookers and even sprinting into the crowd during closer, the Beta Band-sampling “Daydream.”

[Guest blogger Margaret Wappler would like to thank Opti-Free Express Rewetting eye drops for

keeping her sane.]

"We like to keep it funky, as you might have heard," the Coup’s Boots Riley

said to the Outdoor Theatre crowd. He was feeling a lot better today now that it’s a

slightly more humane temperature. The Coup dipped deep into their back catalog with "5 Million

Ways to Kill a CEO," while agreeably wedging in a few licks and lines from the

Red Hot Chili Peppers’ "Give

It Away."

There’s been plenty of Bush-bashing at Coachella. In fact it’s become de rigeur; but

from the Coup, it feels like more than token rabblerousing. Especially when guest

vocalist Silk-E delighted the audience with her song "Baby Let’s Have a Baby

Before Bush Do Something Crazy."

Even the most committment-phobic guy can’t argue with that logic.

[Guest blogger Chris Barton will not be messing with Texas any time soon, he swears. Oh, and about that photograph of the video screen next to the main stage — we manipulated it in an attempt to convey visually what we experienced sonically.]

One of the more unlikely indie success stories of the last five years, Austin’s Explosions in the Sky rose from apocalypse-conjuring masters of quiet-loud-quiet-loud guitar rock dynamics to a film score pedigree and a late afternoon main stage slot. Though their aesthetic is such that the ingredients essentially remain the same from song to slow-burning song, the band is an absolute monster live, offering martial percussion and guitars that can chime like church bells or swell into frozen washes of noise. The end result can sound frightening, sad, hopeful or triumphant, depending on your mood.

Though the sun was bearing down, “exultant” was the mood of the day, particularly during one of the more delicate passages from Explosions’ latest album “All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone.” With the ideal score behind them, security staff began tossing bottle after bottle of water high above the audience, sending drops of icy relief onto a grateful crowd.

Perpetually swaying guitarist Munaf Rayani soon after dropped to his knees before his guitar and raised his hands above his head as if in the midst of a religious experience. With much of the crowd clapping along with the steadily ascending rhythm, we all were.

[Guest blogger August Brown is from Florida too, and understands.]

Against Me! are surely the only band to turn the name “Condoleeza” into a throat-shredding call-to-arms chorus. But the band beats all sorts of odds: They’re from Florida and they’re not Skynyrd ripoffs; they wore all black and didn’t pass out on the Outdoor Theatre stage; and they managed to make punk rock sound fresh in 2007.

Tom Gabel was a ball of agit-prop energy, howling his drinking-song anthems over a bevy of “whoa-oh’s” and manic power chords. In a weekend with the Nightwatchman, the Coup and Rage, union songs are officially back in style and Gabel’s were among the best. On “From Her Lips To God’s Ears,” off their excellent LP “Searching For A Former Clarity,” Gabel shivered with righteous indignance, invoking Martin Luther King Jr. to indict the trigger-happy politics of Ms. Rice: “Do you remember what the martyr stood for? Oh, Condoleeza do you get the joke?”

Such an allusion sounds like a pretty ghastly idea on paper, but Gabel’s wild-eyed flailing and his band’s muscular pummel made it spine-tingling.

Photo by August Brown / LAT.