If the Kooks‘ catchiness were freon, Coachella would be air-conditioned.

The Brighton quartet unleashed their jaunty pop songs on a Mojave Tent overflowing with bodies and adulation, much of the latter conveyed by youthful females who seemed to get a bit glassy-eyed the more singer Luke Pritchard cavorted around the stage. The Brighton quartet may not be critical darlings, but they are darlings.

More than just the boyish Pritchard’s flowing brown locks, it’s all in the choruses. They’re not big and anthemic; they’re clipped and unusually phrased, like a quick kiss in the darkened back of a nightclub. The music has all the right ingredients, even if the finished product could use a few more calories.

Pritchard’s is a contagious charm, though, magnified by his own happy-to-be-at-Coachella sentiments. At one point, he dashed to sidestage to give his bearded, mop-topped publicist a smooch. “You Don’t Love Me,” indeed.

Pictured: Luke Pritchard captured mid-cavort beside guitarist Hugh Harris. Photo by Kevin Bronson / LAT.

[Guest blogger August Brown has been told he’s more otter than bear.]

Grizzly Bear are not an a capella band (well, not usually), but for all the talk of their incantory harmonies, you’d be forgiven if you thought they were a hairy barbershop quartet. But the big story out of their Gobi tent set was that, lo and behold, there’s a bit of a loud, nasty rock band buried in there somewhere.

Their geniusly named drummer Chris Bear throttled his kit
Steve Reid-style while guitarist Daniel Rossen gave the songs welcome shot of pissed-off distortion. Their Warp debut “Yellow House” was a touch too mannered, but their live set was lush and volatile, and full of the unnervingly pretty three and four-part harmonies they’re so known for. A few snappy pop numbers, like the stargazing Motown throwback “Knife” were a nice break from all the free-form noisemaking, but band mastermind Ed Droste seems to have finally figured out how to out-freak the folk crowd: by getting a little bit angry.

[Guest blogger Margaret Wappler has never had Daft Punk at her house but she thinks the invitation probably got lost in the mail.]

LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy is the anti-frontman’s frontman. He owns the stage with cool charisma instead of hyperactive stunts. So even when he stepped out 15 minutes late, the Saturday night crowd in the Sahara Tent who’d been whipped into a frenzy by Justice’s blistering set, howled in a way befitting Murphy’s status as the doyen of dance-punk.

Launching with “Us and Them,” Murphy played the cowbell primitvely, raising the instrument close to his ears so he could hear the precise tones of his hits. Cold-blooded funk roiled in the background, courtesy of synths player Nancy Whang and Al Doyle of Hot Chip filling in on guitar. Tyler Pope, !!!’s guitarist, danced on the sidelines but jumped into the fray for “Yeah,” catching drumsticks tossed at him by drummer Pat Mahoney. At one point, Pope, Doyle, Murphy and Mahoney were all playing percussion, Murphy with an empty water bottle.

The audience embraced the self-deprecation of “North American Scum,” batting beach balls at each other, crowd-surfing and even indulging in a little of that old chestnut, the stage dive. And then Murphy cooled them out with “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down.”

As the end of the show, one woman turned to her friend and said, “That was like Talking Heads meets everything.” Yeah, pretty much.

Photo by Margaret Wappler / LAT.

(Guest blogger Chris Barton can’t make it to Stagecoach this year. His feet thank him.)

Though there’s so much more still to come, one can’t escape the fact this is the last day of Coachella ‘07–but we prefer to look on the bright side. After all, we’re now one day closer to next week’s Stagecoach, a twangier version of the same thing with probably the same amount of vintage western shirts on hand.

Watching North Carolina’s Avett Bros. host a bluegrass tent revival in the afternoon, it’s tough not to feel a little bit of excitement for ‘Country Coachella,’ even though the Avetts will be long gone by then.

Which makes no sense. The trio’s mix of down-home harmonies, fiery picking and larynx-shredding intensity might do some of those Kenny Chesney fans some good. Sticking to the standard upright bass, banjo, guitar line-up, the acoustic trio performed with a howling, Pentecostal fervor that Jack White’s spent years trying to perfect. The Avetts broke with traditional bluegrass from a percussion standpoint, however–banjo player Scott Avett stomped on a kickdrum pedal, while brother Seth worked a high-hat while strumming the guitar, not to mention the breaks where the trio slapped the bodies of their instruments for a lttle extra boost. Covering the usual bluegrass themes–liquor, love and loss–the Avetts brought a welcome bit of blood ‘n guts to a Gobi Tent that surely was about to be lulled into a harmony-rich stasis with the coming of Grizzly Bear.

[Guest blogger August Brown wonders why Pitchfork only has haterade for L.A. bands.]

There’s little to say about Tapes ‘n Tapes that Clell Tickle hasn’t already, but if these guys are the Best New Music, indie rock’s in a world of hurt. The self-consciously quirky guitar-pop quartet was one of last year’s more random success stories — its debut “The Loon” was a deeply unremarkable collection of warmed over Isaac Brock-isms and shoutouts to Harvard Square.

Live, they replicated such exactly, dipping into their thin catalog of blog fodder to work a sleepy Mojave tent. When they chilled out a bit on “Ten Gallon Ascots” they were more convincing, but like singer Josh Grier’s new fashion mullet, they shot for edgy and ended up as kind of sad.

[Guest blogger Chris Barton has been raging against walking in the heat.]

One of the cruelest things about the desert heat is that in the long walk from the car to the main gate, festival-goers become parched and are ready to buy water before even hearing a note. Welcome to the free market. Operating with a permit from festival operators, local entrepreneur Clarissa offers a ride from the parking lot to the base of the main gate’s walkway for $5 a person. It might sound like a lot for a three-minute drive, but after two days of Coachella it was a godsend. Too bad we got to talking and I forgot to pay my fare. Sorry, Clarissa! Hope I see you at the end of the night; I’ll happily pay double for the ride back.

Sources say this just ain’t so:

Rage Against the Machine T-shirts became all the rage Sunday afternoon, as the festival grounds filled in anticipation of the big reunion show. While pin-up boy Miko turned the main stage into a Sunday brunch discotheque — his falsetto clearly aiming for the hearts of female fans and instead piercing everybody’s forehead like a frontal lobotomy — the early rage was provided by Texas metallurgists Fair to Midland in the Mojave Tent.

The quintet’s brawny, dire rock, punctuated by violent hard-core breakdowns, came off as the real deal, neither as overwrought or whiny as many young bands venturing into that territory. The difference? The range of vocalist Darroh Sudderth, who can belt it out, growl, croon … you name it. It is no surprise the fivesome caught the attention of System of a Down’s Serj Tankian, who joined his troops early in the set to sing backup vocals on “Wall of Jericho.”

Afterward, Sudderth and band mates turned the half-full tent into a convulse-along, even sparking a mini-moshpit. Nirvana for the long-chin-hair set.

Perhaps most surprising was the set-ending single, “Dance of the Manatee,” from the forthcoming “Fables of a Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times Is True.” The song is built on a strummed chord progression that sounds as if it could have come out of Travis‘ catalogue. It was, dare we say, pretty?

Photo of Sudderth and Tankian by Kevin Bronson / LAT.

[Chris Barton lingers before leaving the grounds Saturday night.]

Scoff at a DJ headlining the main stage all you want, but Dutch-born trance superstar Tiësto turned Indio into a small corner of Europe, rumbling the grounds with whirling synthesized whooshes and, most importantly, the unstoppable beat that could never be contained in some petty tent. Peppers fans may’ve run for the gates, but for a sizable contingent of dance freaks, the evening’s messiah had arrived to claim the main stage for his devoted disciples.

As a montage of “Baraka”-esque videos played in soothing slow motion amid a swirling, intergalactic light display, even the most joyless rockist inside us finally got it: While Coachella’s mind-bending parking maze was closing down many a night with frustration, many were closing their Saturday with what felt like an ascension.

[Quick hits from rapid wanderings on Saturday:]

Perry Farrell and Boots Riley of the Coup joined Tom Morello — doing business as the Nightwatchman –in the Gobi Tent during his set of social commentary and heated (I know, how could it be otherwise?) Bush-bashing. The Coup’s set on Sunday at the Outdoor Theatre is not to be missed.

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The Good, the Bad and the Queen lurched to late start at the Outdoor Theatre in the final set of Saturday, but the British all-star band more than lived up to its members’ lineage. …

Warmest set of the day? One visitor from New Zealand voted for the Fratellis in the breezeless Mojave Tent. The Scottish trio proved that they are every bit as good as the music on their debut, “Costello Music,” yet as in their recent club show in Los Angeles, they failed to engage the crowd. … The Rapture sizzled in its evening-ending set in the Sahara Tent, with singer Luke Jenner stage-diving and surfing around the proceedings on the outstretched arms a remarkably energetic dance-punk crowd. …

The Black Keys parlayed their taut blues rock into a killer late set at the Mojave Tent — there are not a lot of blues at Coachella, unless you count folks complaining about the heat.

Pictured: The Good, the Bad and the Queen’s Damon Albarn claps his hands without saying yeah. Photo by Spencer Weinter / LAT.