[Guest blogger Margaret Wappler wishes she had stuck with those piano lessons that she blew off in the 5th grade. Sorry, Mom.]

As the only singer-songwriter type to grace Coachella’s main stage, anti-folk Russian Regina Spektor knew exactly how to capture the audience’s attention. She announced this was a singer’s show by kicking off with an a cappella number, tapping out bare-bones percussion with her finger on the mic. “I will love him till the day I die,” she sang, her rich voice cutting through the staggering heat. The crowd was rendered spellbound, or at least as spellbound as you can be while pouring Gatorade down your gullet.

As the show progressed, the audience’s crush on rosy-cheeked Spektor deepened as she rolled out one endearingly odd narrative after another, featuring cereal boxes, cocaine and the Iron Curtain. One dreadlocked man expressed his delight by inexplicably imitating John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever,” but for the most part, it was a lot of mouthed lyrics and screams of “I love you, Regina!”

For most of her set, Spektor and crew showcased the instruments not typically seen at Coachella, including the chair-as-drum and the triangle but when faced with technical difficulties (”Any of you know anything about electronics?” she asked), Spektor strapped on a guitar and played a primitive, haunted version of “That Time” from her latest album, “Begin to Hope.” It was a gorgeous affirmation that even with a guitar on, for Spektor, voice is king.

[Guest blogger Chris Barton checks out the New Pornographers and empathizes with his Canadian brothers and sisters.]

Raising chills on one’s arms in 100-degree heat is no easy task, but that’s exactly what the New Pornographers did during their Outdoor Stage set with one of the irresistably catchy tracks from their latest album “Twin Cinema.” Maybe it’s the power of judiciously placed “hey-la” boy-girl harmonies, but the air seemed a little cooler around the Outdoor Stage during their set, enough so there was probably more audience hand-claps per hour than anywhere else at this year’s Coachella. Not that lead singer AC Newman felt any cooler.

Cursed from a temperature-tolerance standpoint with both red hair and Canadian citizenship, a smiling Newman confessed between songs that he “Might die from sunstroke up here. But today is a good day to die.” After briefly struggling to quote “your president” George W. Bush and Lt. Colonel Kilgore from “Apocalypse Now,” Newman asked someone in the crowd to check Wikipedia before launching into an equally catchy song from “Mass Romantic.” Sure enough, Newman got his answer two songs later from a helpful voice in the crowd who explained the quote was a Native American saying.

“Well this is going to be very interesting for everyone here,” Newman cracked. “Have you considered the benefits of an online education?”

Pictured: Two New Pornographers turn maple leaf red. Photo by Chris Barton / LAT

[August Brown has a warning, he’ll spell it out for you.]

Is there a yet whiter version of blue-eyed soul? Perpetually sunburned soul? If it exists, English techno-poppers Hot Chip have it nailed. Everything about their sound, from the three-way conga solos to self-referential boasts that “Hot Chip will break your legs,” should add up to a perfect storm of aggressive tweeness.
But it all works in a schizophrenic and hip-shaking way that’s witty but not ironic, affecting without becoming cloying.

The quintet has become a bit of a dark-horse club favorite, and meta-floor fillers like “Over And Over” (where Alexis Taylor mutters that “the joy of repetition really is in you” something like a dozen times) got hands, cameraphones and a flurry of balloons in the air. But there were a few moments of real vulnerability beneath the acidic humor, and a long-form take on “Boy from School” was both a blast to dance to and quietly heartbreaking. Even a new song, usually an invitation to hit their beer tent, became a singalong by the third chorus. We’re keeping these guys on repeat.

Photo by August Brown / LAT.

Meanwhile, along the backside of midway among enormous faux-leaf lean-to’s straight out of “Ferngully,”; a brown, onion-shaped DJ booth is energizing a small but clearly committed collection of dance fans with no regard for temperature or time of day. With Metamorphs dropping a throbbing assortment of trance, jungle and perhaps some other beat-heavy hyphenate engineered on vinyl, the hardcore contingent spun and twirled to their hearts discontent while some just laid on their backs in the shade to absorb the vibrations. A nice stopover point while waiting for MSTKRFT, sure, but why not just convert one of those nearby onions into a medical tent branch office and be done with it?

Photo by Chris Barton / LAT

[Correspondent Chris Barton tries a new flavor.]

Though positioned opposite more indie cred-tastic acts like Hot Chip and Regina Spektor, Orange County’s Jack’s Mannequin drew a packed, energetic mob of true believers surrounding the Outdoor Stage. Armed with a full complement of arena-ready arm gestures and manic, piano-pounding enthusiasm from frontman Andrew McMann, the ex-Something Corporate frontman fought the merciless midday heat with a battery of heartfelt pop dusted with a smattering of everything’s-gonna-be-all-right emo (and if such a thing doesn’t exist, it does now).

While the songs ranged from anthemically cathartic to cathartically anthemic, it’s tough to do anything but celebrate a guy who delivers every note as if his life depended on it. “We’re just so lucky to be here,” McMann shouted from the stage, and given his recovery from leukemia a few years back, this wasn’t just stage patter. But one thing though — amid all the earnest good vibes and crowd-pleasing shoutalongs, what’s with the bassist rocking the mirrored Weezer-esque irony-guitar? Consistency, people!

Photo by Chris Barton / LAT.

We’ve seen far less in the way of clever T-shirts this year than last — must have been all the Tool fans in 2006. But one young festival-goer hit it out of the park with this one:”Shakespeare hates your emo poems.”

The inside joke (if you’re familiar with L.A. nightlife) is that the West Yorkshire trio the Cribs were ending their set with “Hey Scenesters!” just as uber-DJ Steve Aoki was getting rumps shaking in the adjacent Sahara Tent. Not that anybody would have given up on the Cribs for Aoki’s brand of mixology.

The garage-punkers flexed a lot of muscle during their set, most of it from their forthcoming album “Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever.” Their tight presentation is anchored by ground-shaking bass lines, the framework for brothers Ryan and Gary Jarman’s call-and-response vocals and shout-along choruses.

And of course it was hopelessly out of place in midday temperatures that reached 105. In fact, when Gary implored his brother to banter with the crowd between songs, all Ryan could muster was “Cheers.” Thankfully, he was merely saving himself for pogoing.

Photo of Ryan Jarman by Kevin Bronson / LAT

As Pop Levi’s antics faded in the Gobi Tent, the British quintet Fields embarked on their psychedelic journey in the Mojave Tent. It could not have been more different. Delicately layered guitars, the boy-girl harmonies of Nick Peill and Thorunn Antonia and a familial charisma conspired to help Fields’ set soar above the shimmering afternoon heat waves. Not even the breezeless tent could stifle the the band’s majestic folk stylings, which approached epic during its “Song for the Fields.” Their recently released album, “Everything Last Winter,” holds even more, and if this is what we are going to call “prog rock” in 2007, everything’s all right indeed.

Thorunn Antonia does her prog-folk thing in the Gobi Tent. Photo by Kevin Bronson / LAT

[Guest blogger August Brown is duly haggard but only part gypsy, while Gogol Bordello is fully both.]

Woe betide most singers who try to out-weird Bjork while she’s onstage. But Eugene Hutz is not most singers. While Matthew Barney’s babymomma fended off Earth intruders on the main stage, Hutz and his gang of haggard gypsies in Gogol Bordello ripped through an hour of irresistably freaky folk punk late Friday night in the Mojave Tent. This nouveaux-Balkan revival may have legs after all, particularly if they come dressed in ripped fishnets and harlot’s lace a la the Bordello dancing troupe.

Hutz, the Warped Tour generation’s Iggy Pop, scrambled about the stage and slobbered all over his grizzled, creepily-bearded violinist-accordionist. Their ramshackle grooves swung like a tent revival while a dozen 19th-century burlesque dancers giggled and fled from a lasciviously prowling Hutz. The moshing throng of black-clad teenagers ate it up, hoisting the Bordello frontman over head as he kicked off guards who tried to harsh his party. “This is not a crime!” he bellowed, and we don’t ever want to live in a world in which it is.

Everybody’s Hutz. Photo by August Brown / LAT.

[Bronson tunes up for a long Saturday with back-to-back-to-back guitar bands:]

Pop Levi’s set was hot enough to make your eyeliner run. Or his.The ex-Ladytron bassist kicked off Day 2 of Coachella with a set of insistent, glammed-up power pop bent on returning the word “mod” to our vernacular. He can hit the high notes — so well, in fact, he seemed particularly impressed with himself. With teeth clenched and his slender framecavorting around the stage, he vamped for every girl in the first 20 rows, and maybe a few in the back of the packed Gobi Tent.

His latest single, “Pick Me Up Uppercut,” provided the requisite bounce for the early arrivals, and his over-the-top axe-wielding and myriad excursions into the psychedelic made good theater out of music that easily could have been made in the time of Sting-Ray bicycles. Heavy, man.

Photo by Kevin Bronson / LAT.