Coachella 2016: Early highlights of festival's first day

INDIO >> Coachella kicked off the first of its two weekends on Friday with a breezy but not too warm day, all maer of beautiful people, the usual wild and colorful art installations and music, glorious music, practically every genre under the bright desert sun.

Like your indie rock melodic and twee. Iceland’s Of Monsters and Men fit your bill as twilight descended, in the mood for something hard and raw. The Kills tued in a typically incendiary set on the Coachella stage around the same time.

Highlights during the first day of the festival included the eye-and-ear-opening vocals of the young R&B singer Gallant who wowed the crowd in the Mojave tent with his pure tone and stratospheric falsetto. He wrapped up with one of the first surprise guest tus of the festival when Seal arrived on stage to first duet on Seal’s hit “Crazy” and then on their recent collaboration “Weight in Gold.”

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Next door about the same time the French electronic rock act Christine and the Queens delivered one of the standout sets of the day. Singer Héloïse Letissier performs as the character Christine, singing in French and English. Her band includes four contemporary dancers with whom she performs in choreographed numbers. Good bet that not a lot in the Gobi tent knew all that much about her at the outset, but all certainly left impressed by her fierce and charismatic artistry.

Other late afteoon performances included the hard atmospheric rock of the British band Foals, a favorite of KROQ programmers, and a moody yet danceable tu by the group Bob Moses, one of KCRW’s stalwarts.

Throughout the mid-afteoon the crowds slowly filtered into the festivals grounds. Rapper Joey Bada$$ had a decent-sized crowd for his main stage set and electronic wizard Robert DeLong, who somehow manages to play three different drum sets and a keyboard station all on his own, got his Coachella stage audience dancing to his beats and squiggles of synthetic sounds.

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Miami Horror, an Australian electronic rock band, made a strong coection with its Mojave tent fans, most of whom were up and dancing throughout the set as the snappily dressed Aussies played danceable rock and roll for a nearly full house.

Earlier, Mavis Staples, at 77 almost certainly the oldest performer on the bill, got one the elder eclectic legend spots that in Coachellas past have gone to the likes of reggae star Jimmy Cliff and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.

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Staples played a mix of classics from the Staples Singers catalogue – “I’ll Take You There” and “Freedom Highway” among them – as well as the Talking Heads’ “Slippery People,” a highlight of her set, and the Ben Harper-peed “Love and Trust.”

Her voice was a little scratchy at times – she joked she was at “Choke-a-Chella” after one wind-and-dust-induced coughing fit – but her soulful growl and gospel vocals and testifying were highlight of the early afteoon.

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The earliest sets on Friday got the newest acts, and often youngest performers in the lineup, including Haelos, whose electronic and atmospheric rock set a lovely mood for those who arrived in the Mojave tent early enough to catch their Coachella debut.

Frances, a 22-year-old English singer, played pretty piano ballads to a small crowd early in the day in the Gobi tent and admitted that she was even a bit surprised to find anyone there for her.

“I’m such a Brit abroad,” she said at one point. “I’m so white you can see me from the moon. I really thought I’d be playing to one person.”

Nineteen-year-old Låpsley who sings in the same retro soul and R&B style of fellow Brits such as Adele and the late Amy Winehouse, if not to their level yet, seemed similarly impressed to have made the jouey from her home near Liverpool to Coachella.

“Thank you all, I’ll be seeing all in the beer garden,” she said at the finish. “I got a fake ID!”

Wonder how that worked out for her.