Coachella 2009, Friday: Leonard Cohen, Paul McCartney, M. Ward, Morrissey, The Hold Steady and more

Come along with Paste as we look back on some of the more notable sets from Day One of Coachella 2009...

Noah and the Whale (2:35 p.m., Outdoor Stage)
While their pastel-flared and horn-ripped debut, Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down, was a host of precious, pristine indie pop, all epic and winding guitars hooked to even bigger melodies laced with streaks of meditative viola, Noah and the Whale's early afternoon set failed to build upon the momentum of the bands before them, let alone generate any of their own. While occasionally nimble and sprightly (something all Britpop bands apparently have to be), Noah and the Whale simply lacked any element of excitement or surprise in their however technically-proficient set. Although their name may be a reference to the Noah Baumbach film The Squid and the Whale, they sounded more like like the house band to Zach Braff's subconscious in his latest cinematic attempt at rewriting The Graduate: pleasant and competent, but without much of a point.

The Hold Steady (4:30 p.m., Mojave Stage)
The first truly excellent set of the day came from Brooklyn's The Hold Steady. Frontman Craig Finn's endearingly throat-graveled vocals whipped and wailed over a gritty tangle of buzzsaw classic-rock guitars as the band roiled their sweaty audience into a fist-pumped and hand-clapped abandon. The giddy, constant applause acted as a staccato counterpoint to songs like the rhythmic punch of "Sequestered in Memphis" and the razor-wired gnash of "Your Little Hoodrat Friend," while Finn gleefully, feverishly danced, twirled and spun around his mic stand like a a plaid-clad, horn-rimmed dervish to the hyper-engaged audience's delight during one of the day's most victorious and celebratory moments. These guys definitely deserved a much larger stage.

M. Ward (4:55 PM, Outdoor Theatre)
M. Ward held time to a near standstill with his breathy brand of soul-burnished and rust-colored folk-rock. Deeply informed by the recent, and quite relaxed, Hold Time, Ward's set of quietly gorgeous rasps and riffs was almost entirely that, as he confidently made his way through through a moving series of rootsy, moving folk. The stinging, thunder-and-lightning punctuation of the closer, a cover of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven," provided a gently-hushed oasis contrast to the hydra-headed desert ruckus surrounding it.

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band (6:15 p.m., Outdoor Theatre)
Conor Oberst's performance, set against a gentle pre-dusk haze, was a barrage of quick and dirty roots-rockers just as suited for blanketing a Nashville skyline as they were Indio's palm treed horizon. In a punkish, post-Dylan snarl, the Bright Eyes frontman previewed rollicking  tracks off of his and Mystic Valley Band's upcoming album, Outer South (due May 5th on Merge), while returning to tracks from last year's self-titled affair, such as the swaggering, bluesy chime of "Souled Out!!!" and the arterial throb of the quietly intense "Cape Canaveral." As a cool desert breeze snaked throughout the ever-increasing crowd, Oberst, decked out in an oversized Stetson and extraterrestrial sunglasses, held the sun-drunk audience in his adept sway, bringing the daylit portion of Coachella 2009's first day to a close with wit and style.

Leonard Cohen (7:45 p.m., Outdoor Theatre)
In what soon coalesced into the finest performance of the day, legendary singer Leonard Cohen began his marathon set with "Dance Me to the End of Love," a track filled with layered, cascading waves of lovely background vocals and gypsy folk, his weathered baritone providing a solemn soundtrack as the sun-bloodied sky behind him dramatically slipped into an darkness. Considering who was on stage, it was a fitting visual metaphor for the stark contrast between the day's eclectic selection of rock and Cohen's brand of poetic, moving folk. Backed by an adept nine-piece band, Cohen gently but authoritatively flowed from one song to the next, easily straddling an oeuvre that spans over 40 years, deftly revisiting late-period winners (such as the propulsive, throat-scratched doom of 1993's "The Future") just as easily as he resurrected his devastating earlier work (most notably, the wistful sorrow of "Bird on a Wire"). By the time his age-ravaged voice led all through a floodlit singalong of the cold and broken "Hallelujah," Cohen had single-handedly guided his audience through what may have been the most emotionally cathartic performance of the entire weekend.

Morrissey (8:45 p.m., Coachella Stage)
Despite (or perhaps because of) being plagued by frequent sound problems ("Lovely tryin' to sing when you can't hear a word you're saying.") and the smell of BBQ ("The smell of burning animal flesh... Oh, it's killing me. I hope that's only human flesh I smell burning. I can stand that."), Stephen Patrick Morrissey more than lived up to his recalcitrant, miserablist image as one of the most biting performers in rock, turning in a lively and swinging set that managed to overcome technical difficulties due to the loose swagger of his vital new material and the man's sheer rebellious charm. Morrissey, commanding the monolithic stage with finesse as a seemingly endless crowd began to form before him, easily skipped from solo material (the jangled chime of "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" stood tall as a highlight) before settling into a surprising and lovely collection of Smiths tracks like "Some Girls are Bigger Than Others" and the otherworldly cool of "How Soon is Now," which, in the end, left everyone within earshot with a satisfied, ear-to-ear grin. Even The Moz seemed momentarily pleased,.

Paul McCartney (10 p.m., Coachella Stage)
There was a telling moment midway through former Beatle Paul McCartney's herculean three-hour headlining set, one that ably captured and summarized the thrust of his entire show: the performance of Abbey Road's "Something." McCartney began the song as a solo piece, recasting the original's serpentine majesty as a quirky ukulele ballad, before his backing band kicked in mid-way with a thunderous, schmaltz-heavy sheen of Vegas-styled classic-rock revisionism before the sheer power and beauty of the song steered the band, and Paul, into more elegant and reverential waters. And that was McCartney's entire show densely packed within a five-minute shell. At times oddball and winning (most especially on a ripping version of "Mama Only Knows" from 2007's Memory Almost Full); other times embarrassingly ham-fisted and mugging (the thunderous shudder of "Live and Let Die," with the pyrotechnic fury of its stage-explosions and fireworks, felt more like the opening-night celebration for a casino rather than a Coachella headliner's live centerpiece); still other times appropriately reverential and epic when approaching and playing his Beatles catalog.

Speaking of which, McCartney fired off the elegiac dread of "Eleanor Rigby," the chiming, solo "Blackbird," and the simply perfect four-song closing stretch of "A Day in the Life," John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" ("Let's hear it for my brother, John!"), "Let it Be" and "Hey Jude," a song which climaxed with thousands in the audience lending their voices to McCartney's, a true moment of communal empathy. The Beatles-heavy encore closed with Abbey Road's "The End," with the immortal refrain, "And in the end / The love you take / Is equal to the love you make." Not a single soul felt otherwise.