Post Malone closes Stagecoach with style if not excitement

Almost precisely a twelvemonth aft helium closed retired Coachella successful 2025, Post Malone returned to Indio’s Empire Polo Club precocious Sunday to header the last nighttime of this past weekend’s Stagecoach festival.

“Who’s f— thirsty this evening, ladies and gentlemen?” helium asked not agelong into the amusement — Malone’s mode of introducing his opus “Pour Me a Drink,” for which helium opened a tin of his beloved Bud Light by smashing it against his head.

Stylistically, Malone’s 90-minute acceptable was successful enactment with the shows he’s been playing since helium dropped his archetypal authoritative state album, “F-1 Trillion,” successful 2024; the dependable was high-gloss Nashvill-alia purveyed by a ace radical of players including fiddlers and inheritance singers.

He did “What Don’t Belong to Me” and “Wrong Ones,” some from “F-1 Trillion,” arsenic good arsenic that album’s smash single, “I Had Some Help,” for which Malone so received a spot of assistance from Shaboozey, who popped retired astatine the extremity of the opus to bellow a fewer lines successful the chorus. (On record, “I Had Some Help” features Morgan Wallen, whom Malone rapidly made wide had not made the travel retired to the desert.)

Malone besides offered up country-fied renditions of immoderate of his older songs, including “Circles” — it’s astir his favourite shape, helium noted — “Rockstar” and “Sunflower,” which sounded particularly beauteous successful this rootsy setting. And helium did a clump of covers, among them “Give It Away” (the George Strait hit, not the Red Hot Chili Peppers one), Garth Brooks’ “Rodeo” and John Michael Montgomery’s “I Swear.”

Guests? Malone brought retired Jake Worthington and Braxton Keith — not precisely the high-wattage names immoderate Stagecoachers whitethorn person been hoping for. And though the amusement was perfectly competent, it had a definite cash-the-check vibe, arsenic though Malone were putting successful the slightest imaginable enactment to fulfill his commitment.

He closed with different cover: Toby Keith’s once-controversial “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).” But wherever Keith recovered a analyzable premix of pridefulness and outrage successful his archetypal — an indelible portion of post-9/11 American creation — Malone seemed blessed to fto radical deliberation immoderate they wanted astir his choice: Maybe helium was taking a risk; possibly helium was reaching backmost for 1 much definite thing.