Muse drew one of the biggest crowds of the Coachella Festival to their explosive Saturday-night set. The band’s recent slew of arena shows around the U.S. and the Coachella crowd’s rapturous reaction indicate that the English trio are finally on their way to becoming as big Stateside as they are in the U.K.

Day two started out much like day one, in fulltilt. Despite a bevy of physical ailments left over from yesterday’s marathon, making it to Camera Obscura’s set on time was worth another painful sprint across the field. However day two was light on the heavy hitters, and after the initial close call, I didn’t have to hustle to see sets from Beach House, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Hot Chip, MGMT, and Muse.

Coachella 2010 began under the cloud of an erupting volcano. Several of the European artists playing this year had to cancel their Coachella appearances due to the Icelandic volcano eruption grounding all flights from the U.K. and other parts of Europe. So day one of Coachella was greeted with the news that we wouldn’t be seeing Frightened Rabbit, Delphic, The Cribs (with Johnny Marr), or Gary Numan after all. And only a few days earlier Mew had already cancelled due to illness. So this year’s festival was already starting with some losses, Mew and Delphic probably being the most unfortunate ones. But while there were few artists playing Coachella 2010 who I both hadn’t seen before and was dying to see (Pavement being one of them), the lineup was still rigged with enough great artists so that I had little time to eat and take breaks between bands. Here’s what I saw during day one.

The 2010 Coachella Festival kicked off yesterday (April 16) in a chaotic fashion, with massive crowds making it difficult to get onto and off of the grounds and challenging to catch close-up glimpses of the bands. An Icelandic volcano also threw a wrench into the works, making it impossible for artists including The Cribs and Bad Lieutenant to fly from England to California to perform. That said, stellar sets by Vampire Weekend, Them Crooked Vultures and La Roux, among others, made fighting through the crowds and braving the heat worthwhile.

Confession: despite my various musical exploits, this is my first year at Coachella. And in spite of various friends’ threats to paint a “V” on my forehead and subject me to an unspeakable hazing process (that’s standard…right?), I spent the week leading up to the festivities feeling not unlike an over-sugared toddler on Christmas Eve. Day one’s notable loot: Sleigh Bells, Yeasayer, Passion Pit, Grizzly Bear, and Fever Ray.

Career suicide, heinous album art, and no regard for their fanbase. Those have been the three themes bandied about most often in early appraisals of Congratulations.

The only thing Kick-Ass the movie has in common with Kick-Ass the comic book is the premise: New York high-schooler Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a nobody to everyone around him except for his two best friends (played by Clark Duke and Evan Peters) and his father. After he and his buddies are mugged one too many times by a couple of neighborhood hoods, Lizewski takes up the mantle and MySpace page of an amateur vigilante.

Groove Armada’s place in the musical echelon might not be as high as it was when “I See You Baby” seemed ubiquitous and big beat electronica was thriving. But as evidenced by this sold-out show at the Henry Fonda Theater, many still love to shake their asses to the music of Andy Cato and Tom Findlay and collaborators.

The story of Chess Records founder Leonard Chess, who would help launch the careers of Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, and Etta James, falls flat, without igniting the fire that helped make recent music pics like Once and Walk the Line successful.