Post Malone closes Stagecoach with style if not excitement

Almost exactly a year after he closed out Coachella in 2025, Post Malone returned to Indio’s Empire Polo Club late Sunday to headline the final night of this past weekend’s Stagecoach festival.

“Who’s f— thirsty this evening, ladies and gentlemen?” he asked not long into the show — Malone’s way of introducing his song “Pour Me a Drink,” for which he opened a can of his beloved Bud Light by smashing it against his head.

Stylistically, Malone’s 90-minute set was in line with the shows he’s been playing since he dropped his first official country album, “F-1 Trillion,” in 2024; the sound was high-gloss Nashvill-alia purveyed by a crack group of players including fiddlers and background singers.

He did “What Don’t Belong to Me” and “Wrong Ones,” both from “F-1 Trillion,” as well as that album’s smash single, “I Had Some Help,” for which Malone indeed received a bit of assistance from Shaboozey, who popped out at the end of the song to bellow a few lines in the chorus. (On record, “I Had Some Help” features Morgan Wallen, whom Malone quickly made clear had not made the trip out to the desert.)

Malone also offered up country-fied renditions of some of his older songs, including “Circles” — it’s about his favorite shape, he noted — “Rockstar” and “Sunflower,” which sounded especially lovely in this rootsy setting. And he did a bunch 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 out Jake Worthington and Braxton Keith — not exactly the high-wattage names some Stagecoachers may have been hoping for. And though the show was perfectly competent, it had a definite cash-the-check vibe, as though Malone were putting in the least possible work to satisfy his commitment.

He closed with another cover: Toby Keith’s once-controversial “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).” But where Keith found a complicated mix of pride and outrage in his original — an indelible piece of post-9/11 American art — Malone seemed happy to let people think whatever they wanted about his choice: Maybe he was taking a risk; maybe he was reaching back for one more sure thing.