Foo Fighters fuel fun as Life Is Beautiful closes

This may seem inconsequential.

It is not.

The Foo Fighters frontman punctuated song after song during the band’s headlining performance on Sunday at the Life Is Beautiful festival with the kind of throaty exhortations one makes when a given feeling — in this case, great elation — can’t be confined to mere words.

And so out it comes — y-o-o-o-w! — the linguistic equivalent of volcanic discharge.

Grohl’s outbursts said plenty about the man — and, by extension, the band he fronts.

He’s the kind of dude who gets by through sheer force of will, by demonstrative overexertion and showing you that he really, really means it by rendering himself a shaggy blur with feet and hair flying about in unison.

Fans can relate to a guy like, a grinder, and in Grohl’s case, it’s a big reason why his band became so popular.

The Foo Fighters’ meat-and-potatoes rock is short on frills and long on the things that listeners can easily latch onto: radio-friendly hooks embedded in sturdily crafted songs; guitars, guitars and more guitars; simple, declarative sentiments that sound good when bellowed out with a beer in hand and that pretty much everyone can identify with (“I never wanna die!” Grohl howled on “Walk.” Me neither, bro! Chug.).

Basically, it’s the kind of music made for high-fiving the person next to you as the band charges through one hit and into the next with showy, impressive displays of energy and vigor.

It’s nothing new, call it hard rock comfort food, and the band knows as much.

“In the end, we all come from what’s come before,” Grohl sang on new song “Something From Nothing,” taken from the Foos’ forthcoming eighth album, “Sonic Highways,” due out Nov. 10.

Underscoring this point, the Foos explicitly demonstrated where they came from for a couple of songs midset when they took on the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You” and Queen’s “Under Pressure,” hammering through both with equal parts joy and brutishness.

“If you need a band, Las Vegas, to play classic rock songs, you’ve got the Foo Fighters right here,” Grohl said afterward.

He was alluding to the covers the band had just performed, but he could have been speaking about his own songs just as well.

The Foo Fighters’ crowd-pleasing set was a fittingly celebratory, feel-good end to a festival posited on the cultivation of good vibes, be it with the kind of artisanal food and drink offerings not normally associated with a concert setting, the art installations that brightened the festival grounds or the series of celebrity speakers who gave largely inspirational talks in the Western Hotel building.

Expanding from two days to three this year, Life Is Beautiful drew more than 90,000 people, festival organizers said, a number in line with the daily draw of 30,000 during the inaugural event.

What remained constant from the Life Is Beautiful’s first year to its second was the street party atmosphere and broad array of attendees who differed both in age and what drew them, some attracted more by the culinary offerings than the music, and vice versa.

The musical lineup mirrored such an eclectic mix.

On Sunday, the banjo-abetted Trampled By Turtles had a portion of the crowd square dancing — or at least trying to — as they alternated quick-fingered Appalachian music with gorgeous, fiddle-enhanced waltzes in which hearts were as heavy as cinder blocks.

Swedish electro pop quartet Little Dragon sustained deep grooves with zigzagging synth lines and a singer, Yukimi Nagano, whose breathy voice hugged the contours of their songs almost as snugly as the form-fitting white dress that clung to her.

As dusk set in, Broken Bells soundtracked the occasion with songs that ranged from twilight disco to vengeful rock to yearning acoustic laments. “Don’t run, don’t rush, just flow,” singer James Mercer advised on “October,” words that pretty much summarized this band’s operating principle.

Later, British rockers Arctic Monkeys disrupted the calm with a repertoire that often managed to be seductive and muscular at once. Guitars frequently blazed like rockets at takeoff, but frontman Alex Turner cooled those jets by singing of late nights and women of questionable repute in a smooth drawl.

All these blustery dudes were balanced by some commanding female performers throughout the weekend.

On Saturday, New Zealand singer/fairy-princess-come-to-life Kimbra assailed eardrums with her bass-heavy R&B, and Kim Schifino, drummer of dance pop duo Matt &Kim, treated her kit like a jungle gym.

The following day, Tune-Yards’ Merrill Garbus brightened the already sunny afternoon with socially aware, Afrobeat-influenced indie pop enriched by multipart harmonies and drum loops while of-the-moment country singer Kacey Musgraves told off nosy neighbors and elucidated upon the joys of drinking and smoking in her playfully arranged songs.

And then there was Lionel Richie.

Heading into the festival, Richie seemed like Life Is Beautiful’s biggest outlier — at least on paper — a crossover R&B/pop star who first came to fame in the late ’70s.

But on Saturday, Richie drew one of the fest’s largest audiences by appealing to both the older crowd who made out to Richies’ steamy early ’80s ballads when they were younger and the 20-somethings who were the byproduct of some of those sessions.

At one point, Richie directly addressed the wide range of ages in the crowd by mentioning the musical formats that his fans use to listen to his music in times of heartache.

“You grab your CD, your album, your cassette, your 8-track. And you call on Lionel Richie,” he said, grinning.

So, what to do on a Saturday night when trying to bring together the diffuse Life Is Beautiful hordes? You grab your goat taco, your craft brew, your ticket to ride the Ferris wheel, your big glow-stick thingy that they kept handing out by the main stage.

And you call on Lionel Richie.