Austin City Limits will celebrate its 10th anniversary next year, and inexplicably move from the seasonal perfection of October to the sweltering clutches of September. Mistake, in my opinion. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and ACL 2010 certainly wasn’t broke. In fact, the three-day festival managed to pull together all the elements to create what was perhaps the most ideal situation possible: clear skies, temperatures that never went over 90, cool evenings, and not a drop of rain, mud, or even much dust.
FRIDAY:
Per usual, I arrived at the festival later than planned. After much butting around, we finally managed to get our crew over to Zilker Park and walk the few blocks it took to get into the festival grounds. Unfortunately we took a “short-cut” that ended up being a long-cut, and managed (yet again) to miss most of the show I was most looking forward to: The Black Keys. (Note to all of my tardiness detractors: if this isn’t proof of my inability to be on time, I don’t know what is.) I’ve seen Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney rock out before, but not since they released Brothers, and if you take a look at the ode, I mean review, that I wrote about that album you would note that it holds a very special place in my heart, to put it mildly. But I’m not one to dwell, especially at a music festival, so after a brief sadness I put it behind me, and enjoyed the last few songs of their set... I can’t really talk about it anymore. Let’s move on before I start dwelling.
Beach House is a band I love but mostly listen to in the darkness of my room when I am moping about something. I was delighted by how naturally Victoria Legrand’s wistful lullabies blossomed out of the massive speakers and over the sun-drenched grass, with the tensile strength of spider silk, which according to Wikipedia is greater than the same weight of steel and has much greater elasticity. And that is my educational simile of the day.
Spoon rocked as always although I wish they would at least try to do the live beat-boxing on “Stay Don’t Go.”
SATURDAY:
Day 2 began with Mayer Hawthorne, a guy who just recently came onto my musical radar. I’m absolutely obsessed with “Green Eyed Love” (if you haven’t heard it yet, do that now; seriously, just stop reading and Google that shit), but this impish little number is a diamond in the rough, or rather, a diamond in the all-too-smooth white-boy soul goo that makes up the bulk of 2009’s A Strange Arrangement. Which is not to say that his performance wasn’t an enjoyable way to spend a Saturday afternoon; it just didn’t wow enough to keep me from ducking out after a few songs to check out the Black Lips, who I’d heard would be playing horn with a human skull. Sucks to go up against that.
Guitarist/vocalist James Mercer from the Shins and producer/artist/musical genius Danger Mouse from just about every awesome music project of the last decade struck gold with Broken Bells, an eponymous debut filled with haunting, mournful melodies that felt at once achingly familiar and inconsolably detached. However, their Saturday performance on the AMD stage started out feeling little more than detached. The sound seemed off and I was almost offended by the lackluster nature of my personal favorite track, “The Ghost Inside,” although it was impressive to watch the imperturbable Danger Mouse move from keyboard to guitar to drums without batting an eye. Then, all of a sudden, a miracle happened: Broken Bells covered The Black Key’s “Everlasting Light,” which redeemed all prior mediocrity and restored hope and beauty to my world.
Torn by my desire to linger over the gorgeous panorama of Australian sound emanating from The Temper Trap’s stage, I eventually gave in to the need to station myself as close to Jim James and his heart-melting falsetto as possible in preparation for the Monsters of Folk performance on the Austin Ventures stage.
In case you don’t know, I am Yim’s #1 fan. That being said, I must admit that as much as I appreciate his tendency to experiment, I love him best as My Morning Jacket’s frontman, so it’s a bit difficult to watch him sharing a stage with effing Bright Eyes. But I’ve ranted about this before, so I will just say that the best parts of this performance was the on-stage camaraderie between Yim and M. Ward and the three MMJ songs they were gracious enough to play for me. Ultimately, my loyalty to Yim Yames and all that he does prevented me from leaving MOF’s two-hour set, even though LCD Soundsystem, another Top 10, was playing at the same time on the other side of the park. Luckily I got a chance to rock out to James Murphy & co. in Atlanta earlier in the week.
Next, we shopped around the Art Market to the pulsations of Deadmau5 until we had to start dancing, which we did until his set—which tends to start rocky and end orgasmic—was over. Then we danced over to check out M.I.A.’s set on the AMD stage.
Maya Arulpragasam is, in my opinion, not a bit overrated—she’s totally brilliant and a little fucked up, which just makes her even cooler. Not even the New York Times can change my mind about that, even after her Saturday night performance. True, for some reason the giant screens showed cartoonish visuals and even just blue rectangles for the majority of the show, so from far away it was hard to tell if anyone was even onstage. And true, her vocals were a bit jumbled and hard to hear. But the beats were delicious and the lights were flashing and the energy was high, right up to the over-the-top virtual blood bath of her surprise encore. Maya jumped around with her name written across her forehead (literally), wearing shorts, thigh-highs, and a half white, half black shirt which I’d guess is meant to symbolize the fact that “my mum is a saint, and my dad is insane. That's exactly what I am—I'm a split personality between my mum and dad.” Who knows exactly what the nature of her relationship with the Tamil Tigers really is, but M.I.A. is a brilliant musician and a vigorous performer, and at ACL on Saturday night, even if you couldn’t exactly see her, you could definitely feel her.
Muse ended the night with their perfected brand of high-energy arena rock, as their soaring vocals and searing melodies etched their way across the sea of fans covering Zilker Park like a living, breathing, dancing blanket.
SUNDAY:
We began Day 3 with Foals’ rippling electro-math-rock, which swirled and swooped around like a robotic bird in the sun. They sounded like a smoother, more British version of TV on the Radio, which is a good thing.
Next up, Devendra Banhart, which turned out to be one of my favorite performances of the weekend. Brightly eccentric and understatedly fun, Devendra is the kind of guy you see in concert and just want to hang out with afterwards. The coolest part of the show happened when Devendra suddenly shouted into the mic, “Okay, is there anybody out there who’s written a song that they’ve never performed before?” Enter Shane Bill, a small pale kid with a mop of dark hair and sunglasses, who played his part so perfectly it almost seemed staged: after the briefest moment of awkward tuning and clear shock at looking down to see a massive sea of people below him, Shane got down to business, crooning out a song about Jack and Jill and some kind of violent occurrence that included the word motherfucker, which he sang in a jangly, Devendra-esque voice as we all cheered and clapped and chanted with the kind of communal affection and support that makes one happy to be alive. During Shane’s performance, Devendra and his band left the stage entirely, watching from a back corner like proud parents before returning for a nice moment where Shane and Devendra put their foreheads together and said things that Shane was probably too dazed to recall. I actually somehow came across little Shane as the crowd cleared away right after the show, and found him still a little shell-shocked. He told me his real name was Shane Zwiner and he was from Houston but wanted to move to LA to be a singer and an actor. You go Shane, you go.
Next up, the Morning Benders looked even younger than Shane Bill but provided a nice wash of melodic vocals to sit in the sun to as we watched a security guard snatch a freshly-rolled blunt away from a shocked group of hippie kids. The guard went backstage and came back about 5 minutes later, giggling. I’m onto you, sir.
For Yeasayer’s show, I found myself on the far right of the stage with a perfect view of the badass lady who translates not just words but sounds and feelings via sign language whilest rocking out onstage—my sources tell me the same lady was at Lollapalooza, which means this must be the greatest traveling gig in the world and a very good incentive to learn sign language. Suggestion for future festivals: two sign language ladies, one on each side of the stage, battling.
Edward Sharpe looked like the ultimate oddly-sexy hippie in a stained, once-white muumuu and his characteristically raggedy beard as he leaned off the stage and into a groping crowd of unnervingly young kids wearing braces and Silly Bandz aplenty. He and his large gang of Magnetic Zeros frolicked in front of a Wizard of Oz-themed backdrop that fit nicely with their jangly, neo-psych, “magical mystery kind” of indie-pop, but I’m way past my word limit so let’s end it there and hustle.
Flaming Lips: awesome, as always. What else can I say that I haven’t already said?
Once “Hotel California” was said and done, it was time to head out. I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man.
But I loved Austin City Limits.
Written by Hilary Cadigan
Photos by Max Blau & Hilary Cadigan
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