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ACL: Blonde Redhead
Fifteen minutes before the start of Blonde Redhead’s set Friday afternoon at ACL, the backstage was almost entirely empty. There were about three of us standing around waiting for the New York trio to take the stage. At Lollapalooza, the last time I saw them, the backstage area was packed well over 20 minutes before they started.
Here, the backstage area filled up about 15 seconds before they broke into their first song. Which illustrates the difference between ACL and Lollapalooza really nicely. At Lolla, VIPs want a good sightline for these atmospheric rockers. Here, they really need to see the last possible seconds of Pete Yorn and Bela Fleck (who seems to have turned into the Frank Zappa of bluegrass; or was he always like that?).
Seemingly locked into passive-aggressive combat with their monitor mix, the trio nonetheless pulled off a solid if low-key set. It’s tough to sell their kind of textured rock in a festival setting, especially in merciless heat better suited to, say, reggae. Or volleyball.
Guitarists Amedeo Pace and Kazu Makino seem to set the bands rhythms as much as Amedeo’s drummer brother Simone. Their parts weave and out of each other, looping and delaying one minute, cascading the next, Makino’s girlish voice keeping pace, breaking off and filling in the melodies, especially on tracks from this year’s album “23.” I warmed to the album (which I initially filed under “Blonde Radiohead”) after seeing B.R. explore the songs live. In front of sweltering fans, the atmospheric synth parts, samples and loops concretizes, becoming something more kinetic. When Amedo plunged ot the ground at the set’s end peels of feedback streaming out of his amp, you were reminded that, even if they are built for dark clubs, there isn’t much music like these guys at ACL; we’ll take what we can get.
(Photo by Brian K. Diggs AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
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