Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2007 > November > 04 > Entry
HIghlights of Fun Fun Fun Fest, Day One
The weather? Perfect. Low 80s during the day, high 60s at night. Seriously, this might have been the nicest Austin music festival weather of the 21st century. Total bullseye. Clearly the folks at Transmission sacrificed a goat or a virgin or something. But can you even find a virgin on Sixth or Red River? (“Ba-dump-ching”) Thanks, I’ll be here all week.
Love the “Return to Forever” T-shirt on the bass player for hipster metal titans Saviours. The band played a monster set, yet not jazz fusion. Discuss.
Swedish hard rockers Witchcraft were their own retro-metal miracle - melodic, swinging, denim clad.
The Evangelicals hail from Norman, Okla. So they can be forgiven for sounding an awful lot like early Flaming Lips, who hail from Oklahoma City. This isn’t a knock: the younger band’s set blended complicated pop song craft with simple, trippy keyboard melodies and overdriven guitar burn. Their smoldering hunks of psychedelic riff-style blended brilliantly with the cloudless sky. And hey, it’s a heck of a lot better than sounding like later Flaming Lips.
White Denim, perhaps Austin’s buzziest buzz band, lived up the exhausting amount of blog hype. They’re still kind of fuzzy on the whole song-band vs. groove-band thing, but it didn’t stop the trio from putting a frantic, sweaty set of soulful drum breaks, geeky funk and layers of serrated guitar.
And I do mean layers. It was a great day for guitar and violin loops. Owen Pallett, doing business as Final Fantasy, turned his lone violin into an orchestra (“It’s not as much a band as a magic show,” one megafan was overheard to note). The audience got a bonus when Pallett played a cover of Destroyer’s “An Actor’s Revenge.” The Destroyer himself, also doing business as Dan Bejar, was spotted backstage and brought up (Bejar is one of the songwriters in New Pornographers, but rarely plays live with them). The song was started again with Bejar’s glammy, Bowie-esque voice joining in, along with an entirely too excited Cadence Weapon. It truly was Pallett’s fans’ final fantasy. (Sorry.)
Speaking of Bejar, the New Pornographers set was strong, in spite of harsh sound (hello, midrange!). Bejar, however, only wandered out to sing his songs. They’re wonderful songs, eccentric and melodic in ways that work in solid contrast to lead tunesmith Carl Newman. But the effect was almost surreally prima-donna-ish.
As someone with absolutely no interest in ‘80s and especially ‘90s New York hardcore, it’s vaguely painful to admit Madball put in a ripping set, noting the lack of barriers between the stage and the audience. And it was cute to see the pit entirely comprised of guys in their early thirties pretending they were 18 again. The Angry Samoans, on the other hand, spent an awful lot of time talking about how old they were and how young the crowd was. The music could not have sounded more 1979, which is entirely appropriate. Corpus Christi O.P. (original punk) Tim Stegall made an appearance. OK, OK, you guys are old. (But they do get more points than you can imagine for $5 T-shirts, which were essentially random thrift store shirts with the Samoans logo silk-screened on them, which was perfect for one of the great junk culture punk bands.)
Speaking of, let’s hear it as well for Explosions in the Sky’s merch table. Ten dollars per LP (including the double from this year) = classy. I bought two. The Sword’s set was excellent - heavy, hair-swinging, sludgy, loud metal for brainy heshers alike. They had plenty of new, thunderous songs, including a tribute to science-fiction author George R.R. Martin’s novel “A Game of Thrones” called “Take the Black.” Heavy nerds united! (And I mean heavy both in the physical and metal senses.)
Though the audience for their set was dwarfed by the crowd for Explosions in the Sky, Neurosis’s epic art-metal was magnificent, equal parts ambient doom, crushing thrash and enigmatic, black and white visual projections. (The split audience thing was a shame. Each band could have easily picked up 500 new fans had they played at different times.) Opening with the title track from this year’s excellent “Given to the Rising,” it was impossible to know that this band barely plays live anymore and indeed lives in entirely different parts of the country. Guitarist (and fourth grade teacher) Steve Von Till’s “Hidden Faces” felt like an anthem of focus and power (“Through the weathering vine/ I WILL SEE YOU COMING/ The feral now feeds you/ Instinct is pure/ All actions are sane. “To the Wind” (gotta love that 45 second howl from Scott Kelly), “At the End of the Road” and “Water is Not Enough” emphasized the band’s ability to move from drift to pound at the drop of a drumstick. “Distill (Watching the Swarm)” probably should have been seen by any kid going to the upcoming Tool show to see how it’s done. (It’s pretty much impossible to imagine Tool without Neurosis.) Set closers “Burn” and “The Doorway” crashed into massive feedback walls and stopped on a dime. Sometime, 22 years of experience pays off.
(Pictured: 1. Sick Of It All. Photo by Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN, 2. Final Fantasy. Photo by David Weaver FOR AUSTIN360, 3. Neurosis. Photo by Bret Gerbe FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN.)
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Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Fun Fun Fun Fest
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By CarterB
November 4, 2007 10:05 AM | Link to this
Mr. Joe doesn’t like the DJ tent, eh? Busdriver and Girl Talk both delivered rousing sets from what we saw. We left before he finished, but I’m curious of Girl Talk’s stage collapsed like it did in Dallas a few days ago. As for White Denim, why did they end their set 15 minutes early? They were really good, but sheesh, a 30-minute set is too short. Festival highlight for me was being able to get up close for Final Fantasy and Okkervil River. Here’s a fest that is not swarming with people at ACL in terms of size. No more ACL for us—$150 tix and 100 degrees is too much.
By eh~
November 4, 2007 10:09 AM | Link to this
Seemed about 50-100 people max liked the DJ tent. Waaay too many late 20s schmucks with their caps on sideways. Eat something, gain some weight!
30 minutes is more than enough time to make a good smack, re: White Denim.
By Matt
November 4, 2007 10:22 AM | Link to this
During the day, yeah stage 3 wasn’t too popular and was very high-schoolish. But during girl talk? There were nearly 50 people on the stage alone. The entire area was packed, and I’ve never seen so much crowd energy in my life.
By eh~
November 4, 2007 10:28 AM | Link to this
OK, I left right before, didn’t mean to hate on the whole stage, and I quite enjoyed Jester despite the bass probs. Beats and sunshine don’t mix too well though.
Diplo does not eat shrimp or have iodine poisoning, and he just might get slandered tonight. Just an instinct…
By dave
November 4, 2007 10:57 AM | Link to this
“Beats and sunshine don’t mix too well though” -really?!? here, have some prozac.
By eh~
November 4, 2007 4:10 PM | Link to this
Yeah one might need Prozac to get excited about 90% of electro DJ “music” these daze. Is Kraftwerk playing at your frat-house? Tweet, mon…
By Tim Stegall
November 8, 2007 8:54 PM | Link to this
Thanks for the mention, Joe. However, I should point out I also lived here for nearly ten years in the ’90s, wrote for That Other Austin Paper and several national publications, and led a fairly popular local punk band called The Hormones that put out a few records and got played by John Peel and reviewed in Rolling Stone. I do appreciate the kind words, though, although I hate to think of being 42 as being “old.” winks