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ACL 2009: Sunday
October 11, 2010
Blind Pilot
Mellow and resolutely mid-tempo, Blind Pilot’s music is maybe better suited to an intimate coffee house than a festival field, but the Portland, Ore.-based group drew a sizable crowd to bake in the midday sun at the Zync stage Sunday. Singer-guitarist Israel Nebeker has a warm, engaging voice, and since the duo he formed with drummer Ryan Dobrowski has expanded to include Kati Claborn on banjo and dulcimer, Luke Ydstie on upright bass, Dave Jorgensen on trumpet and harmonium and Ian Krist on vibraphone, unusual arrangements add color to songs that all tend toward the ruminative.
Often, Blind Pilot seemed a lot like a more summery, less mysterious Bon Iver, as on “Two Towns From Me,” “3 Rounds and a Sound” and a new song that ended suddenly with the memorable line “Let my heart beat itself still.” Claborn’s voice blended very well with Nebeker’s, but pretty as their harmonies were, the delicate vibraphone and exotic harmonium — a bellows-powered keyboard instrument, often used in Indian music — did more to set the band apart.
Blind Pilot was always ingratiating, but most interesting on “One Red Thread,” where it picked up the pace, slowed it down and then gathered momentum again, giving the strong rhythm section a real chance to shine and using harmonium and trumpet to emphasize shifting moods.
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October 10, 2010
ACL review: Richard Thompson
Richard Thompson was probably the only artist bold enough to open an ACL set with three just-released songs, but he’s such a phenomenal guitarist, and has such a tremendous band, that he could doubtless get away with playing a bunch of polkas — which he impishly suggested that he was about to do, “for your delectation,” as an appropriate lead-in to the rollicking, Celtic-flavored “Demons in Her Dancing Shoes.”
Thompson led off with the first three songs on his new “Dream Attic,” the searing Wall Street satire “Money Shuffle,” slow and somber “Among the Gorse, Among the Grey” and stampeding “Haul Me Up.” The first older song, “Can’t Win,” was a prime demonstration of the telepathy between Thompson and his band, with his vocal cry seeming to turn into Joel Zifkin’s violin lament. Thompson’s long, enthralling electric guitar solo had the emotional sweep, high drama and stunning invention of a Stravinsky suite for six strings, and Michael Jerome on drums and Taras Prodaniuk on bass furnished a tumult underneath.
A complete contrast came next in the form of the graceful, melancholy “Al Bowlly’s in Heaven,” an oblique anti-war meditation, with Thompson on acoustic guitar and multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn playing a smoky sax solo. The band’s fire and fury exploded on “I’ll Never Give It Up.” Thompson ended with one of his classic rave-ups, “Tear-Stained Letter,” and there were enough death-defying twists and spirals in his solo to last most players a couple of years worth of standing ovations. The audience kept hollering for an encore even after crew members started swarming the stage to break it down, but to no avail.
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October 5, 2009
Live review: Bon Iver at Paramount Theatre
Bon Iver — a.k.a. indie-folk musician Justin Vernon and band — turned in one of the most memorable performances from the entire ACL Festival weekend Sunday evening at a sold-out show at the Paramount Theatre.
The band’s final performance before their tour-ending Wisconsin homecoming show couldn’t have been scripted better. The sold-out audience was hyped, fueled by adrenaline, alcohol (and who knows what else) after three days of music, sun and rain. The Paramount Theatre’s acoustics sounded as if they had been fine-tuned especially for Vernon’s booming falsetto. The show was also the final night of Bon Iver’s tour with opening band Megafaun (a freak-folk group of stunning power featuring members of Vernon’s previous band DeYarmond Edison).
Vernon was very gracious the entire evening, whether he was calling up an old friend to start the show by reciting a poem, or whether repeatedly thanking the audience for taking part in an evening that was seemingly a poignant apex in his life.
“I can’t express enough gratitude for y’all showing up to fill this beautiful theater,” Vernon said.
Bon Iver began the show with the first three songs from debut album “For Emma, Forever Ago” played in sequence, a comforting start for those familiar with what’s turned out to be one of the strongest debuts of the decade. The band’s emphasis on tone and harmony was obvious from the detail in the arrangements of their four-part vocal harmonies to the intricacies of their instrumentation. On “Skinny Love,” bassist Matthew McCaughan and guitarist Michael Noyce both played drums, adding a primal, inescapable beat accompaniment. On other songs McCaughan simultaneously played bass and a kickdrum with his foot while drummer Sean Carey played a small electronic keyboard.
As strong as the songs on “For Emma, Forever Ago” are, the band’s tireless touring for the past two years has developed them into an impassioned unit. Whereas some artists become detached from songs after performing them again and again, Vernon slipped into the songs like an old comfortable vintage sweater, filling them out with his passionate voice. The crooks and crannies of each song were not dusty and dark, but were places where Vernon’s bright voice illuminated, revealing the artistry of his song craft.
Just past the set’s mid-point, Vernon played an unexpected, rousing cover of the Outfield’s “Your Love,” inciting screams and laughter from the audience. Vernon pulled back the rhythm and created a bouncing groove, emphasizing a backbeat pocket that doesn’t exist in the original song.
An ethereal and sublime version of “re: Stacks” followed where Vernon played solo for the first time of the evening. The instrumentation stripped away to just his voice and guitar emphasized the power of the lyric and Vernon’s immense songwriting talent, recalling everything that was inspiring in Nick Drake’s music while being wholly original.
Bon Iver closed the night with a two-song encore. The first was the elegiac “For Emma,” then he brought Megafaun and various friends up on stage to cover Megafaun’s “Worried Mind.” The group of musicians huddled along the edge of the proscenium and used only the theater’s acoustics as amplification, Asylum Street Spankers style. After a few verses, they called on the audience to sing-along to the chorus, a cathartic “Come ease your mind, come on ease your worried mind.” The collaboration received a standing ovation (as did the first set and Megafaun’s brilliant opening set), proving that sometimes the most powerful performances at a music festival are not merely the loudest and largest.
Setlist
Flume
Lump Sum
Skinny Love
Brackett, WI
Blood Bank
Beach Baby
Josie
Creature Fear
re: Stacks
The Wolves (Act I and II)
Encore
For Emma
Worried Mind
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Live review: Toadies
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
When the sun broke through the clouds Sunday afternoon, the massive crowd gathered at the Livestrong stage stripped off their shirts and painted each other with the ubiquitous festival mud in some tribal ritual akin to applying war paint. The Toadies must have planned on playing in the predicted downpour, though, as they opened with “I Come From the Water.” The joke was on them. Since the band actually comes from Fort Worth, they are probably familiar with the temperamental Texas weather, so a blown weather forecast couldn’t have been too surprising.
The band ripped their set wide open with the venomous “Song I Hate” and the viscous riff rock of “No Deliverance” from last year’s post-reunion album of the same name (minus longtime bassist Lisa Umbarger). It was the band’s trip back to 1998’s “Rubberneck,” though, that elicited massive sing-alongs during the “we will wake up” parts of “Tyler” and the “so help me, Jesus” parts of “Possum Kingdom,” the band’s big hit. The overhead crane camera was up and running and the video screen images vacillated between shots of the band and shots of the massive crowd crushed together in the mid-day sun.
After 15 years singer Todd Lewis still has that angst-ridden straining quality in his voice, sounding as if he was pushing the envelope of his vocal range on songs like “Push the Hand” and “Got a Heart.” The band turned in a loud, swampy set of nearly note-perfect renditions of their best songs, waking the crowd from their heat-induced lethargy and inspiring them to dance and embrace the musical and literal grunge.
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Live review: Pearl Jam
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
- Photos: Pearl Jam at ACL Fest 2009
Around the 90 minute mark of a 10’s across the board set Sunday night - during the guitar solo passage of “Alive” - Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder ventured to the left side girders of the stage and peered up and down the superstructure. A moment later, he bounded to the right stage edge and did the same thing; feeling the framework before looking out on the ocean of mud-covered fans caught up in his every move and syllable.
As many as 10 years ago the front man would’ve gone ape and started climbing, probably winding up atop a speaker stack before diving onto a mass of waiting hands. Who knows if it’s because of his firmly adult age (now 44) or just a feeling of “been there, done that” that caused it, but those two moments of reserve were the only times Vedder or any of his bandmates held anything back during a two hour epic performance that should put them in the books as one of the best headlining acts ever in Austin City Limits Festival history.
Put together a checklist of what you want to see from a festival headliner and it was there: oldies (“Why Go?,” “Corduroy,” “Daughter”), well-executed new stuff (“Got Some,” “The Fixer”), virtuosity (guitarist Mike McCready wailing behind his head during “Evenflow” or any of a number of solos throughout the night), Eddie being Eddie (plenty of chat to the crowd without rambling) and covers (Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World,” The Who’s “The Real Me,” and, amazingly, Jane’s Addiction’s “Mountain Song” with Perry Farrell on vocals).
What strung all that together was Pearl Jam’s ability to change speeds in a snap and pull the right song from its nine-album canon and fire it just the right way to fit the vibe of the show. It’s what makes a transition from almost folk like “Daughter” into the first verse of the dirgy “W.M.A.” followed by the full-on stomp of “Hail Hail” not only make sense but seem completely obvious.
That adaptability comes from the band’s healthy touring regimen through its 19 years together, which in recent years has bizarrely turned it into an alternate universe Grateful Dead, where crossing Lynyrd Skynyrd with Minor Threat is the kind of thing that can get Gen Xer fans to go on the road for dozens of dates at a stretch. But thankfully that’s what happened, and even though Sunday’s two hour time limit was 60 minutes shorter than what they’re known for these days, it never lacked for immediacy or felt like there was a base that wasn’t being covered well.
So whether you were pining for a karaoke-level standard like “Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town,” lesser-known mid-period stuff (“Not For You,” “Given To Fly”) or old chestnuts (“Why Go?” “State Of Love And Trust”) it was there in full force.
Whether or not the Pearl Jam makes good on Vedder’s mid-set promise to return to Austin in a reasonable time frame (its last visit here was in 1995) few of the masses who toughed out the mud through Sunday - “You all look like a (expletive) ocean… and it’s beautiful,” Vedder offered later on - would argue the band put its stamp on ACL Fest and the city for years to come.
Set list: Why Go?, Corduroy, Got Some, Not For You (plus a verse from “Modern Girl” by Sleater Kinney), Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town, Given To Fly, World Wide Suicide, Evenflow, Unthought Known, Daughter (with transition into first verse of W.M.A.), Hail Hail, Insignificance, Present Tense, State Of Love And Trust, The Fixer, Go
(encore) Red Mosquito (feat. Ben Harper on slide guitar), Do The Evolution, The Real Me (cover - The Who), Alive
(encore) Mountain Song (cover - Jane’s Addiction with Perry Farrell on vocals), Rockin’ In The Free World (cover - Neil Young)
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October 4, 2009
Live review: Dan Auerbach
Dan Auerbach’s regular gig, the Black Keys, has been called garage blues rock by so many music journalists that he’s had to clarify in interviews that the band doesn’t consider itself a blues act. He’s even gone so far as to suggest that his band mate, drummer Patrick Carney, has something of a dislike for the genre.
Which makes one wonder if he struck out on his own, with this year’s solo LP “Keep It Hid,” to show the world just what an Auerbach-led blues band would actually sound like. Taking to the Austin Ventures stage with backing band the Fast Five — better known as San Antonio rockers Hacienda — Auerbach delivered a brilliantly realized 45 minutes of hard-edged, full-bodied blues rock.
With the lovelorn “I Want Some More” — in the finest blues tradition, the first of what would be many songs about women and the pain they can cause — Auerbach employed his sharp-as-a-razor voice and virtuoso guitar playing for a powerfully gritty opener. And “Whispered Words” demonstrated that Auerbach keenly understands the power of tension and release in blues, with its frequent start-stop solos and dramatic pauses.
Backing Hacienda more than kept pace, really strutting their stuff on occasional hook-heavy rockers like “My Last Mistake.” Even with the considerably loud dance mashup of Girl Talk drifting over to the Austin Ventures stage, Auerbach kept it loud, fast and fierce, with an intense performance that provided a perfect cap to a long, grimy day.
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Live review: Clutch
Ricardo B. Brazziell AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Look, I’m a homer for rock of a certain age coming from Washington, D.C., and her vanilla suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.
Clutch are from around there - Germantown, Maryland, to be exact. And they’re homers, too. The band takes the stage to the sounds of D. C. go-go legend Chuck Brown’s “We Need Some Money,” something pretty much only a band from that area would do. (It’s also a good example of Clutch’s sense of humor, i.e. they’re playing a show because they need money.)
Neil Fallon, still sporting one of the best neck-beards in rock, gestured like a ranting homeless dude when he wasn’t playing second guitar. Opening with “50,000 Unstoppable Watts,” the single from their new album “Strange Cousins From the West,” and alternating between stomping blues-pound (“Electric Worry,” “Motherless Child”) and surreal hard rock (“The Mob Goes Wild,” Immortal”), Clutch delivered such a solid set of meat-and-potatoes thunder that it reminded you how little heavy music there is at ACL.
And I could listen to that guy rant all day. A few choice lines:
“Keep calm and carry on/ reefer madness quiets the falling bomb,” from “Struck Down.”
“Holy Diver, where you at?/ There’s a woman on the hill in a wide brimmed hat With a shotgun, .44,/ And a big blood hound in the back of a jacked up Ford.” from “Cypress”
“I’m gonna build a castle out of Goodyear tires/ Cinderblock and busted doors; that’s where I’ll retire” from “Let a Poor Man Be”
“Who rides the solar cycle with no hands ma?/ Who found the Ark inside Texarkana?” form “Immortal”
May he rant another 19 years.
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Scene report: State Radio
State Radio brought its brand of socially aware and politically active songs to the Austin Ventures stage during the Austin City Limits Music Festival Sunday.
Before their evening performance, the trio stopped by the press area to discuss their new record and get their human rights message out to those who haven’t heard it before.
The 6-year-old band was happy about being in Austin and happy about being at an open-air festival venue.
“We love Austin,” said lead singer and songwriter Chad Stokes. “And this festival has a good collection of bands. We like festivals; we do well at them. Audiences here are pretty liberal. The exposure is great and, musically, playing here opens the door to other things.”
State Radio just released a new record, “Let It Go,” produced by Dom Monks in 1970s live analog fashion. With socially conscious songs about Armenian genocide and a reggae tune about human rights with emphasis on women living in Sudanese refugee camps, Stokes said it is the band’s best album to date.
“It’s more optimistic than our previous album,” he said.
When asked what led to the band’s rosier outlook, he replied, “George Bush isn’t president any more.”
The dynamic trio — Stokes on guitar and lead vocals, Chuck Fay on bass and Mike Najarian on drums — is heading out on a West Coast tour to promote the new record and will continue working on projects with their social offshoot organization, Calling All Crows. Stokes said it is important for the group to take breathers between projects and albums to keep fresh and creative.
“It can get tricky balancing music and social reform,” he said. “We need to make sure we have enough practice time and enough free time to go off creatively into left field.”
C. Taylor Crothers photo
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Live review: Preservation Hall Jazz Band
If you were among the discriminating cognoscenti who partook of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s set at the Wildflower Stage on Sunday night, you have a right to strut a bit. You were, after all, among the couple of thousand or so folks (yeah, I’m talking about you, you Dan Auerbach and Spearhead fans) who weren’t climbing each other’s shoulders for a glimpse of Girl Talk or queuing up for Pearl Jam. There is more to life than headline acts.
And no matter how many chart-toppers ACL books, I hope there will always be room for acts like PHJB. They are among those heirloom performers who carry the torch and maintain the foundations for all the myriad acts that populate the ACL stages.
They’re a barrel of fun, to boot. A multi-generational array of jazz men, they’ve been spreading the gospel of classic New Orleans jazz and Dixieland since Preservation Hall opened its doors in the French Quarter in 1961. Today, the group is helmed by Benjamin Jaffe, the son of Allan Jaffe, who helmed the first incarnation of PHJB. But though the players change (though the virtuosity seemingly does not), the repertoire remains a timeless blend of rags, jump blues, brass band music, Dixieland, hot jazz and American standards.
The group was tearing through “Shortbread” when I arrived, about 10 minutes into the set, and they had no sooner tied that up prettily than they lit into Louis Armstrong’s “Ol’ Man Mose.” “Tailgate Ramble” followed, as did “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate,” with bassist Walter Payton taking a rare lead vocal.
“Sugar Blues” led into a long excursion that eventually meandered it’s way into “When the Saints Go Marching In,” which morphed into “Mama Don’t Allow” and even a fragment of the football Saints’ fight song (“Who dat?/Who dat?/Who dat say dey gonna whip dem Saints?”).
But for my money, the high point of the evening came a little earlier, when the band lit into the public domain standard, “Ice Cream,” and the tuba player hauled out a cooler full of ice cream bars and drumsticks, which the group tossed out to the sweaty crowd like Mardi Gras beads. It was, hand’s down, the best bit of showbiz of the whole weekend.
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Scene report: Preservation Hall Jazz Band
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band was the perfect band to close the Wildflower Center stage at the Austin City Limits Music Festival Sunday.
With pure delight emanating from the dancing audience, the eight-piece band brought the full magic and history of New Orleans music to life with energy and passion that underscore music as the universal language that tames even mud-caked beasts.
Many in the audience were unable to contain themselves in chairs and rushed to the front of the stage to dance and sing along as the first few tunes caught fire. In sweat-soaked grey suits and ties, the band members grinned at the audience and smiled at each other, happy for the chance to share their music with fans who really love the genre.
The band started out hot and ended steamy, with a rendition of Louis Armstrong’s “Ol’ Man Mose,” and their own versions of essentials “Tailgate Ramble,” “Shimmy,” “Sugar Blues” and “Mama Don’t Want.” Standouts included Walter Payton singing “Shimmy” with his head thrown back, eyes closed and a grin across his face during pauses. The man and the music conjured up every ghost great of New Orleans past in memory.
Members of the band that graced the Wildflower stage on Sunday night were Ben Jaffe on tuba, Charlie Gabriel on clarinet, Payton on string bass, Clint Maedgen on tenor sax, Mark Braud on trumpet, Rickie Monie on keyboard, Freddie Lonzo on trombone and Joe Lastie on drums. These eight men are on a mission, and that mission delivers a big slice of heaven on earth to those lucky enough to catch a live performance. They want to nurture and perpetuate the art form of New Orleans jazz. Judging from Sunday night’s performance, they’ve got the pipes to do just that.
“I love playing the music and I love knowing that I’m participating in a culture that’s been going on for hundreds of years,” Jaffe said. “When Katrina hit New Orleans, it didn’t just tear apart the city, it tore apart the culture as well. Many of our great artists and musicians have now been spread across the country. I want to make sure that we can get them back, that we can continue the music and the heritage that has been here for so long.”
Jaffe’s parents, Allan and Sandra Jaffe, founded Preservation Hall in New Orleans in 1961 on St. Peter Street in a building that dates back to the 1700s. They wanted to create a sanctuary that would protect and honor New Orleans jazz, which had taken a nosedive in popularity with the upsurge of modern jazz and rock and roll. The couple, originally from Pennsylvania, wanted a haven where New Orleans musicians could play New Orleans jazz — a style they did not want to lose.
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band began touring in 1963 and produced some big names, including Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bunk Johnson, brothers Willie and Percy Humphrey, husband and wife Billie and De Pierce, famed pianist Sweet Emma Barrett and, in the modern day, Wendall and John Brunious.
Jaffe came by his talent naturally. At a very early age, he found he could pick up almost any instrument and begin to play it. He started his professional career when he was 9 years old. Now 38, Jaffe is proud of his heritage.
“New Orleans is one of the last places where people are still born into musical families,” he said. “It’s a badge of honor. And it could only happen in New Orleans, the way jazz could only happen here.”
Payton was Jaffe’s first music teacher. Jaffe and Braud went to school together. John Bernius and Wendell Bernuis, bandleaders, were Jaffe’s uncles.
“Down in New Orleans,” a Blind Boys of Alabama record that featured the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, won a Grammy earlier this year. The band will release a digital album, “St. Peters Street Serenade,” available at the end of October that will feature five audio tracks and three music videos. One video, “St James Infirmary,” will be animated.
The band is also working on a release aimed for March called “Preservation.” The record was recorded in Preservation Hall and took more than a year to pull together. It will feature some pretty impressive names, including Dell McCurry, Jason Isbell, Pete Seeger, Ani DeFranco, Steve Earle, Blind Boys of Alabama, Paulo Nutini, Ave LaVere and Jim James. Money from the album will fund the Preservation Hall outreach program for children.
Jaffe said he was surprised at the response he got from other artists eager to work on the album.
“It’s an incredible array of artists from all over the world,” he said. “I think what brought them in was respect and admiration for the history of Preservation Hall. All of them in some strange way have a connection to Preservation Hall or to New Orleans.”
At the end of the month, the band begins an international tour that will take them to Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Slovenia and France.
“I like to travel, because the audiences are so multigenerational,” Jaffe said. “It gives me a very warm feeling. Parents are giving something to the child that the child loves. They are also giving the child a tradition, something that is worth something to him. Worth carrying on. That is a very warm feeling.”
Roy Mata photo
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Live review: Girl Talk
Ricardo B. Brazziell AMERICAN-STATESMAN
- Photos: Girl Talk at ACL Fest
Predictions were dire or delirious — depending on your point of view — for Girl Talk’s 7 p.m. set. The Xbox 360 stage was, by Sunday night, the muddiest venue at ACL, and Girl Talk, the mash-up project of Pittsburgh’s Gregg Gillis, was likely to be the festival’s biggest dance party. Whatever Dillo Dirt sludge that had managed to stay on the ground was likely to find its way into whatever hair and clothing had managed to stay free of it.
In fact, though, from where I stood (well to the right of the soundboard; getting any closer was pretty much impossible) the overwhelmingly young crowd was on its best behavior, though their parents might not have seen it that way: They pumped their fists, chanted along to the most profane raps, danced in place and smoked a lot of pot. (On the Jumbotron to stage left, Gillis aired footage of marijuana leaves, which was sort of redundant; no one needed any encouragement.) Some mud got kicked up, but it didn’t splash much higher than your knees.
The real insanity was onstage, where Gillis was joined by 100, maybe 200 fans, who danced and screamed while he triggered his storehouse of samples, pulled off his shirt and jumped on the table in front of him to goad the crowd on.
Though, again, the crowd didn’t need much encouragement. The fans screamed along to an impressive array of musical samples. One brief passage near the beginning of the set trotted out Bruce Springsteen (‘Dancing in the Dark’), GS Boyz (‘Stanky Legg’), Red Hot Chili Peppers (‘Under the Bridge’) and Nelly (‘Cut it Out’) in quick succession, and everybody seemed to catch every reference. When the teen-or-twentysomething girls around me sang along with gusto to Pilot’s ‘Magic,’ a bit of fluff from 1975 that I wouldn’t have thought stood the test of time, I asked Lauren Bungo, 22, how she knew the song. It was on a famous soundtrack, she thought. Maybe ‘Shrek’? (Actually, a quick Internet search reveals that it plays a prominent role in Adam Sandler’s ‘Happy Gilmore.’)
‘This is, like, all the music we listened to in junior high school and high school and college,’ Bungo’s friend Alyssa Davis, also 22, explained. ‘It’s our childhood.’
There were too many samples to list in their entirety, though it’s worth noting that Gillis drew on at least two songs associated with Michael Jackson — ‘ABC’ and ‘Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough’ — and flashed the words ‘RIP Michael’ on the Jumbotron.
Though most of the mud stayed more or less where it was, this was still a first rate dance party. Gillis is something of a wizard with his samples, not only making undeniable dance grooves out of unusual material (Cindy Lauper’s ‘Time After Time,’ Elton John’s ‘Tiny Dancer’) but drawing unexpected desires from at least one member of the crowd. Near the end of the night, Gillis started looping the piano intro to Journey’s deathless radio staple ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ and, Lord help me, after a minute or so I was desperate to hear Steve Perry sing.
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Live review: The Dead Weather
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Jack White is no stranger to ACL, but the Dead Weather, his latest band with Alison Mosshart of the Kills, Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stoneage and Jack Lawrence, also of the Raconteurs, is much harder and darker than the Raconteurs. Their pre-Pearl Jam set on Sunday evening was loud, gritty and in-your-face, perfect muddy festival music. The band stretched out the songs from their somewhat under-the-radar release from earlier this year, “Horehound,” with White on drums for most of the set.
Mosshart smoked, screamed and hyperventilated on stage as Fertita and Lawrence ripped through the material. White’s drumming is forceful and competent, but he really is more entertaining on the guitar, which he didn’t pick up until the end of the set for “Will There Be Enough Water,” a duet with Mosshart that also happened to be one of the high points. That isn’t to say the rest of the set wasn’t up to snuff. Fertita held it down on guitar and on the organ, especially on the choppy groove “I Cut Like a Buffalo.” Mosshart was great on just about everything, whether standing on the monitors and falling on the ground as she sang, her energy made the Dead Weather’s performance one of the best of the festival.
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Live review: the Arctic Monkeys
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to the somewhat self-satisfied front man that the problem might have been more with the band than with the audience.
The English quartet took issue with a disengaged audience after three limp performances of songs off this year’s “Humbug,” including a grinding and disappointing version of “Dance Little Liar” and a technically proficient but completely soulless take on first single “Crying Lightning.” The band loosened up somewhat as the set went on, delivering a decent take on ballad “Cornerstone.”
But even on the Monkeys’ most famous song, the inevitable “I Bet That You Look Good On The Dance Floor,” Turner looked miles away. Only drummer Matt Helders, keeping time with an obvious enthusiasm, seemed excited and present, pounding out each note with a clear fervor. It’s too bad the Austin City Limits videographers didn’t linger on him more.
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Live review: Heartless Bastards
‘It’s been a while/since my face has cracked a smile,’ Erika Wennerstrom sang early in Heartless Bastards’ 3 p.m. ACL set. It’s a typical sentiment for this Austin band, which specializes in Wennerstrom’s embrace of misery — she’s heartbroken, not heartless.
This is music all about limits — the limits of love, the limits of Wennerstrom’s singing (she likes to hit the top of her range and then let her voice give out an expressive croak), the limits of her songwriting (great riffs, great lyrics, but a melodic sensibility that rivals John Lee Hooker’s one-chord songs for narrowness) and the limits of her band’s interest in rocking (they play plenty loud and tough, but rarely go for any forward momentum).
If that sounds like criticism, it isn’t, really — or, perhaps, only provisionally. There’s something thrilling about hearing this band scrabble against its limits on songs like ‘Done Got Old’ and the title track to its new album, ‘The Mountain.’ Sometimes they even pushed past them; ‘Gray’ (which Wennerstrom introduced as an ‘oldie’ from the band’s first album, 2005’s ‘Stairs and Elevators’) and the penultimate song (wish I knew the title) rocked in a way these folks (Wennerstrom and her drummer and bassist, along with a second guitarist who seems to be a new[ish?] member of the band) rarely shoot for.
Needless to say, by the time Wennerstrom thanked the large crowd who had gathered around the Dell stage for showing up, her face had cracked a big, big smile.
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Live review: Jypsi
With a break in the rain ACL goers were ready to dance Sunday, and Nashville upstarts Jypsi were on hand at the BMI stage to oblige. Siblings Lillie Mae, Amber-Dawn, Scarlett and Frank Rische take the bluegrass, country and rock ‘n’ roll hybrid of the Dixie Chicks and give it a faster (almost punk) beat laced with punchy bass lines. The four harmonize beautifully and solo on their respective instruments just as well. Frank played so hard and fast he had to cut his last solo short after breaking a string.
Jypsi’s sound is built on the radio-friendly, pop-country hooks of songs such as “Mr. Officer,” a flirty attempt to escape a speeding ticket with “just a warning,” and “Friday Night in America,” an ode to small town life. The band brought a nice slice of southern honky-tonk to the festival Sunday as the sun broke through the clouds for the first time all afternoon, an apt reflection of the band’s sunny disposition.
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Scene report: Jypsi
Bluesy (mostly) girl band Jypsi pulled in a toe-tapping crowd at the BMI stage Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
Despite the mud on their legs and in their hair, fans started smiling and swaying to the tunes when the versatile bluegrass rock band’s bow hit the fiddle strings.
The band, comprised of sisters — fiddle player Amber Dawn, lead vocalist Lillie Mae and mandolin player Scarlett Rische — along with their guitar playing brother Frank Rische, played hit singles from the past, including “Love is a Drug” and “I Don’t Love You Like That,” along with their newly released single “Mister Officer.”
“This crowd was super responsive,” said Amber-Dawn, at 27, the eldest of the Rische clan. “We definitely want to come back to Austin. What’s not to like about the place?”
The band is a veteran of SXSW and Bonnaroo, but it was their first ACL festival. The siblings were born in northwestern Illinois and started singing as toddlers, when their father decided to start a family band. The family moved to the Carolinas and eventually to Nashville. They played trailer parks in the Grand Canyon area — and just about any gig they could get as kids, building up a growing legion of fans throughout the South.
Still young, aged 17 to 27, the band tempts new fans into thinking of them as an overnight success. That’s a misconception.
“We’ve been doing this since we were born almost,” Amber-Dawn said. “It’s been a long, long road.”
Belting out lyrics like “Anything boys can do, girls can do better,” the foursome attracted a good number of young women to their audience mix. But full-bodied voices, killer blues song leads and rock-solid instrumentation pulled in a balance of testosterone.
The band slowed down a bit mid-set for a version of the Beatles “I Will” that would have given the Fab Four a run for their money. They followed the tune with crowd-pleasing, wild-paced trademark bluegrass songs. It was a bit like watching the Dixie Chicks with a dude on board.
Only fresher.
Four siblings in a band together for life — that seems like a sure prescription for altercation, but Scarlett said the band has worked out a way to blend their creative perspectives.
“We are individuals,” she said. “We always start with four different opinions. But, in the end, we compromise. When we put out a song, it’s something we are all happy with.”
Jypsi has a newly released video of “Mister Officer” out and is recording a new album with producer Nathan Chapman. The band will be touring the Northeast through mid-November, when they will begin a tour of the South with Darius Rucker, lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish.
Roy Mata photo
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Live review: The B-52's
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Walking up to the huge crowd on hand for the B-52’s Sunday afternoon set, it was hard not to assume that most of the people were hanging around to hear “Love Shack.” It seemed the band felt that way, too. Fred Schnieder maintained a bored look for almost the entire hour, going through the motions on songs spanning the band’s career, including “Private Idaho” and the more recent “Funplex.”
Schnieder managed a bit more energy during his playful back and forth with Kate Pierson on “Strobe Light,” but despite his signature snark (“don’t take handfuls of diet pills”), it was hard to assume that he was happy to be on stage after he introduced “Love Shack,” saying that they had learned it “in karaoke.” Pierson and Cindy Wilson were more engaged on an energized “Roam,” one of the highlights of the set. The crowd did clear out significantly after “Love Shack,” many missing closer “Rock Lobster.”
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Live review: Here We Go Magic
Here We Go Magic, the latest project from psychedelic folkie Luke Temple, has itself a pleasantly self-effacing front man.
“Here’s a new song,” Temple said halfway through his band’s early Sunday afternoon set. “Well, actually, all these songs are probably new to most of you, but this one’s new for us, too.”
It takes a winningly charming songwriter to make reference to his own obscurity, but then that’s appropriate for Here We Go Magic. Between their cheeky band name and their bouncy indie pop tunes, the band seems to have adopted charm as their ultimate goal.
Although said new song was a dance-worthy indie delight with an excellent bass line that recalled the iconic riff from the ’60s “Batman” TV show, Temple struck largely to tunes from the band’s debut, released earlier this year on Austin’s Western Vinyl. He’s since been signed to Secretly Canadian and added members to the band, filling out the somewhat spare pleasures of the first album’s songs.
When the band dipped into its more atmospheric, droning compositions — as with the opening and closing songs or the slow build on the eventually joyous “Only Pieces” — Temple seemed to lose the crowd. But when the band focused on its bouncy strengths Here We Go Magic succeeded in breaking away from their amateur-hour-Arcade Fire weaknesses. And when Temple instructed those in the audience “who did know the song” to clap along on an enthused take on “Fangela,” a surprising number of onlookers knew just what to do, suggesting that Here We Go Magic’s charm is winning converts surprisingly quickly.
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Live review: Rodriguez
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Give or take a stray performance here and there, there’s a gap of nearly three decades in the Detroit singer-songwriter Rodriguez’s music career — two albums of somewhat Dylanesque music released in the early ’70s, decades of manual labor and then an unexpected music industry rebirth over the past few years.
That gap showed in Rodriguez’s ACL debut this morning. On some songs, he and his six-piece band — guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, trombone and sax — held together, and at times even rocked with conviction. ‘Establishment Blues,’ ”Can’t Get Away’ and ‘Sugar Man’ (his best known song) were particularly strong. On the latter, the band imaginatively revamped the album version’s occult studio trickery, which wouldn’t have been possible to replicate live. Instead: trombone solo!
But on a number of songs — the opening ‘Inner City Blues’ (an original, not the Marvin Gaye classic), ‘Crucify Your Mind’ and, especially, a disastrous ‘I Think of You’ — the band kept falling in and out of step. It was hard to pin down who was at fault, but as the band seemed fine (some overbearing synthesizers aside) when Rodriguez wasn’t playing, one suspected it was his hesitant guitar strumming that was tripping things up. (Though the fact that this is not a regular band — Rodriguez lives in Detroit, the rest in North Carolina — couldn’t have helped. Nor did the feedback that plagued much of the set.)
Still, it’s something of a miracle that Rodriguez was here at all, more than three decades after he and the music industry essentially gave up on each other. ‘It’s an honor, a pleasure and a privilege,’ he said at the beginning of the set, and for most of his 45 minutes on stage, it was our pleasure, too.
Jay Janner photo
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Live review: Black Joe Lewis
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Getting over during the opening slot on Sunday on either of ACL’s two biggest stages can be a thankless assignment. Crowds can be small and insufficiently enthusiastic (read: hungover). The vast stage can be intimidating. And, well, most musicians do not relish the thought of throwing down at noon-thirty on the Sabbath.
Austin’s Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears had a simple riposte to all those concerns: a blast of concentrated, horn-driven R&B, soul and funk that jump-started both the day and the crowd.
“Sugarfoot,” from Lewis’ breakout album, “Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!”, lit up the soggy morning with peppery horns and a lock-tight groove.
Lewis himself is a shouter, in the proud and honorable tradition of Wilson Pickett, James Brown, Joe Tex and O.V. Wright. And the band’s tongue-in-groove vibe is reminiscent of the great house bands at Stax, Duke and Chess records.
That being said, Lewis & Co. are not merely trading in nostalgia. Songs like “Big Booty Woman” “Humpin’” (metaphor is not BJL’s long suit, admittedly) sound freshly imagined and vital.
And Lewis himself seems to be having a ball romping through an R&B playground without taking the whole thing too seriously. “I’m gonna be signing (autographs) during the Cowboy game,” he said with winning self-effacement. “I hope more than two people show up!”
Then it was back to business, with the breakneck Famous Flames-styled “Bobby Booshay” and the contagiously fun singalong of “Get Yo (Stuff).” It’s the kind of stuff that would go over better in a smoky nightclub near the stroke of midnight, but Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, to their credit, made Sunday noon seem like Saturday night.
Jay Janner photo
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Live review: Suckers
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
The 11:45 time slot is a tough one, especially on a very muddy (and kind of smelly) Sunday morning. It probably also doesn’t help Brooklyn based Suckers that they haven’t released a proper album yet—all of the hype surrounding the band is for the most part based on one self-titled EP, produced by fellow psychedelic Brooklynite Anand Wilder of Yeasayer. The handful of people that were there saw that the hype is much deserved, however, as the band’s catchy set, driven by their grasp on vocal and rhythmic experimentation, ensures that this probably won’t be their last ACL fest.
Highlights included “Roman Candles,” where multi-instrumentalist Austin Fisher’s nasally, slightly raspy vocals complemented punchy, syncopated percussion; Fisher’s voice nicely contrasted songs fronted by Quinn Walker, whose falsetto added a bit of tension to the songs. The band’s versatility is one of their strong suits. Closer “It Gets Your Body Movin,” one of the band’s best yet, moved from a plodding, quiet start toward a climactic finish, with various members of the band alternating between percussion, keys/effects and other instruments, including Walker, who supplemented his guitar by beating a drum with a maraca.
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Live review: L.A.X.
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
If there’s any genre of music that calls for muggy and muddy conditions, it’s heavy metal. But if there were two, it would be heavy metal and dance pop — after all, a good electronic dance show has no higher goal than to get its attendees as grimy, dirty and sweaty as possible, and half that job was already done by the festival grounds themselves.
And it was in that spirit that local sextet L.A.X. played for a tiny-but-appreciative crowd, adding a bongo player and playing a mix of new material from their forthcoming “A” EP and tried-and-true club materal like “Dancin.’” Band leader Andrew Collins sang and played keys with an impressive fervor — and though usually performing under waves of auto-tune it was interesting to hear his occasionally undistorted voice — but largely yielded the floor to L.A.X.’s secret weapons: vocalists Erin Jantzen and Yadira Brown. With commanding voices and stage presences to match, they’re ideal front women who manage the difficult job of selling some of the band’s more outre lyrics — L.A.X. toss out more obscenities before noon than most bands do all day. The new material showed a marked growth over songs written for the ‘L’ EP, with better hooks and a more finely tuned electropop style.
But the morning’s standout moment came as Austin rapper and man-about-scene Zeale joined the band for “Pump to the Beat,” managing an impressive freestyle and electrifying the groggy crowd. As a man of at least 50 danced passionately in an L.A.X. shirt near the front of the audience, it was clear that L.A.X.’s increasingly energetic live shows and catchy material are beginning to pay off.
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Zilker forecast: 100% chance of mud
Imagine getting severely beaten in a bar fight a couple of weeks after a facelift. The recently leveled and resodded “Great Lawn” of Zilker Park is a muddy mess Sunday after heavy rains and foot traffic Saturday. Walking from stage to stage is like wading through Haagen-Dazs chocolate, but it smells a lot worse.
Here’s the statement from C3 Presents:
“As a part of Festival preparations, ACL Festival organizers and the Austin Parks and Recreation Department established a plan for post-Festival maintenance. This plan includes an extended load-out period to allow time for the grounds to dry before breaking down large structures, taking extra precautions during the load-out period to protect the grounds, assessing the condition, and then re-sodding areas of the park if necessary.
While certain areas of Zilker Park may be muddy and a discomfort to Festival-goers, the grass and root system are still in tact, and Zilker Park will be restored to pre-Festival conditions after the event.”
Top: Ricardo B. Brazziell photo; bottom: Jay Janner photo
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