Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > ACL 2010: Sunday category
ACL 2010: Sunday
March 9, 2011
Pepsi brings Big Boi to Seaholm Monday night
Here are all the details to enter a chance to attend. Also, Pepsi is bringing Snoop Dogg to Seaholm Saturday March 19. Perhaps they’re teaming with Vevo, which is bringing in Kanye West that same night.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010: Sunday
October 19, 2010
Gayngs now suing bus company
Our friend Chris Riemenschneider has the details on the just filed lawsuit. Revealed in the court papers: Gayngs would have made $15,000 for their Sunday afternoon set at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Also, the driver was named “Radar.”
Gayngs canceled after their equipment went to Nashville the night before, in the disputed bus.
Details on the suit here.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
October 11, 2010
ACL update: More on Gayngs bus situation
Our old pal Chris Riemenschneider, now at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, has an update on the missing bus that forced the cancellation of Gayngs’ Sunday set at ACL Fest. The bus owner says what was missing was payment. Gayngs disagrees. More here.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
ACL Review: 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.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
ACL Review: Trombone Shorty
Given half a chance, Trombone Shorty (Troy Andrews to his mama) will probably do more to revive jazz than fellow New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts alumnus Wynton Marsalis. While Andrews and his band, Orleans Avenue, draw in audiences with killer funk grooves and R&B flair, Andrews is a phenomenal improviser, on both trombone and trumpet, and he had an immense crowd at the Clear 4G tent — that is, jammed into the tent and at least doubling the tent’s population outside — reacting to the standard “Sunny Side of the Street” like Lynyrd Skynyrd fans finally getting to hear “Free Bird.”
When he gave a crash course in circular breathing during a long, unaccompanied trumpet solo, fans went nuts, and Andrews wasn’t just showing off. The solo had structure and meaningful direction, as well as jaw-dropping technique.
Andrews’ major-label debut, “Backatown,” leans heavily on the funk, and he did not stint on that front Sunday. “Where Y’At” brought a metal edge to irresistibly funky rhythms, and he and the band showed how steeped they are in classic New Orleans soul on a brilliant cover of Allen Toussaint’s “On the Way Down,” which showcased Andrews’ terrific vocals. He’s a better singer than a lot of contemporary R&B hitmakers, with a satiny tone and deft phrasing, and he scats effortlessly as well. Both a detail-oriented bandleader and a commanding frontman, he seemed to have everyone within earshot in his thrall, but gave his bandmembers plenty of spotlight time — particularly wildman bassist Mike Ballard, who leaped around almost as much as Andrews and even played on his back, feet waving in the air.
Andrews channeled both James Brown and Michael Jackson at one point, giving his charisma full reign as he gyrated around the stage and moonwalked. He ended with a medley that incorporated everything from the traditional “When the Saints Go Marching In” to the theme from the HBO series “Treme” (an ode to his own neighborhood) to an instrumental lift from the Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun” (I think he borrowed that last bit from the Soul Rebels, one of New Orleans’ premier brass bands, who cover the whole song). His was the ultimate crowd-pleasing performance, and it’s hard to imagine he’ll be playing a side stage next time, but the level of musicianship was even higher than the level of showmanship.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
ACL2010 review: the Eagles
Let’s make one thing clear right off the bat: for the many voices convinced that the Eagles were a poor choice to headline the final night of the 2010 Austin City Limits Music Festival, I won’t attempt to convince you otherwise.
Since the quintessentially Californian classic rockers were first announced as the headliner back in May, the criticisms have essentially written themselves: they’re a nostalgia act, a safe, boring bet that saw the apex of their career more than 30 years ago — and even at their creative and commercial zenith, the Eagles’ mellow country-rock anthems were never all that exciting to begin with.
Of course, Pearl Jam in 2009 and the Foo Fighters in 2008 were far from the freshest headliners themselves (though both were promoting new albums at the time), but at least they had the benefit of being able to rock and kick and scream and thrill. The Eagles have a staggering catalog of hits and a record that’s neck and neck with “Thriller” for the best-selling album of all time in the United States, but they’ve never been the sort of band that gets the blood pumping.
Even the Eagles themselves were conscious of the criticisms. Sunday night saw Glenn Frey crack an age joke about his own band. “That was off our first album,” he said of “Witchy Woman.” “We recorded it back when the Dead Sea was just sick.” And as Don Henley told Statesman writer Brian T. Atkinson in an interview, “We get criticized for lack of spontaneity, but we do what we do. That’s the school we come from, and it has worked very well for us for almost 40 years.”
So for those disappointed in the selection of headliner, it should come as no surprise that the Eagles didn’t do anything likely to change anybody’s mind. They’re a “what you see is what you get” band through-and-through. Hopefully, those that weren’t digging it took advantage of the opportunity to beat the crowds and maybe play something a little more raucous on the iPod on their way home. Move along, nothing to see here.
Of course, to judge by the tens of thousands of fans that still showed up, to say nothing of the tens of millions who have bought an Eagles record at some point in their lives, plenty of people really, really like the Eagles. For them, the important question was: was the band any good?
And the answer is … yeah. Really good, actually. Certainly it wasn’t a show that was big on surprises, but Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Timothy Schmitt and their assorted hired hand musicians put on a fun, well-polished two hours of hits culled from across the Eagles’ career. The playing was tight, the vocals excellent — whatever was ailing Don Henley that forced the Eagles to reschedule three shows earlier this week, he sounded pristine Sunday — and the song-selection crowd-pleasing. It wasn’t a revelation of a set, but it did turn Zilker Park into an extended love fest for a while, as audience members crooned along to “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and applauded for Joe Walsh classic “Life’s Been Good.” There are worse ways to spend a beautiful Sunday evening.
The show kicked off with the four Eagles side-by-side on the gentle “Seven Bridges Road,” a perfect chance to show off the band’s trademark, still-strong vocal harmonies. The audience got more engaged with the first appearance of a proper iconic Eagles song in “Take It To The Limit” — and it’s something of a sight to see tens of thousands of people swaying in unison to that one.
“Hotel California” followed. It’s hard not to feel like they busted out that one a little early — as the Eagles’ signature story song, it’s the kind of thing you’d think they’d save, possibly for an encore. But in front of a projection of the album’s classic cover, Henley nailed the vocal over, admittedly, a completely gratuitous saxophone. Schmit similarly delivered a commanding performance on the soft-rock groove of “I Can’t Tell You Why.”
The gratuitous saxophone was hardly the only cornball thing about this show, of course — from a cheesy introduction to “Witchy Woman” to the video projections, which tended to be a bit overwrought, there was a healthy element of cheese on display. And then there was “Long Road Out Of Eden,” the 10-minute centerpiece from the 2007 album of the same name — and the sort of sprawling epic the Eagles very definitively do not need. The video projections may have reached the height of their silliness on “Dirty Laundry” — a song which should have the audience reflecting on how much more relevant it is in 2010 was undermined a bit by the odd sight of Glenn Frey soloing in the frame of a parody magazine cover.
But for the most part the Eagles were smart enough to rein in any totally over-the-top bombast. They delivered a boisterous “In the City,” making good use of an expanded cast of musicians so expansive Glenn Frey seemed to struggle a bit to remember them all during the introductions. And the occasional forays into Walsh and Henley’s solo songs was welcome — particularly on “Life’s Been Good,” which may have gotten the night’s biggest reaction from the crowd. The harmonies on “Take It Easy” were note-perfect.
And things closed, as most could have predicted way back in May, with “Desperado,” served up simply and eliciting a lovely sing-along from everybody in the audience who hadn’t yet started working their way toward the gates.
In short, they were the Eagles: professional, tight and possessed of a catalog of modern classics. Sure, they never quite achieved the level of theatrical release that Pearl Jam so brilliantly nailed last year. But think of their set less as a climax to three days of sun, beer and bands and more as the ideal cool-down, and it’s hard to see how they could have fared any better. For anybody born after 1955, these songs are as warm and comfortable as an old blanket, and they were a charming, mellow, well-delivered way to wrap the festival.
Set list
Seven Bridges Road
How Long
Take It To The Limit
Hotel California
Peaceful Easy Feeling
I Can’t Tell You Why
Witchy Woman
Lyin’ Eyes
Long Road Out Of Eden
Walk Away
Boys of Summer
In The City
The Long Run
Life’s Been Good
Dirty Laundry
Funk #49
Heartache Tonight
Life In The Fast Lane
Encore
Take It Easy
Desperado
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment
ACL2010 review: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
It’s hard to imagine any band out-hippy-ing Phish, but Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros may have just managed the impossible Sunday night, with a cathartic explosion of psychedelic indie rock that deserves mention as one of the highlights of the festival — spirited, joyous and religious in its fervor.
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros — an expansive musical collective led by Alex Ebert and Jade Castrinos — faintly recall the Polyphonic Spree in more than a few ways. There’s the sheer size of the band, for one — they’re not as big as the Spree but they include an assortment of musicians numbering in the double digits. There’s the band’s sunny, optimistic, anthem-minded approach to songwriting. And there’s that inescapable feel of the religious — call it cultish or just spiritual, but there’s a passion and an energy on display in Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes that would fit right in at a tent revival meeting.
But Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros have something the Polyphonic Spree never quite managed — a galvanizing single, “Home,” that’s exploded in the few months since the festival lineup was announced. So when Alex Ebert, barefoot and bearded and looking like a wild man, jumped out of the photo pit and on-stage to kick off the set with “40 Day Dream,” the audience was with him from the start. Before a backdrop showing the yellow brick road to Oz, Ebert and Castrinos delivered one of those anthemic sets that had the young crowd eating out of their hand. Ebert in particular was consistently engaging, delivering much of the set from the edge of the pit, standing over the audience and holding hands with the crowd during “Janglin.” Ebert’s boyish excitement reached its apex with “Come In Please,” when during the song’s soaring crescendo he leapt into the audience and crowd-surfed. The set ended with “Home,” its opening whistle eliciting a Pavlovian cheer of anticipation from the crowd. It was a commanding performance with a somewhat rambling outro that saw most of the crowd depart before Ebert and company left the stage.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
October 10, 2010
ACL 2010: Foals and Yeasayer
Phish was, of course, the jam band du jour at ACL this year.
But the aesthetics of jam bands were all over Zilker Park this weekend, even if Phish’s hippie signifiers and instrumental precision were not. In several acts, textures and instrumental filigrees subbed in for strong structures and traditional songcraft.
For example, the British trio Foals certainly looks like an indie rock band, but their music is more self-consciously fussy and detailed than, say, Belle and Sebastian or Pavement or longtime punk rockers such as Ted Leo. Someone, perhaps themselves, tagged Foals as math rock, which is close, but, to my ears, not quite correct. (I find math rock to be a very specific aesthetic and a little heavier than Foals. Examples of classic math rock include Bredwinner, Shiny Beast, Polvo, Cheer-Accident and Stinking Lizaveta — consult your local Google for more!)
They’re an awful lot like ’90s indie prog rockers such as Storm and Stress and its sequel band, Battles — complicated guitar parts with cascades of notes and tricky time signatures. In the ACL context, this was brainy music to which you could shuffle in a sack dress. Yet, Foals are on Sub Pop and Yeasayer are on Secretly Canadian, two vaunted indie labels who come out of a completely different tradition than Phish.
And Yeasayer, on the other hand, sounded completely different from Foals, but also felt of a piece — Phish fans could appreciate their complicated progressivism, indie rockers didn’t have to betray their indie-ness. The band folded all sort of sounds together — big beat electronics,folky melodies and whatever language Talking Heads spoke. Like lots of multi-genre blenders, Yeasayer’s music could occasionally taste like chicken, but the massive crowd was ready to noodle dance once again.
Talk about knowing your audience. Well played, C3.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010: Sunday
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.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
ACL review: The Flaming Lips
It definitely felt a little bizarre walking to watch the Flaming Lips while the sun was still shining on Sunday. The sheer spectacle of their live show is unquestionably enhanced by darkness, but they made the most of their hour-long set at this year’s ACL festival.
Right before they started to play, frontman Wayne Coyne addressed the crowd to thank them for waiting and to explain that he would be coming out into the audience in his “space bubble” and he hoped everybody would “love each other and help each other” instead of rushing toward the front of the crowd.
After an introduction from local poet Thax Douglas, the band members slowly entered the middle of the stage one by one until Coyne emerged standing inside his bubble. It was slowly inflated until it rolled into the audience and he began to float above the crowd as the band played an instrumental introduction behind him. When they settled in to “Worm Mountain,” the first proper track of the set, the stage exploded with balloons and confetti. Keep in mind, all of these things happened before the band was done playing their first song.
You don’t really see or hear the Flaming Lips as much as you experience the Flaming Lips. By the time they had gotten halfway through “Silver Trembling Hands,” the second song of the set, Coyne was perched on the shoulders of a man wearing a bear costume and was encouraging the audience members to scream as loud as they could.
The band’s 1993 hit “She Don’t Use Jelly” was up next, after which Coyne strapped on a helmet cam, which began broadcasting on the screen behind him, and declared it to surely be “the most beautiful night that Austin has had all year.” With all of the on-stage banter and crowd interaction, the band only managed an eight-song set before their hour was up. As the daylight started to fade, Coyne said that the band “would play all night if we could” before closing down the stage with an epic rendition of their 2002 single “Do You Realize??”
In our current musical landscape, the Flaming Lips are a real rarity. They might not sell millions of records, but they’ve managed to maintain their integrity with almost 20 years on a major label. Their transformation over the last several years into genuine showmen has turned them into one of the best live bands in the world and a perfect return booking for ACL. Maybe next year we can bring them back after the sun goes down.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
ACL review: Dawes
Not having seen them perform before, I wasn’t prepared for Dawes’ live show to be as high energy as it proved to be. An initial rushed listen to their latest album, “North Hills,” left an impression of a certain thinness, a kind of a lack of gravitas. It’s usually bad to trust first impressions.
Then I heard they’d rocked the house at Lollapalooza and some fans pushed up against the stage barricade attested the group had killed at Emo’s the night before. So what did I know?
Their bio material touted the group as stylistic heirs to the Laurel Canyon/Southern California folk/country/rock tradition, and that’s true as far as it goes (eg. “When You Call My Name” and “Love Is All There Is”). But it’s also possible to hear echoes of the Band, especially in “That Western Skyline,” when frontman/guitarist Taylor Goldsmith’s voice takes on a timber similar to Band vocalist Rick Danko.
But it didn’t take more than a couple of songs for the group to cast their own distinct shadow. The fourth song, to be exact, a song from their forthcoming album called “Fire Away.” It was a big-hearted rocker of a beast, characterized by anthemic lyrics (“When you need someone to walk away from/When you need someone to let you in…Fire away”) and a bleeding guitar solo from Taylor (whose brother, Griffin, plays drums and sings). Bassist Wylie Gelbert and keyboardist Alex Casnoff rounded out the tightly knit quartet.
The band doubled down with “Peace In the Valley” (“If I don’t find peace in the valley/It’s cause there wasn’t any there”), with a tricky guitar/piano interweave and the rubbery, rocking melodic set closer “When My Time Comes,” with Goldsmith bouncing across the stage like a guitar-shredding jack-in-the-box and the crowd punching fists in time to the singalong chorus.
I didn’t have a Dawes T-shirt like my neighboring aficionados along the stage barricade. But I walked away, like them, a fan.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
ACL review: Norah Jones
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and submit that Flaming Lips fans are probably not Norah Jones fans. So while those folks agonized between sets by the National and Cage the Elephant on Sunday night, Jones’ cadre had to decide between the lissome Texas songbird and English guitar maestro Richard Thompson while they (presumably) waited for the Eagles to close out the evening.
Can’t speak for Thompson’s show, but those who opted for Jones, on the Zync Card Stage, were treated to an efficient, polished, low-key rendition of her small but eclectic repertoire. Efficient and polished, yes, but Jones’ set seemed almost airtight at times — there was none of the liberating abandon or risk-taking that marked many of the weekend’s other performances. Like Dylan’s John Wesley Harding, she’s never been known to make a foolish move.
Which was too bad, in a way. If ever there was an audience that might have forgiven or even encouraged a wayward bit of recklessness or even outright anarchy, it’s the ACL crowd. Maybe if there had been a couple of backstage tequila shots before the set, who can say what might have transpired? Ah, well, as Mark Twain said, “I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it ceased to be one.
That being the case, it’s impossible not to admire Jones’ flawless tone and excellent taste. In a set that veered from a honky-tonk cover of Johnny Cash’s “Cry, Cry, Cry” to the Brecht/Weill-ian “Sinkin’ Soon” (with Jones doing her best Lotte Lenya) to the pumping, funky “It’s Gonna Be,” Jones and her band were invariably spot-on. Her latest album, “The Fall,” let Jones stretch her stylistic legs and songs from that effort, like the dance track “It’s Gonna Be” and the drugged and dreamlike “Light As A Feather” introduced welcome new colors into her performing palette.
Jones concluded her set with “Lonestar” — “my Texas song,” as she described it. Here’s hoping she channels a little native attitude into her next visit home.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
ACL scene: Moments with Midlake
Midlake frontman Tim Smith said, “It’s great to be in Austin — as it always is,” and then joked about the heavy bassline bleeding over from Rebelution at the Honda stage. “I love to hear reggae,” he said dryly. “We’re gonna have that at every show, reggae playing at the merch table. OK, there’s no merch table, but I got plenty to sell. I didn’t mean that in a bad way — my wife’s standing over there!” Fortunately, the Denton group’s beautifully pensive yet propulsive songs were loud enough to pretty much drown out the commotion.
Later, I was standing not too far from the Rock Island Hideaway, whatever that was, trying to decide whether to go hear some of the Flaming Lips, and saw the Midlake guys nearby, one of them still carrying a guitar case, so I walked by them and just said “Great show!” They said “Thanks!” and then one of them called after me “Hey, do you know where the stage is that we played on?”
The Austin Ventures stage was just on the other side of the Hideaway tent and some trees, I suppose they must have left something behind.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
ACL 2010 Review: Warpaint
The story of Warpaint at ACL begins Saturday night, when the Los Angeles quartet put it a shockingly fun set opening for Sonic Youth at La Zona Rosa.
For the first time in, well, as long as I can remember, LZR sounds amazing, thanks to a new sound system put in by new bookers C3 Presents. Warpaint took full advantage of this. The band is probably best know for its show biz kid heritage — their first drummer was actress Shannon Sossamon and Sossamon’s sister Jenny Lindberg plays bass. No idea what Sossamon was like as a drummer, but current stick lady Stella Mozgawa is a godsend, she and LIndberg propelling the songs along as Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman’s vocals harmonize and their guitars flicker in and out. It’s as if the Bangles were raised on nothing but early 80s dance rock such as Liquid Liquid and postpunk such as the Slits. This is in no way a bad sound, and the quartet pulled it off beautifully, jamming here and there like Television’s lanky daughters.
Their ACL set proper seemed a little more subdued, but that might have been, you know, exhaustion from playing a killer set a mere 12 hours before. Lindberg still seemed the engine that moved the music, but things were taken down a notch. I look forward to seeing them again in a darker, more interior setting, possibly after they have had a nap.
Again, it is tough to see past the Hollywood thing, but the better they get, the more I think that will fade (or my own prejudices will subside). Their debut album “The Fool” appears in stores Oct. 25. I look forward to it.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010: Sunday
Musicians love the Eagles
Although their booking to headline ACL Fest angered some indie rock fans, such fellow Budweiser stage acts as Portugal. The Man and Band of Horses proclaimed that they were proud to be on the same stage that would later host the creators of “Tequila Sunrise.”
“I can’t believe the Eagles are going to be right here,” said Horses franchise, singer Ben Bridwell.
Like Don Henley of the Eagles, Bridwell is a reedy singer who hits glorious high notes. Sunday, he reached a special place with “No One’s Gonna Love You,” then drove the crowd into ecstasy with “The Funeral.”
Portugal. The Man were Ween without the sense of humor, with John Gourley’s falsetto topping everything from reggae to punk. Wearing a hoodie in the mid-day sun during any month in Austin besides January and February is like sunglasses at night, but Gourley was a soul possessed, reminiscent of Jack White on a big Bowie jag.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010: Sunday
ACL2010 review: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
“Thank you, Eagles fans, for not throwing (expletive) at us,” said Ted Leo Sunday afternoon, kicking off the Budweiser stage for the day and ripping into “Even Heroes Have to Die.” “For you we will play our most Eagles-y song.”
If there were any disgruntled Eagles fans in the audience, it wasn’t showing. The crowd size was modest but there was headbanging-a-plenty as Leo ripped through a bang-on 45-minute set of blue-collar indie punk, played nice and fast and functioning as the perfect primer for a day’s worth of rocking out.
For his part, if Leo was the least bit fatigued after last night’s Lance Hahn memorial show at Red 7, he didn’t show it, either. Leo was his usual shredding, smiling, humble self, grinding through a great version of “Bottled In Cork” with Austin’s Sally Crewe helping out on tambourine and vocals. And he was an animated whirlwind, hopping on one foot from one side of the stage to the other, guitar in hand, for closing song “Stove By A Whale.”
“I love you!” rang out an anonymous cry from the audience.
“You don’t even know me, but thanks for the sentiment,” replied Leo.
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Update: This blog entry has been changed to reflect that Sally Crewe made a guest appearance on “Bottled In Cork,” not “A Bottle of Bucky,” which was played earlier in the set. Thanks to Matador Records head Gerard Cosloy for the correction.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
ACL review: M.I.A.
Britain’s M.I.A., a/k/a Maya Arulpragasam, was just about missing in action during her 8 p.m. performance on the AMD stage Saturday, but if you like standing in a field watching videos and a light show, it was a heck of a spectacle.
For almost the entire first 35 minutes of her set, the stage was kept dark, so that performers, including the hip-hop star, were only seen silhouetted against a giant backdrop of videos and animated graphics. The big screens on the side showed the same or complementary images. Presumably people close to the stage could determine if M.I.A. herself was up there prancing around, and not someone of similar height, but further away, all you could see were shadows and some pretty dazzling work by the lighting and set designer(s). Gigantic black rectangles pulsed on the video screens, black-and-white footage of dancers played in a loop behind what I suppose was a band and what seemed to be backing singers, and M.I.A.’s name and the logo for her latest album, written in lights, changed colors. Lights blazed and flashed, sometimes white, sometimes colored. On the video screen, the cartoon outline of a human figure cavorted about, changed hues and split into three, then became one again, and then split into more line people dancing with each other.
M.I.A. played her first hit, “Galang,” very early in the show, or at any rate, the song was played, and she might well have been delivering the vocal, rapping in that trademark, sing-songy, somewhat screechy alto-trying-to-be-a-soprano, which is pretty arresting on a single, but can grow tiresome, especially Saturday, when there were so many distorting and echoey effects on her vocals that her words were indistinct. One number bled into the next for a while, and M.I.A. made no attempt at interaction, so most of the crowd seemed to feel no obligation to clap or yell at the end of a song, although many danced along enthusiastically to the raw, compelling beats.
Finally, more than halfway through, the spotlights on stage came up enough that you could see the artist, and I thought about trying to get up closer, but as soon as she finished her 2008 hit, “Paper Planes,” a mass surge toward the exit began, and heading in the opposite direction seemed too much like a suicide mission. The spotlights went back down again, anyway, and then at 9:15, everything suddenly came to a halt. There was a semblance of cheering and shouting, and the business on stage recommenced, so apparently, an encore was taking place. Then M.I.A’s voice said something along the lines of “thank you,” and I thought she had probably said “This is our last song,” but apparently it was “That was our last song,” because everyone left the stage, and after five minutes, the remainder of the crowd decided it must be over, although there were about 10 minutes left in her scheduled time slot.
One guy walking past me in the dark said to his friend in frustration “I couldn’t understand a thing she just said,” which was a pretty fair summary of the whole show. Photo: Jack Plunkett ASSOCIATED PRESS
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
ACL scene: M.I.A.
Dressed in a half-black, half-white shirt and rolled white jean shorts, the diminutive firecracker M.I.A. looks like a cheerleader after a pep rally in 1991. The only thing that would betray that image are the black thigh-high stockings that, along with the hip gyrations, scream sex. Say what you will about her second album or the controversy surrounding her New York Times magazine story earlier this year, but the woman knows how to put on a show. She bops from the front of the stage to the back to twiddle anon and switch up the beat and next thing you know she’s right down front dancing on top of equipment cases with the crowd, even holding some of their hands. She’s got them all eating out of hers.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
ACL 2010 review: Ruby Jane
A couple of days ago I was lauding the youthful prowess of 21-year old singer/songwriter Sahara Smith. And talented she indeed is. But in terms of age, she looks like a candidate for AARP membership next to 15-year old Ruby Jane Smith. Ruby Jane, as she is billed (“If Madonna can use just her first name, so can I,” she declared at age 10 according to her mom).
A vivacious, effervescent and ferociously talented instrumentalist, writer and vocalist, the young Dallas native immediately attracted the attention of Willie Nelson and Asleep At the Wheel’s Ray Benson upon moving to Austin. She’s released a live mostly-acoustic/roots album and has a new EP coming out of the gates soon.
But as a performer, she’s accelerating far faster than her recorded repertoire might indicate. Onstage at the BMI Stage Sunday morning, she surrounded herself with a crew who could rock as hard as they could swing.
And at that, it was all they could do to keep up with their bandleader as she made lightning changes between fiddle, acoustic and electric guitars and mandolin. In the course of several songs, she slung her guitar behind her back, the better to pick up a fiddle and take a hot solo.
Kicking off with a gypsy jazz take on Django Reinhardt’s “Minor Swing,” Ruby Jane moved into the country-blues-flavored “Feels Like Home” and the romping, sunny “Beautiful You, Happy Me” before essaying a surprisingly mature cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Be Here To Love Me” (and how many 15-year olds have the chutzpah to cover a Townes song?)
Speaking of chutzpah, Jane completed a new pop ballad, “The Fall,” only a little more than a week ago and determined to present it to the ACL crowd freshly hatched, so to speak.
After another new song, “Stick Around,” in which Ruby Jane used a vocal effect to give her voice the timber of an old field recording before turning the tables with a fuzztone-flavored rock finale, she closed her set with the juiced-up swing/boogie stomp of “Greasy World,” from her debut album.
As she left the stage, several of the early-morning festival goers wandered around like survivors of a tornado’s near miss. And in some ways, that was apropos-Ruby Jane seems less like a kid not yet old enough to drive and more like a force of musical nature.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Sunday
October 8, 2010
Video: Live ACL updates at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday
Austin360.com has 20+ staffers working to bring you the most comprehensive ACL Fest coverage on the web. Stop by Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 5:30 p.m. for a live video update from Zilker Park featuring previews, reviews and live interviews with artists.
Get a (low-budget) sneak peek here. (With stick figures!!!)
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2010, ACL 2010: Friday, ACL 2010: Saturday, ACL 2010: Sunday
