With an awesome wife and a generous friend, I managed to sneak my way into one more day of ACL Fest awesomeness. With a one day wristband in hand and no where to be on a Sunday afternoon, I got out to the park pretty early and did it up right.
Mandolin Orange. I walked in with these guys playing the BMI stage just to the right of the entrance, and I was sucked in by the mandolin play. I'm a huge sucker for a well-done mandolin (see Chris Thile, mandolin mega-hero) and these guys were tearing it up. I don't know a lick of their music, but I'm definitely going to put some into my queue to hear, because they sounded fabulous on Sunday for the three songs I caught.
Daughter. So pretty. Reminded me of the Explosions in the Sky music used for Friday Night Lights, except with a lovely voice instead of just instrumentals. And the singer was a precious little thing, at one point noting that it was very hot, unlike their home in England, and so she was <twee English accent> "slightly melting." However, after about 4 songs, I was pretty bored by the pretty. Melt my face or you get nothing!
Speaking of melting, holy Hannah it was hot. My phone said 97, but it felt like double that for part of the day. Zero cloud cover, straight sun all day. And the grass was toast. Just absolute hay underfoot by Sunday. Which meant that the dust was pretty bad - not historic dust like 2005, but enough so that I spent the next day hacking up funky stuff and wishing I could use my nose to breathe. I hadn't seen people wearing masks at the Fest in years, but I saw a handful on Sunday.
Kaleo. After leaving Daughter, I wandered up on these dudes in time to hear two songs that were kinda awesome. I remember one being about the "Back Door!!!", and one being about "Rock and Roll!!!", but I can't find either among the three songs on Spotify. The songs on Spotify attributed to these dudes are pretty piano rockers nothing like what I heard at the festival. I wouldn't go listen to the songs on Spotify (the third is in some guttural foreign tongue) but know that they were pretty fun live.
Lord Huron. Again, over Borns (because I remember Borns being lame) or Sheppard (because that "Say Geronimo" hit isn't even that great). Amazing show. Great choice. And strangely enough, the crowd was a fraction of last weekend - I was able to walk right up to the center and about 20 feet back in the crowd without any trouble. I could have walked closer if I had stepped over sitters, but was happy enough where I was. His music is so very lovely, I just couldn't help but enjoy the whole thing with random laughter bubbling up inside me. He looked like he was enjoying it too - whipping his hat off during excited moments of guitar frenzy and generally bouncing around the stage. "Fool for Love" and "Until the Night Turns" were a great dance-along, and for some old man reason, I full on teared up during "Meet Me in the Woods." I'd like to blame that on the tremendous amount of dust in the air. Also, this time he didn't play "End of the Earth," which would have been disappointing if I wasn't so entirely pleased with the rest of the set.
Sylvan Esso. I heard them doing a guest DJ spot on KUTX over the weekend, and so I figured I'd give them a shot here over Strand of Oaks. At no other time could I imagine Clipse getting radio airplay in Austin. Pretty cool. But then this show? Meh. Kind of rap, kind of electro, kind of boring. About the time I bagged it and started to walk off, their computer/music machine apparently kicked the bucket and they had to replace it before they could continue. Huge crowd though, so they're doing something right for some people.
Decemberists. I know I said I might give Ben Howard a shot here, but I got lazy and decided to stay on the west side of the park. I was quite a bit closer than last time (we stayed longer at Strand of Oaks than I did for Sylvan Esso), and they put on another great show. The backup singers (who I hadn't noticed last week) were dancing and jamming, and overall I felt like they got up to more antics this time.
For me, last week's set list was quite a bit better, as this time they stuck mainly to older albums. The show opener was "The Hazards of Love," and it lasted for about 12 minutes. I only know this because someone next to me asked what time it was and I told him that they had been playing that same song for 15 minutes and then had to revise my time estimate. There are four songs on their album by that name with that song title, so maybe they played all four? I'm not familiar enough with that album to be sure. Oh, but now listening to that album again, they definitely played "A Bower Scene," because those heavy jams in the middle, I remember those. When they hit those jams, all of them jammed out and dropped low.
From the new albums, they played "Make You Better" (again, I inexplicably teared up during this one, having kids messes you up, folks), "Down by the Water," and "Calvary Captain." They also played something from a new EP, and an old one called "Chimbley Sweep." I'm frightened of the chimbley sweep, as, if I understood the lyrics, he's an orphan boy who makes it happen with the old widows. Near the end of the show, Meloy turned around and started directing individual performances from the different players, and then everyone fell down dead on the floor? It was odd. I enjoyed my positioning much better this time, but felt like the first weekend show was the better of the two.
Chance the Rapper. I wanted him to be better. I really wanted to enjoy this. But I just couldn't get into it. I fear that rap is passing me by. Big crowd, and I could only squeeze into the back. It looked like those up front were into it, hands in the air and bouncing around, but the folks around me were pretty chilled. Oh, and I saw a drug deal next to me. While I have never purchased drugs in a festival setting, it would seem to me that trusting the skeezy-looking guy in the STILL TRILL baseball cap and neck tattoos to pull real and/or good weed out of his sock in exchange for your $40 would be a bad proposition. I heard the girl ask him something and the reply of "yeah, that's four ounces of the good stuff." Good luck kiddo. Hope you didn't die from smoking oregano doused in skunk juice.
Kurt Vile & the Violators. I so wanted to hear "Pretty Pimpin'," because now that I have given that track a chance, it is a smooth, cooooool ear worm. Love it. But I just heard a few songs as I waited for the next band at the nearby Tito's tent. He sounded nice - pretty simple seeming guy.
GRiZ. Holy crap. Next time I bag on EDM artists, remind me of this show. I had more fun bouncing around with the children at this stage than I did for just about any show of the whole weekend. Pre-show, I was hanging with Jeff from Kansas City (who called me "sir," a-hole) and I asked him how old the oldest person in the tent was. He guessed mid-30's, and after I told him I was 39, he got very excited and told me he hoped he was still doing this stuff when he was 39. For real doh, I was without any doubt the oldest person I could see in that tent. This guy plays electronic dance music with his laptop and some other little dials and switches up there on stage, but he also fires out a real deal saxophone to jam in the middle of songs. And it totally and completely works. Everyone in that tent was jumping and bouncing and sweating along to those tunes. Speaking of sweating, I had this very clear memory while in that tent of the mosh pits of my childhood at Liberty Lunch, where the actual air you are breathing is very obviously the hot, wet, smelly air that the people around you just expelled out of their bodies. I mean, it was suffocating in there. And I got soaked. But freaking fun! A young couple near me also complimented me on my knowledge of Dr. Dre lyrics during the show. Don't test me on the opening bars of "G Thang," yo. I am the man. Oh, and that reminds me - kids these days! - everyone in that room knew the opening bars to The Jackson 5's "ABC," Earth Wind & Fire's "September," and some other old ass song where I was shocked that people under 40 even knew what it was. People literally singing along to Earth Wind & Fire at the top of their lungs? What is in those drugs?
Dwight Yoakam. Dwight is the freaking man. His voice sounds spot on the same as it did 30 years ago, twangy and full, and he jammed a pretty classic set sprinkled with a few of his new tunes. His band members were cracking me up - lots of sequins going on behind the big man in that band. But it was a solid performance, nothing big or bombastic, just a spot on trip through hits (and new songs that sound exactly like the hits). "Streets of Bakersfield" is my jam. "Ring of Fire" and "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke" were fine cover versions. I didn't stay for the end, but it was a good one.
Florence + the Machine. Best show of the weekend. It is close in my head with the Alabama Shakes set, but this was knockout, real-deal-headliner stuff. Florence's voice is HUGE - and I even think they had the sound dialed back for the portion of the show when the Weeknd's stupid thumping mess was still farting around at the Honda stage. And she puts on a true show - running back and forth across the stage, twirling around, hyping up the crowd, walking down among the front row people to touch them and sing out to the rest of the crowd. I was also trying to get a picture of her outfit because I thought it was funny - looked like what the Texas Pom girls probably wore in the 30's. White pants, burnt orange shirt, white vest. At one point, she ran down the VIP runway thing to the sound stage in the middle of the crowd, back behind me, and stood up on something to raise her arms up over the crowd and sing straight to the gathered masses. It was awesome. And then, for some reason, she started talking about how we all had things we should get rid of and it was time to take off something you didn't need. So I took my hat off and waved it over my head (like half the crowd around me), but then she sprinted by without her shirt on, ran offstage, and then came back out with shirt back on. Woo hoo! PG-13 show kids! Anyway, killer showmanship stuff.
While the theatrics made the show more fun, the music made it great. In the past, I have kind of ignored Florence the way that I did Fitz and the Tantrums. When the radio plays the same songs a billion times (see "Dog Days are Over," "Shake It Out," and now "What Kind of Man"), I start to tune it out and devalue the individual songs. But these are huge, expansive rock tunes that absolutely killed it live. Obviously different from the Foo Fighters, no one was pumping their fists in the air or anything, but the sing-along aspect of this show was goosebump-inducing fun. When they kicked off "Dog Days" and this huge moon lit up over the stage, and the whole world was jumping and singing and losing it? Awesome time. If you get the chance to see them live, I'd definitely recommend making it happen.
HUGE thanks to the wife and my buddy for making this one happen. Fabulous day of Jack time. I owe you both one (or three)!
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