Before I get to the next few hours, a thought about the venue. I think this sounds like it is going to be amazing. About 30 miles east of Austin, in the pine forest of Bastrop, the Sherwood Forest Faire is a full-on medieval village nerd-fest with a castle and jousting stadium and the whole 9 yards. So freaking weird. For the sake of convenience, I would much prefer that this was held downtown at the Auditorium Shores or Waterloo Park, where FFFF was held. But since this is what we have, I gotta say this place looks kinda rad. I don't know if the bands will play from the top of the castle, but in my opinion, they should set up and jam out on the parapets. All of the hip kids Snapchats would be so cool and full of quips about Shrek or whatever castle-centric movie would resonate with a 20 year old these days. For my old man generation, we'll be quoting the Knights Who Say Ni! the entire time.
On to the bands in the middle of the day on Sunday:
4:00
- Recover. Never heard of these dudes before, but their music is actually really good. I just kept listening to it for about an hour longer than I intended. Austin band, doing an emo rock thing like Taking Back Sunday and Dashboard Confessionals. No new music on Spotify since 2011, so maybe this is a big reunion show or something? Their most popular tracks are from a 2002 EP called Leci n'est pas recover, which translates to Recover Kinda Kicks Ass, in French. I think. My French is a little rusty from high school.
- The Frights. Sweet! Started daydreaming during the first track and thought this was FIDLAR after a little while. This is awesomely fun pop punk lo-fi-ness. I definitely want to see them play live.
- Youth Code. I think I've figured out at least one aspect of this lineup poster. While it is not as simple as the old FFFF poster that had a black stage where all the metal and scary shit lived, now I understand that the band playing The Keep stage is going to be the scary shit and death metal. This stuff is some Front 242-sounding industrial music and yelling. I do not want to hear this music any more.
5:00
- Open Mike Eagle. Some smart sounding rap music. When I first pulled up his music, it almost looks like this was going to be spoken word stuff or something, because the song titles are things like "Dark Comedy Late Show" and "Admitting the Endorphin Addiction." His 2016 album is called Hella Personal Film Festival. He says "ghost fart" in a song. I like this stuff.
- Old Man Gloom. Yikes. Black stage action right here - heavy hardcore screaming.
5:30
- Wale. This guy is an odd one to me. In my mind, I like his a lot, because he is name-checked and part of the wonderfully tacky and amazing "No Hands." But really, I'm not much for his actual songs. They are fine, but when I tried his Seinfeld-influenced and -assisted The Album About Nothing, I was mildly into it and never listened to the album again. His two most popular tracks are "MY PYT" (36 million streams) and "Ride Out" (60.7 million streams). The fact that he co-opts the King of Pop's "PYT" just hacks me off, especially when the song bites the rhythm to "Sexual Healing" and just sounds stupid. Pretty weak R&B flavored rap junk. Maybe I'll go check this, or take the kids to find a taco during this time or something. Don't care to see him.
6:05
- Kero Kero Bonito. WTF, dude. Her most popular track ("Flamingo") starts with a chant asking how many shrimps you'd have to eat before your skin turns pink, then devolves into a sweet Zamfir pipe tune, then the lyrics are in Japanese. The music in this song is simple, weird, synth stuff. According to Wikipedia, they are a band of three people from England. Freaking weird, man.
- Cherubs. Oh man, I am so grateful for that "s" at the end of this band name. At first, I thought this was going to be Cherub, who came to ACL a year ago, are kind of disco-frat-boy-pop, and are so very terrible. Instead, this is Cherubs, who are more of an angry punk crush. They are apparently local, and their top song on Spotify ("Stag Party") includes the sound of a phone left off the hook in the background, which is an awful sound. The band had a few mid 90's albums (1992, 1994, and 1996) before they quit, but apparently got back together recently to release 2015's 2 Ynfynyty and 2016's Fist in the Air, a 3 song EP. This is good stuff, heavy, sludgy rock ("Donkey Suite" or "Red Carpet Blues") and brighter, drum-machine, Strokes-ian punk ("Fist in the Air"). The 2015 album is good too, kind of a Queens of the Stone Age cock rock vibe. Maybe I can get the kids to jam out to this for 30 minutes.
6:40
- Thursday. Emo rock. Their top song sounds familiar ("Understanding in a Car Crash") but I don't know that I knew these guys before just now. No recent albums, and according to their bio, they were a "significant player in the early 21st century's post-hardcore scene." That phrase makes them sound significantly more important than they probably are, as though the early oughts post-hardcore scene was some sort of key moment in the history of human existence. The band broke up in 2013, but has apparently pulled an LCD Soundsystem and reunited for a cash grab tour with no new music. These tunes are fine, but if there was anything else going on at the same time, I might go do that.
I'm a little worried about the bands in this 6 o'clock zone. If the wife and kids aren't having an exciting time right about here, the wife is going to start dropping hints about bedtime and school in the morning and how long it is to drive back home, and we are going to lose momentum on this thing. Hopefully there will be some jousting or sword fights or dragons that we can watch for a bit to psych them back up to stick around. More to come.
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