While many around the country are going to Oktoberfest events and starting to plan for Halloween, the thoughts of people in Austin are on the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Whether it you are attending it, wishing you can afford it, or complaining about how bad traffic is going to be, there is no avoiding mention of the festival. For many this is what they look forward to all year. For its 16th year celebration, the festival is bringing a pretty diverse lineup over two consecutive weekends and has made some serious improvements to the layout. Flushable toilets, a third entrance, and moving stages to decrease sound bleed over, all combined to make the festival even more enjoyable for the thousands of festival goers that will be attending this year.
While New York rock/pop group The Lemon Twigs drew a fair sized crowd initially, the D’Addario brothers combination of 60s baroque pop and 70s power pop sounds were not quite enough to keep the audience’s attention throughout their set. After playing their single, “These Words”, the older of the brothers, Brian, traded places from vocals to drums with his sibling, Michael. Though the songs had more energy to them the crowd began to thin out in search of beverages or better music.
The first sizeable crowd of the day congregated at the Honda stage in anticipation of the electropunk group Crystal Castles. Taking to the stage in black trench coats and ripped leotards over their face it wasn’t long before the band was drenched in sweat from the humid day. The masks also helped blur the fact that original singer, Alice Glass, had been replaced with Edith Frances. The autotuned singing over the loud synths and drums made the lyrics more ambient anyway that Frances stage presence was more important than what she was screaming. Most of their set was made up songs from their new album, Amnesty (1), though a few older songs got fans breaking out their phones to record the spectacle.
French band, La Femme, was undoubtedly the most fun set of the day. Playing the small BMI stage, the Parisian psych-coldwave group had everyone in the crowd swaying, if not flat our dancing along to songs that ranged in influence from punk to surf-rock. Vocal duties were traded back and forth between female vocalist, Clémence Quélennec and band founder, Marlon Magnée. At times, three out of the six members on stage would be playing keyboards and synths, with Magnée holding his keyboard up like it was a keytar.
Over in the Tito’s Vodka tent, British musician, Simon Green, better known by his moniker Bonobo, took to the stage with a full band in tow. Green and band played live renditions of career spanning studio material, with a singer, keyboardist, guitarist, saxophonist/flutist, electronics, and drummer, often with improvisations and solos. For a few of the songs, Green brought out singer Szjerdene to sing the female vocal parts and other tracks found only Green on stage playing bass along with samples. It was a much more captivating set than many would expect from someone traditionally associated with being a DJ.
While throngs of people rushed over to listen to some sort of EDM music blasting horribly from the Homeaway stage, many others found themselves either at the Barton Springs stage to watch Solange perform some soul filled R&B music. Though the do-wop style choreography was well done, the set was fairly low energy and many that were only watching in hopes of Beyoncé joining her sister on stage started filing away as it became apparent that wasn’t happening.
Meanwhile, on the Miller Lite stage, Americana/rock artist Ryan Adams took to the stage in front of a pyramid of TVs to perform a much more upbeat set. Playing songs from his newest album Prisoner, like “Do You Still Love Me?” and “Doomsday” to older material like “To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)” and “When the Stars go Blue”. As the crowd sand along to almost every song, it was apparent that this was to be a highlight of the weekend for many.
While a good amount of people went to watch The XX perform, most in attendance made their way to the American Express stage to see one of hip hop’s biggest artists, JAY-Z. Performing in front of a 50 foot high balloon animal dog, the second richest man in hip hop gave an outstanding performance. Whether rapping tracks from his newest album 4:44 or busting out crowd favorites like, “Empire State of Mind”, “Big Pimpin’” or “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)”, Sean Carter kept the attention of the crowd throughout the set. In a tribute to Linkin Park’s late front man Chester Bennington, Hova rapped his lyrics for “Encore” over the Linkin Park song “Numb”. After an encore of “99 Problems”, fans left the park in droves and tried to imagine how the next day is going to top the first.
All photos by Maggie Boyd.
