Live Report: Austin City Limits Music Festival 2015

The live music capital’s double weekender...

Austin City Limits returned at the weekend, with the sprawling Texan event continuing to surprise.

Clash writer Caitlin Teibloom was on hand to soak up the vibes, while Katherine Squier took some glorious snaps.

– – –

FRIDAY
Everybody who shows up to a music festival is chasing magic. What people define as magic varies – some are seeking out that perfect moment with their friends where a band plays their radio hit right as the friend who went on a beer-and-cider run returns. Others want to be sweating it out against the railing, front and centre, while their favorite band plays a deep cut they never thought they’d hear live. Still others just want to take in a sunset from a grassy hill as a celestial jammy tune pours out of the speakers. The great thing about the Austin City Limits Music Festival is that it provides enough diversity to appeal to all magic seekers, and even surprises beyond what the imagination can conjure.

For Friday’s line-up, the best thing to do when you first arrived at the fest was wander around until the right sound caught your ear. In this case, that “right sound” was Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas. On a bed of guitars and brass, Jessica Hernandez’ fierce and fiery voice leaps and sparks – whether it’s a sassy “apology” original like ‘Sorry I Stole Your Man’ or a familiar riot grrl rocker like Le Tigre’s ‘Deceptacon’, Hernandez owns the spotlight, dancing and roaring across the stage. Sometimes it’s appropriate to double down in the Texas heat, and Hernandez and her Deltas set fire to the early afternoon.

When you listen to a Drew Holcomb song on record, there’s a quiet folkiness to his songs that echoes Nick Drake. When he and his Neighbors band don their cowboy hats and take the stage, they’re a little less folky, and a lot more (country) rock ‘n’ roll. If you find yourself drawn to two-steppin’, this is a great revelation, but if you prefer The Decemberists’ ‘Eli The Barrow Boy’ to the Eli Young Band, the highlight of this set was the cover of the Counting Crows’ ‘Mr. Jones’. Expertly played as a happy crowd sing-along, this was the perfect hip-swaying song to wrap up the set.

Sometimes when you’re Billy Idol, you just have too many hits. And when you have too many hits, sometimes they can blend together. So it’s understandable that when Idol announced it was time for ‘Rebel Yell’, he accidentally started singing ‘White Wedding’ – twice. Despite this mini-hiccup, Idol proved himself to be as entertaining and relevant as ever, and not just because his hits are still as deliciously yelpy as they always were. Newer songs like ‘Can’t Break Me Down’ seemed like they would be comfortable among any punk rocker’s album, which was a pleasant surprise for anyone who was just waiting on ‘Mony Mony’. With a minimum of three costume changes and loads more charisma, Billy Idol easily earned his festival slot, and ‘Eyes Without A Face’ was a special quiet moment in a chaotic weekend.

It’s hard to be objective if you’ve fallen completely in love with a musical project. It’s like trying to be an ESPN commentator when LeBron James is your cousin – you’re going to want him to win. Luckily for all of the jewel runners at ACL, Killer Mike and El-P owned both weekends so hard that it would be difficult to question their excellence. Run The Jewels have been touring on their two albums for a while now, so they’ve really perfected their chemistry, set list, and show flow – including surprise guests like Gary Clark, Jr. weekend one, and Bun B weekend two, and Boots for both sets.

Highlights of both sets were crowd participatory, like the chant-along ‘Lie, Cheat, Steal’, or hilarious ‘Love Again’, where Mike and El managed to get a crowd of people to say some goofy, dirty stuff in unison. For Bun B’s guest spot on weekend two, the guys performed their song from Killer Mike’s ‘R.A.P. Music’, ‘Big Beast’, which infused some fresh energy into the set. Ultimately, RTJ could do pretty much anything and it would be entertaining, moving, live and funny. When you’re making music with your best friend, it turns out you can do just about everything well.

Sometimes you want the kind of psych rock blur that is a traditional “festival band” – all fuzzy guitars and inaudible lyrics smooshing into one another, kind of like that scene in Dumbo where Dumbo and his mouse friend accidentally get drunk. As a matter of fact, Tame Impala might as well claim that scene as their inspiration for the song ‘Elephant’. Whether you’re a drunk elephant or a drunker Austinite, Tame Impala came at that moment in the festival day where you’re either feeling on top of the world, or you’re passed out on a stretcher from heat exhaustion. Either way, the vibrations from the band seemed like the most appropriate soundtrack for the scene.

Austin’s prodigal guitar rock son, Gary Clark, Jr., brought his smooth vocals and smoother licks back to his hometown for an almost-headlining (and, later with the Foo Fighters, actually headlining) festival slot, and really, how else was Austin gonna treat one of its own? Comparisons can certainly be drawn between Clark and that other oft-headliner of ACL, the Black Keys – southern blues rock with smoky vocals are just too distinctive to avoid the same groove in the brain. But the Gary Clark, Jr. difference is that he’s a superior guitarist with a more varied musical sensibility, so his songs tend to have their own personalities. Try ‘Don’t Owe You A Thang’ followed up with ‘The Healing’, and you’ll get a sense of the talent Austin has borne. Gary Clark, Jr. may only be headlining stages in Austin for right now, but with the Dave Grohl seal of approval, Clark’s lone star seems to be rising.

– – –

– – –

With Dave Grohl perched atop his throne of guitars, Foo Fighters launched into a hit-filled set, with ‘Everlong’, ‘Monkey Wrench’, ‘Learn To Fly’ and ‘The Pretender’ all featured in the first six songs of the night. For his part, Grohl really tried to compensate for his immobility by adding more yelps and screams into his set than usual. Unfortunately, this was to the detriment of the songs. Rather than infusing them with added energy, it broke up some of their best parts, like if someone was telling you a fascinating story and their kid brother kept poking his head into the room to interrupt it with a yowl.

But it seems that even though Grohl himself had concerns about the group’s ageing fan base, he had nothing to fear all along – one of the night’s biggest fans was a three-year-old girl who hooted with abandon, banged her head and threw up the rock hand signs like she invented them. Sometimes a little yowling at the end of a long day is really all you need.

SATURDAY
There’s something too cut-and-paste about Father John Misty. He makes pretty enough folky pop tunes, and his voice is nice – non-confrontational and easy. But in a live setting, his gyrations and awkward dancing are very in-your-face, playing at the troubled troubadour with self-important songs like ‘Only Son Of The Ladiesman’ and ‘The Ideal Husband’. The lyrics all feel too well worn – songs grappling with everyday life and whether there is meaning behind it. To his credit, Father John Misty enraptured fans at his early afternoon ACL set, but to the uninitiated, it all just seemed a little too much like empty pageantry.

Saturday afternoon was filled with as much bright-eyed “live forever, cherish youth” pop as ACL could pack in. With sets from the likes of MisterWives and WALK THE MOON, there was plenty of neon and face paint to go around. MisterWives pandered to the crowd by covering ‘I Can’t Feel My Face’ by The Weeknd and ‘P.Y.T.’ (presumably for their fans’ parents). WALK THE MOON took the direct approach by asking fans to lift their worries over their heads like a car, and then performed ‘I Can Lift A Car’. For theatre kids who never grew up (or actual kids in theatre now), these performances hit just the right note.

The best performer on Saturday was one only a handful of festival-goers saw. BOOTS was up against TV On The Radio and Bassnectar, so unless attendees did their homework, they might not have given the superstar writer/producer/musician a chance. Those in the know may have been drawn in because of BOOTS’ work with Run The Jewels, or perhaps because of his credits with Beyoncé (for example, he wrote the killer rhyme in ‘Ghost’ on her self-titled 2013 release, and worked on 80% of that record). Maybe they discovered his work on the trailer of Fifty Shades Of Grey, or knew about his work with FKA Twigs.

Whatever the discovery path, those who attended his evening set were very lucky, because they had a chance to witness a real creative mind at work. BOOTS’ solo work is dark, almost gothic rock, with lots of disorienting guitar and eerie synths thrown in for interest. His live set is entrancing, using blindingly bright lights flashing to punctuate paranoid but grounded-in-truth lyrics. He will finally be releasing a full-length album at the end of this year, but if it’s possible, it’s much better to see BOOTS in person. His energy is electric, his voice is powerful, and his music goes deeper when you can feel the drums changing the pulse in your veins.

– – –

– – –

“This one’s for my fans who’ve been with me from day one.” It’s tough to take Drake at his word when he says things like this, because surely he isn’t talking about those who have championed him from the Degrassi era – indeed, he proclaimed after ‘Hold On, We’re Going Home’ that he was done with “that date night, pasta-making shit” for the evening. It seems like a shame, really, because this diversity of lyrical content is what’s made Drake stand out.

Lately, though, it seems that the Canadian rapper is really insistent on his own greatness and edge. He’s a talent and knows how to entertain, which is important – he also knows how to build a great self-confidence-boosting anthem. But there is a point at which one does protest too much, and for Drake, you can just hope that he finds some “real friends” already so we can move on from the hand-wringing. That said, it’s hard to argue with fireworks during a rousing rendition of ‘Energy’. As he rounds the corner to 30, maybe maturity will help this artist to feel more internally confident and open him up to more varied lyrical explorations.

SUNDAY
“My father once said to me, ‘In Nigeria, there are two kinds of people: those that make things happen, and those that don’t. When I moved to the States, I found six types of people. Number one: those that want things to happen. Number two: those that make damn sure things happen. Number three: those that don’t want anything to happen. Number four: those that make damn sure nothing happens. Number five: those that watch things happen. And number six: those that wonder, what the hell happened?” With this anecdote, Jidenna dedicated ‘Long Live The Chief’ to his father and threw down the catchy, grimy track in the sticky Texas heat.

It can be hard to wake up early on day three of ACL – especially two Sundays in – but Jidenna made it a whole lot easier. This Wondaland artist has style, class and social meaning behind his words and actions, so you get the extra adrenaline shot from combining dance with a cause. While his only full release to date is the hit ‘Classic Man’, Jidenna’s music was all so amazing that it was as engaging as if you knew every lyric to every word already. On weekend one, he was able to show off his “five shots hiding in my cane” parlour trick, but by weekend two he’d lost the cane to airport security in Dubai. Still, his suits, Chieftains, and killer rhymes set to sicker beats were enough to get him through his set and then some, allowing him to easily claim the title of breakout artist of the festival.

We’re all getting old, but it’s going to be OK. This was the take-away from the Amason set both weekends, because the Swedish group covered Foreigner’s ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’, and almost nobody in the audience knew the song. Sure, it probably plagued your local radio station throughout your early childhood, but nobody listens to the radio anymore, grandma! In a way, though, this made the cover that much more charming. Given Amanda Bergman’s recent split with her husband, there was fresh pain and deeply felt hope in the strains of the song that gave it a new life. The original songs were as gorgeous and layered as they are on record, and even though the group had to battle some serious Texas sun and chatty Hozier fans, they managed to pull off a performance that was nuanced and beautiful for those who really tuned in.

Chance The Rapper should win the award for “most likable person”. He is so genuinely positive that he covered the theme song from Arthur – yes, the children’s cartoon about the glasses-wearing aardvark. And it’s great! And he played it live! Chance isn’t just fluff, though – he goes deep on songs like ‘Cocoa Butter Kisses’, espouses being yourself in ‘Wanna Be Cool’, and then sings an ode to his grandma on ‘Sunday Candy’. There’s nothing like a crowd enraptured by a performer and singing along, loudly, to the verse, “You singing too / But your grandma ain’t my grandma!” Of all the ACL sets, it seemed like Chance got the most crowd participation, with a sea of arms waving and a choir of voices joining in on every single song.

If you close out your day with alt-J, you’ll leave a music festival feeling like you got the quintessential experience. They’ve played late on line-ups enough to know how to put together a gorgeous light show, and their music – with its echoing voices and rolling guitar waves – is meant for big, open grassy fields. Of course, the hits still land the hardest, as ‘Matilda’ and ‘Breezeblocks’ proved, but the best thing about Alt-J is, despite their success, they don’t take themselves too seriously.

Lead singer Joe Newman noticed a sign near the front of the crowd, for instance, and burst out laughing just like your best friend would, giggling, “It says ‘PENIS’!” This tends to ground a rock show a bit, in a very good way. Instead of untouchable rock stars, alt-J become the guys next door who just so happen to be excellently talented. This is the magic that festivals are made of: sing-alongs, dancing, laughter and beautiful music.

– – –

– – –

Words: Caitlin Teibloom
Photo Credit: Katherine Squier

Buy Clash Magazine

-
Join the Clash mailing list for up to the minute music, fashion and film news.