Austin City Limits 2011: Friday

On Friday I woke up earlier than anyone should ever be awake the morning after a concert and I drove myself from Dallas to Austin, scrambled to a meeting on the University of Texas campus, and then headed to the home of my friends Stephen and Kim who had graciously agreed to put me up for the weekend. They weren't back from work yet, but I was able to change out of my dress clothes and get ready for festival-going. Just as I started to walk out the door, it started to downpour. Audibly. I stood and watched it for a few minutes. First, I contemplated the muddy horror the festival was about to become and adjusted that I just might be ruining both of the pairs of shoes I'd brought with me. Then I donned my trusty poncho and walked down the hill to Zilker Park.

Zilker Park is a large expanse of gentle hills covered in soft green grass. Lots of people were taking off their shoes as soon as they got inside the gate, and I wondered how long the grass was going to survive the daily forecast of rain and the 75,000 people trampling on it. I picked up a schedule and headed over to the AMD stage. It was already approaching 2 and, with only 4 hours until Bright Eyes was performing and few other bands I knew and/or cared to see, it was the only place to be. My festival-going approach tends to be largely based upon a propensity to camp out at the front of my favorite stage, and this largely involves a lot of standing without food or drink for hours at a time which, while it seems crazy out of context, always seems completely worth it at the time.

By complete chance I ran into a professor I'd like to work in next year while I was walking to the AMD stage. We talked for a little while and, when Brandi Carlisle's drummer came on stage and started wailing on her kit to start their set, I let him and his friends get back to their enjoyment of ACL. I couldn't believe the odds.

Brandi Carlisle

I had been completely unfamiliar with Brandi Carlisle's music before her set started. I was able to get pretty close to the front and so was surrounded by the kind of die-hard fans I like to see at festivals. So many festival-goers wander from stage to stage smoking and talking and iPhone-ing pictures of themselves at the shows to their Facebook profiles that I begin to really detest them. This is why you get at the front.

Brandi was enthusiastic and spent a lot of time engaging the crowd. We sung a three-part harmony at one point, led by her twin guitarists, and the set had a healthy mix of slowish songs and rocking ones. I resolved to listen to some of her music at some point and see how it holds up recorded, but I haven't managed to do this yet.

Ray LaMontagne
The word for this set was "chill". Or maybe "languid" or "reserved". Ray didn't say anything except "thank you" until near the very end of the set, when he introduced the band and commented on how nice it was to have been invited to play. The set was solid and I enjoy his music when I hear it, though I've never been entirely familiar with it. The highlight of the set for me was "Repo Man" -- the guitar work was infectious, and the band was perhaps more animated than at any other time during the set.

And during the entire set, I swear Summer Glau was up in the VIP section, singing and dancing and making weird faces. Really. Can you see her?


Bright Eyes
Bright Eyes played a festival set. It was very different from what I'd witnessed in Dallas the night before. Fewer lyrical changes, fewer new musical arrangements -- in short, they played crowd favorites off of all the major studio albums without major alteration or embellishment. I enjoyed it nonetheless.

They opened with Four Winds, which now features electric guitars and keyboard where it once featured a fiddle and a couple of supporting string instruments that made up a mini orchestra they no longer tour with. The backup vocals are now performed by Now It's Overhead's Andy LeMaster and the Mynabirds' Laura Burhenn, which, for me, is a big plus. Minor lyrical adjustments from the studio version and from the Dallas 9/15/11 version feature the "Mexican girl" from the original "walking on the water at the end of the world, four winds blowing through her hair".

That was followed by two of my favorites from the 2005 double-release of I'm Wide Awake It's Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, "We Are Nowhere and It's Now" and "Take It Easy (Love Nothing)". I never tire of hearing Take It Easy performed live, and, upon further reflection, iTunes tells me it's my single most listened to song. Probably not a coincidence.
The setlist contained only three cuts from the newest record, The People's Key, and the first one showed up at song #4, "Jejune Stars", which may be my favorite off the new record anyway. "Landlocked Blues" left out the extended mandolin-trumpet-guitar bit they've been tending toward lately, and it felt pretty naked as a result, despite staying pretty true to the studio version. The festival format, once again, kills the spirit of the show.

Conor moved to the piano for "Lover I Don't Have to Love" and "Shell Games," maybe the two most recognizable tracks. Their commercial viability is unmistakeable. "Another Travelin' Song" was introduced as a song about being a traveling band dedicated to all the rock'n'roll bands at the festival.

"The Calendar Hung Itself" was next. It's consistently the only Fevers and Mirrors song to score a place on the setlist, but still probably gets played less than a third of time. It's incredibly fun live, even if the band seems to think it doesn't reflect their main body of work anymore. The two drumsets they keep on stage for the People's Key and Digital Ash songs are put to work and augmented by multiple other percussionists. The result is highly ordered chaos broken briefly by "I Believe in Symmetry" (a delightful cut from Digital that I love to hear live) and revived with new vigor by "Road to Joy".

The band's performance of the final cut from I'm Wide Awake It's Morning doesn't usually come close anymore to the awesome destructive power it had during tours between 2005 and 2007 (probably because Conor's mostly sober at shows now), when I witnessed such wonders as Conor leaping over a drumset to tackle Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney, who, by some miraculous talent, managed to keep the beat despite landing on the ground behind the drumset with Conor on top of her. And nothing nearly so violent as Nate Walcott's total demolition of a trumpet by means of repeated collision with the stage. However, the resulting cacophony that followed the exhortation "Let's fuck it up, boys, make some noise!" was nonetheless formidable, even in an outside venue.

They closed, as is their habit lately, with "One for You, One for Me". It's not my favorite, but it's the closer on the most recent record and gives Conor, who plays no instrument during that song, the opportunity to walk around in front of the barrier making girls squeal. And, often, crowd-surfing before he leaves. Since the stage was a good ten feet off the ground, his leap from on high was somewhat dramatic, and his climb back up (admittedly, using the 6-foot speaker platforms) seemed no less than athletic.

Coldplay
Pickings were slim for headliners on Friday night, at least as far as I was concerned. I was already at the rail for Coldplay and my other option was Kanye West, so I stayed put.

I haven't been a Coldplay fan since middle school, when A Rush of Blood to the Head was all the rage. I fell off the bandwagon on purpose the second time Chris Martin was accused of plagiarism.

The stage was decorated with a preponderance of neon paint, like a high school garage band given an enormous budget and released on a bunch of guitars and amps. It came across as really lame.

I can't say I loved the set. They didn't play all of their radio hits, and I was particularly surprised when "Green Eyes" didn't make the cut. The stage was, predictably, bathed in yellow light for "Yellow". I will say that they played with a lot of energy and enthusiasm, and that was something.

On the way out of the festival and up the hill, I could hear Kanye still blathering into an autotuned microphone. I guess I made the right choice.