The final day of the first weekend of Austin City Limits Music Festival ended with one of my favorite runs I’ve ever made at the festival with incredible performance after incredible performance.
I started my day out with Glove, a band that reminds me a ton of bands and artists like Depeche Mode and Gary Numan. They have a kind of grungy sound that’s driven by synths and it was a ton of fun live. The lead singer did freak me out though with how he would nearly growl saying “Thank you so much…we love being here.” It was super low register and creepy and I’m glad it wasn’t said that many times. After them I went to catch the end of Primo the Alien. I didn’t get to see much of her set as I showed up really late but it was a dance party nonetheless.
I went right back to the American Express stage to catch Goth Babe who put on probably the best early day set of the whole weekend. He was super thrilled and super appreciative to be there and he could not stop smiling which is always great to see from an artist. He also had one of the most fun gimmicks of the weekend, splitting the crowd in half between the walkway down the middle to see which side could jump higher and get crazier and saying, “Whichever side goes crazier gets a cupcake…don’t mind that it’s gonna be hurled at you from the stage.” He was not joking, he actually did throw cupcakes at the crowd. He also ended up throwing brownies at both the audience and his booking agent who he brought on stage at the end of his set. He was a super fun time and I’m glad I got to check out his set.
After Goth Babe, I once again returned to the Tito’s Tent to catch Claire Rosinkranz. She’s a young artist born out of the TikTok Indie Pop boom with her viral hit Backyard Boy but she’s grown a respectable catalog. On stage, Rosinkranz is a burst of youthful energy, jumping and running all over the stage, getting the audience to participate whenever possible. After her, hold on, it was a busy day, I gotta check my notes. Oh, yeah. After Rosinkranz, I had to suffer through Oliver Tree.
When he was actually performing, Oliver was solid and could get the crowd going. It was everything in between that was brutal to get through. For example, after his first song, Oliver said that Austin was his “hometown” before looking down and reading things off a sheet to pander. Then, he apologized for his tardiness after coming on stage a minute early and said, “Unfortunately, because of my lateness, this will be my last song of the day.” He then would introduce every song after it by saying, “DO YOU GUYS WANNA HEAR ONE MORE SONG?? Alright, for my last song…” If I had to hear him say that one more time, I would’ve banged my head against the barricade. I will say, some of his banter was hilarious like him asking about halfway through his set if anyone smoked weed and telling people to put their joints in the air, to which he then asked security to arrest everyone with a joint in the air saying an Oliver Tree show is no place for illegal drugs.
While Oliver Tree’s set was pretty horrid, I wouldn’t change it if I could do it again because it put me in a great spot for the set I had been most looking forward too since the lineup came out, Paramore. I’ll talk about the only negative of their set first before I start gushing, the band’s set finished 10 minutes early and while it was printed on the setlist, they didn’t play Still Into You. Okay, my complaints are done, Paramore absolutely ripped. Did I maybe overhype this set for myself? Yes. Did I still have a fantastic time? Also yes. It’s absolutely insane to me that a band celebrating their 20th anniversary this year is still somehow in their prime. Hayley Williams made mention of this and said, “…and now we all have physical therapists.” Given how intensely both Williams and guitarist Taylor York were banging their heads and bouncing around on stage, it’s not shocking. Outside of Still Into You‘s egregious omission, the setlist was still fantastic with the band touching on their entire catalog outside of All We Know Is Falling. The crowd is one of the largest I’ve ever seen in the park and I was blown away at how loud they got for songs like That’s What You Get, Ain’t It Fun, and of course, Misery Business. I know I hyped up The War on Drugs sunset set but Paramore’s golden hour set was one for the ages.
Riding the high from that set, I then grabbed some food and headed over to the Barton Springs stage to see Goose, a jam band from Connecticut that has been absolutely killing it all year long on their tour and festival run. Once I settled in, I danced harder than I danced the entire weekend. This set was incredible in every aspect from the bands performance to the lighting to just how fun and groovy the crowd was. Jam fans have a way of making you comfortable enough to be yourself and let the music just take over you during a jam show and that’s exactly what happened to me. Me and a line of 4 strangers that I never got names from grooved so hard to songs like Arcadia and Dripfield. Even though I showed up late and left early, Goose was just another contributor to the incredible final run I had at the fest.
To end my weekend, I was faced with a really tough choice. I could either cross the park again and see the Red Hot Chili Peppers with the freshly returned John Fruisciante, or I could cross the street that separates the Barton Springs stage from the rest of the park and see Kacey Musgraves on the Honda stage. I love both artists dearly and while it hurt to miss the Chili Peppers, I decided to end my weekend with Kacey Musgraves. The main reason for the choice being that I, surprisingly, have been a fan of Kacey for a longer time than I’ve been a fan of the Chili Peppers. I first remember hearing and getting into Kacey in middle school meanwhile, I didn’t get into the Chili Peppers or rock music as a whole until my freshman year of high school. I’m getting goosebumps thinking about this set because not only was it the best set I saw all of Sunday, it also takes the cake for best set I saw all weekend. This show was pure magic and I don’t know if I’ll ever have the right words to describe it. I had to sit down where I was standing as the crowd filed out to just process the show I had seen for a minute before I also left.
The show opened with Musgraves singing the title track of her latest album, star-crossed, in front of a prop heart outline that would later get engulfed in flames as the song reached its climax. While I still do not care too much for star-crossed as an album, all of the songs she played from that album were fantastic. Early highlights included cherry blossom and breadwinner which got the energy up. Then, she pulled the rug out from under me without any warning and went into a block of Golden Hour material, starting with the title track. I’ve never been someone that really cries at shows but something about her performance of this song got the eye holes a little watery. (For the record, I ended up crying three more times during her set.) From there, she went on to play Butterflies, Lonely Weekend, Space Cowboy, and High Horse all in a row. I didn’t need anymore convincing but as soon as Space Cowboy ended, I knew nothing was going to top this set.
About halfway through her set, Musgraves went backstage and came back out with her acoustic guitar and nail clippers saying, “I know this is gonna be weird but I’m gonna need to cut my nails before this next song. You try to be a cute girl off stage and say “Oh I want to get my nails done!” and then you try to play guitar and you sound like absolute sh*t.” This led to a solo acoustic performance of the song Merry Go Round from her first album, Same Trailer Different Park. The crowd was so attentive that you could’ve heard a pin drop. Her show finished strong with an awesome cover of Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, after that was another run of star-crossed material with Musgraves going from justified, my favorite song on the album, to the live debut of keep lookin’ up and ended the run with there is a light which was highlighted by cryo cannons on stage, giant white beach balls getting tossed around the crowd, and lasers flying in every direction. To end her show, Kacey played the songs that end and open Golden Hour, Rainbow and Slow Burn, respectively. The set couldn’t have ended more perfectly as both songs were pure bliss to hear live. I don’t know how much else I can say rather than just giving my advice that if you’re in the same predicament as I was, pick Kacey. Her whole set is also available to stream on YouTube so check that out if you’d like to
I’m grateful to have attended the festival for the 4th year. While I still rank this lineup at the bottom as far as years I’ve gone, I think the experience I had ranked at the top. Thank you guys for keeping up with me this weekend!
Loading ...