Live Review: Austin City Limits

MAGNET’s Matthew Irwin reports from the 2012 Austin City Limits Music Festival in Texas.

About three songs into his Friday night set at Austin City Limits, M. Ward told the audience he’d heard this year’s fest was the biggest yet. Though the Portland-based singer/songwriter played one of the smaller stages at the seven-stage event, his performance concluded as the Zilker Park crowd reached its peak for headliners AVICII and the Black Keys.

The three-day event sold out at 75,000 people per day, which put a palpable pressure on personal space, even before Saturday’s rain showers. Festival-goers, however, remained lighthearted, many expressing reassurance at the news, released October 2, that organizers have decided to extend the festival to two weekends, with the majority of bands appearing at both. Doubtful, however, is whether adding more dates will attract a more dedicated crowd. We don’t want to impose our festival raison d’être on anybody else, but if one is willing to spend $200 on the weekend pass, plus the cost of transportation and festival food, she should be eager to listen to the music. Generally, those interested in talking more than rocking filter toward the back, but we were particularly disappointed in the gaggle of mid-30s women at Gary Clark Jr.’s midday performance gossiping over the music in the front rows on Sunday. This was not an uncommon occurrence.

Nonetheless, when we closed our eyes during Clark’s show, he almost could have passed for the Black Keys, but for his voice, a combination of the sounds emanating from his diaphragm and from his guitar, which clearly separated him from the Akron, Ohio. duo. We wondered: If he had come up around the same time as the Keys, which of them would have been on the big stage Friday night, especially after the Keys’ lackluster ACL performance, Dan Auerbach strangely punctuating his vocals with his hands like a diva.

A few bothersome points that deserve mentioning: 1) ACL faced off Neil Young & Crazy Horse against Jack White Saturday night, while letting the Red Hot Chili Peppers play uncontested on Sunday. Endearing in his persona with an all-woman band, White’s performance, nonetheless, felt like an imitation of a performance. Young, on the other hand, played as if those thousands of people had come only to see him, and they responded as if they had, singing his lyrics back in greater numbers than for other performers. 2) Some of the more popular sets were performed by DJs, such as Bassnectar and Big Gigantic, and not only did the bass invade the rest of the park, but we had thought that dub-step had reached its peak four years ago. 3) The Weeknd’s Abel Tesfaye bailed on his Sunday afternoon performance, with the official line being that he was sick, though attendees at his downtown Austin show the night before reported that he had been pretty drunk onstage.

Now for the good stuff: Rufus Wainwright produced a heartwarming and energetic performance, aware as any other musician that weekend that he had limited stage time, but unable to help himself from corresponding with the audience at various lengths. Like Young, he came to perform for an audience, not at a festival. Los Angeles band He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister was clearly the festival darlings, returning day after day for interviews in the media area, and infecting Stubb’s Barbeque on Saturday night with an Okkervil River-like, vaudeville folk that’s incredibly sexy and danceable, but also might simply be the sound of this time and place, begging the question, “Where might they go from here?”

We were partial to Oberhofer, the not-so-Brooklyn band from Brooklyn that just released the EP Time Capsules II, though band members told MAGNET they don’t really care for the term EP—it suggests a lesser achievement, whereas they feel theirs is a full expression where they are and where they want go. Lead vocalist and guitarist Brad Oberhofer took full advantage of the festival atmosphere, running around the stage whenever a break in vocals allowed, even leaving the stage altogether to run around the festival grounds. Oberhofer is the kind of band for which we endure festival crowds and unpredictable weather and strange scheduling. It is parts Deerhunter, Avi Buffalo and the Black Lips—experimental and moving, strange and sincere and all the way rock ‘n’ roll

Additional reporting by Melina Laroza; photo by Dave Mead