By Marty Brandwein
Austin City Limits. Weekend 1. Friday. After waiting for only a few minutes to get into the festival, I entered, surrounded by streams of people in cowboy hats, boots, sunglasses, and not much else, speed-walking from one stage to another. Already, there’s a twenty-person line to take a picture in front of the ACL sculpture, but I’m not there for that. So, I made a beeline for Honda Stage.
By the time I get there, Foster the People is already playing, founder and frontman Mark Foster bouncing around the stage as they perform one of my favorite songs of the set, “Sit Next to Me.” The crowd is loving the band’s energy and giving it right back as they rock their way through each song. Every bass line is being slapped, every lyric is being spit, and every key is getting… keyed, I suppose. The screens, though they only convey a fraction of the band’s actual energy, show each musician in a tracer-ridden, trip-inducing world. Finally, after a great run of songs, it’s the encore, the song that every casual fan, including me, has been waiting for begins. The drumline starts and the crowd screams as “Pumped Up Kicks” blares over the speakers. Though a noticeably lower energy song for the band, Foster the People still delivers on what I can only imagine is a song the band is more than tired of.
After a few less-than-notable performances from other bands, it’s time for the main event of the night, at least for me. It’s time for… blink-182. Back at Honda Stage once again, the members of blink gallop out as if they have, excuse the pun, forgotten their age. Now, I won’t sit here and pretend that I was conscious, or even alive, during blink’s heyday, but I was screaming the lyrics to each song I knew and pulling out Shazam on every song I didn’t. Between each snarling riff and insane drum solo, the hilarious, and not-suitable-for-this-website, banter between vocalists Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge showed their immense comfort on stage. By the end of the set, Travis Barker’s fingers were literally bleeding and my vocal chords were ripping as every single Millenial in the crowd lost their minds to “What’s My Age Again?” and “All The Small Things.” Incredible set with incredible energy. Gonna need to sleep after this one.
Photo by Gabriel “Allen” Witkop
Wake up, it’s Saturday! First up is Khruangbin playing at American Express Stage. Getting there decently early, I was surprised at the mass of people already flooding onto the dead grass in front of the festival’s biggest stage. After a short wait, funkiness floods the field as “María también” seeps from the speakers. To say that the band was not energetic would be inaccurate; though they refrained from the Jagger-like dancing of Foster, Laura Lee Ochoa perfectly matched the mood of her bassline, seeming to glide around in front of thousands. The on-screen visuals similarly mirrored the upbeat groove of each song, making for a cohesive and thoroughly enjoyable set. With great difficulty, I peeled myself away from the performance, nearly running to one of the smallest stages in the festival, IHG.
So who, you ask, could possibly steal my attention from Khruangbin, while playing at one of the smallest stages? As I arrived, two words faded onto the screen, and the crowd began to chant: “VINCE STAPLES.” Despite no real set pieces on stage and far less elaborate visuals than the other artists I had seen, Vince more than matched the energy of his peers. With songs from every album, including “FUN!,” “Yeah Right,” “THE BEACH,” “Étouffée,” “Big Fish,” and “Norf Norf,” the rapper, actor, and comedian entranced his audience from start to finish, curating a set to be remembered. Despite Saturday’s performances from big names like Dua Lipa and Khruangbin, Vince managed to steal the show, all from the humble IHG Stage.
Finally, it’s Sunday, the day that for me and many others represents only one artist: Tyler, the Creator. But before his incredible performance, Kevin Abstract took over Vince Staples’ “alma mater,” IHG, to perform hit tracks from both his solo albums and his work in BROCKHAMPTON. Displaying his innate understanding of the balance between artist-necessary arrogance and human humility, Abstract brought up no less than 5 fans on stage to watch him perform “Georgia.” His crowd work, however, did not stop there, leaning over the barricade to rap and sing many songs alongside his front-row-fans. One standout track from the set was the surprising “BUZZCUT,” a song I never thought I would see live. Despite the absence of the immaculate Danny Brown verse, the truncated tune lived in my head for the remainder of the day.
After Abstract wrapped up his set, I migrated to the American Express stage. As only a spectator of the “femininomenon” that is Chappell Roan, I was trapped in a sea of fans spelling with their arms and screaming with their whole bodies. Despite my apathy for her music, Roan’s theatricality and energy was pervasive throughout her set, including her surprisingly good rendition of Heart’s “Barracuda.” But finally, after two hours of wading through the crowd and waiting for the end of the set, I was left swimming upstream, intent on making it as close as possible to the stage for Tyler’s set. Tyler started on the top of an on-stage mountain screaming through many songs from “The Estate Sale” and “Flower Boy.” As he progressed in semi-reverse-chronological order, I made it to the beating heart of the pit by “IFHY,” a personal favorite of mine. Though I could continue to name drop Tyler’s incredible tracks, there is nothing I could write that could convey the energy of both the artist and the crowd; it is unmatched by any other set I have yet experienced. Every lyric is screamed by the crowd and every track has a unique and custom-made intro. I can not, to the time of my writing this, think of a single thing that could be improved.
Photo by Gabriel “Allen” Witkop
As my second-ever music festival, and my first three day stretch, ACL 2024 will be hard to beat. An incredible experience from top to bottom with electrifying energy, phenomenal organization, and thousands in attendance, I will certainly be coming back next year. See you then.