extreme late pass here folks, but the awesomeness that was fun fun fun fest left me stunned and reeling for quite some time. but i’ve collected the my thoughts and pictures and finally, i bring you coverage of austin’s glorious fun fun fun fest brought to you by sunbear and free miller high life tall boys. check out my write ups on yeasayer, cool kids, les savy fav and all the other fun (fun fun) acts after the jump…
– sunbear
i had seen no age in austin a month prior to the release of their acclaimed 2008 album, nouns, and let me tell you that no age is one well-oiled rock machine. the raw energy and vibrant dissonance of the los angeles avant garde band was well on display as guitarist randy randall spewed volatile guitar riffs over drummer/singer dean spunt’s manic drum drumming. cuts from their latest ep losing feeling were in play, though it was when the band rehashed their nouns material, most notably “teen creeps” and “the eraser”, that the austin crowd were rabid for, did they kick up clouds of dust as they moshed. austin wouldn’t see such a brash collision of cacophony again, or at least until randy and dean make their return.
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yeasayer’s impressive fog and lights show couldn’t detract from the fact that the newly revved up band honed their “middle-eastern electro pop” to a fine point. songs from their debut album all hour cymbals sounded even more grandiose and lush than they did on record. newer material from their upcoming album odd blood was showcased including the infectiously summery feel-good anthem “ambling alp”. most impressive was the fact that each band member was proficient in a multitude of instruments, all adding to the complex and cerebral genre-bending yeasayer are renowned for. frontman anand wilder was as eccentric a frontman as you could get, equal parts trippy when using psychadelic voice effects, and just plain bizarre with his spastic dancing. perhaps it was the epilepsy-inducing light show or the bevy of world music sounds emitting from the band, but yeasayer were definitely one of the most captiviating performances of the festival.
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summer of ’09 will always be remembered as the summer of ‘wave-gaze’ or ‘chill wave’ or ‘glo-fi’ or, to be concise, ‘repetitious’. the large influx of bands riding a tidal wave of latent 80’s nostalgia mated with dreamy soundscapes were everywhere, alan palomo’s neon indian project leading the pack and being the most industrious, producing a very impressive album, psychic chasms. live, the four-piece neon indian were a more energetic band then song titles like “terminally chill” and “should’ve taken acid with you” would lead you to believe. the live instrumentation really ramped the album’s blurry electronica into high gear, as did palomo’s off-beat dancing. the vast array of effects palomo had at hand was impressive as was the overall attack of the band as they kicked out some of the night’s most ethereal jams.
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ah, the cool kids. were there any more apt name for a group it would be purely ironic. not to say that the cool kids aren’t a bit tongue in cheek themselves. their cheesy native tongues’ one liners are fantastically hysterical, from slinging 16-bit game consoles (“i’m in the crib saturday night with my sega thass right!”) to coining their own throwback terminology (“cause you a doll not an action figure, cause you don’t want action n*gga”). call it revivalism if you want, but the cool kids are far more substance than their kitschy flows let on, and their live show is a testament to this. no hype men, no band, no fluff: just two emcees and one DJ was all the cool kids needed to rock a solid hip hop set crammed with newer gone fishing material and their anthemic bake sale classics “what up man” and “88”. with the spirit of a tribe called quest on their side, the cool kids dominated the stage like old pros and controlled their audience perfectly with call and responses and 808 beats that even the whitest of white kids couldn’t deny.
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the abrasive post-hardcore of les savy fav and the stage antics and costumes of frontman tim harrington is the stuff of hardcore legend. on the one hand you have a band keeping the spirit of jawbox and fugazi alive. on the other, you have harrington, a wildly insane bizarro icon whos shenanigans propelled les savy fav’s live act into the stratosphere. as i approached their stage, mid-set, harrington was scaling the stage scaffolding to get over to ratatat’s stage where he shanghai’ed their drumset for his own personal use. but listen here: i don’t need to try to describe in words to you how out of contol a les savy show gets. just watch this. like, seriously. watch it now. that guy should be sponsored by little giant. and that other guy should get himself to the nearest clinic now and get himself tested because tim harrington looks dirty enough, god only knows where he’s been.
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les savy fav – the sweat descends
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stay tuned for my day: 2 coverage
WEWOREMASKS IS DEAD. 