The first weekend of Austin City Limits 2013 is now on the books, rounding out strongly on Sunday with a rock & indie flavored day led by The National, Phoenix, Lionel Richie and Atoms For Peace.
At the tail end of a weekend that included stellar performances from Arctic Monkeys, Kendrick Lamar, Queens of The Stone Age, The Black Angels, Kings of Leon and beyond, the quality remained high and climaxed on the highest possible note – and we’re not talking about Lionel Richie’s revival of “We Are The World”.
Opening the day with The Wild Feathers, Crave’s Band of The Month for October (check out an exclusive performance of their single “The Ceiling”), we revved up for the day’s music marathon on a soulful dose of blues-rock peppered with country.
Grouplove got the dance party running strongly on the AMD stage, but at 3:30 it was just too goddamned hot to keep the momentum up, and the songs simply don’t connect on a soul-charging level. Hannah Hooper’s body-hugging outfit kept us locked long enough for the mind to wander to inappropriate places, however, while singer Christian Zucconi gave Jared Leto a run for his money in the self-aware ladybait department. But aside from superfluous visual stimulants, their beats were hard enough to walk away from that we’ve got the sunburns to show for.
After some shade and hydration we moved on to Spoon’s Britt Daniels and his Divine Fits, who dutifully ran through an energetic but underwhelming set of songs from their 2012 debut LP and two new singles before closing with a powerful take on “Shivers.”
Heartpunch of the Day: The National
From opener “I Should Live in Salt” to the impossibly hypnotic poignance of “Blood Buzz” and beyond, singer Matt Berninger led his band through an achingly beautiful set that emphasized the strengths of the band’s understated, undulating dream-gravity. Sipping a beer and dancing to the music, Berninger was by no means a sullen presence as the gorgeous downtempo set built to a lovely conclusion with “Terrible Love” from their 2010 album High Violet.
Well-timed Crossfire: Phoenix
Opening with latest hit “Entertainment,” Phoenix was the perfect middleground use of time between The National and Atoms For Peace for those who didn’t want to watch Tame Impala’s scarved nonsense. Running through a set that touched on points along their entire five-album catalogue, highlights included “Run Run Run,” “Funky Squaredance” and “Consolation Prizes”. Just as Portugal. The Man did on Saturday, the band closed with a reprise of their opening track, “Entertainment”. As singer Thomas Mars still crowdsurfed before the set’s end, a beaming grin could be seen across his face.
Then came the main event, and what an event it was. Anyone possessing a vague familiarity with this side project run wild expected offbeat time signatures, ethereal weirdness and an overall electrifying experience from Atoms For Peace to close out the first weekend of Austin City Limits 2013. What I didn’t anticipate was just how deep down the rabbit hole we’d go, nor how little control I’d have over my entire body throughout the astonishingly fantastic performance. Simply put, it was impossible not to dance my almighty ass off during the entire two-hour performance.
Radiohead shows are magnificent, yet often include a variety of downtempo heartache jams that really tend to put a damper on the maniacally happy dancing fun of their more upbeat, percussion-driven tracks. Atoms For Peace possess no such hindrance, with two drummers providing a kaleidoscopic blizzard of breathless polyrhythmic voodoo, led by Mauro Refosco’s intricately exquisite tribally-laced percussion.
Seeing the orbital intersection of Thom Yorke and Flea, two stage-spazzing virtuosos in their own right, is the musical equivalent of a superhero team-up without the stupid capes and posturing. Flea’s thundering, buoyant bass weaved a deep, binding thread through Nigel Godrich’s atmospheric multi-instrumentalism, Yorke’s elfin spasms and the aforementioned world of percussion. He was positively unhinged in creative flexibility, far eclipsing his work with Red Hot Chili Peppers with a bounding display of fretwork and lurching, contorting dance moves. This man is 50 years old, bouncing like a superball.
Yorke’s highly danceable solo album The Eraser provided the majority of supplemental material beyond Atoms For Peace’s single album Amok, including “Skip Divided,” “Cymbal Rush,” “Atoms For Peace” and a stunning version of “And It Rained All Night”. U.N.K.L.E. track “Rabbit In Your Headlights” was reincarnated, stripped of its soul-staining darkness and supplemented with a psychedelic rhythmic acceleration.
Ending with a second encore of “Black Swan,” the band bid farewell with a hauntingly arresting dose of rueful midtempo melancholia. The crowd was chanting along, “This is fucked… up… fucked up…,” but it’s unlikely anyone related to the lyrics in any way but complimentary. An entirely immersive, rhythmically psychedelic wonderland, Atoms For Peace is arguably the most enchanting live band in motion this year.
Setlist
1. Before Your Very Eyes
2. Default
3. The Clock
4. Ingenue
5. Stuck Together Pieces
6. Unless
7. And It Rained All Night
8. Harrowdown Hill
9. Dropped
10. Cymbal Rush
11. Skip Divided
12. Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses
13. Rabbit In Your Headlights (UNKLE cover)
14. Paperbag Writer (Radiohead cover)
15. Amok
16. Atoms For Peace
17. Black Swan
As we made our dazed and delirious way towards the exit, Lionel Richie jammed us into a time machine from the opposite end of the field, tearing through his own hit list with solo nostalgia jams and Commodores including “Sweet Love”, “Lady (You Bring Me Up)” and “Brick House”. He ended the night with “Hello”, “All Night Long” and that little song he wrote with Michael Jackson so long ago: “We Are The World”.
Austin City Limits returns next weekend with the same lineup… but it’s going to be hard to top what just went down. Check out our entire run of ACL 2013 coverage below!
Photos: Johnny Firecloud
