Austin Town Hall

So just as I did last year, I’m going to take a minute to be a negative nancy and focus on some of the downer moments of our ACL weekend.  As always, the positives greatly outweigh the negatives and I still enjoyed my festival experience (no matter how much it rained).  You’ll notice that most of my list consists of things that no one can really do anything about so that leaves me hopeful that next year will be near perfection.  I’m willing to bet that you can guess my #1 & #2 slots, but damnit if that weather wasn’t the worst I can ever remember.  Yes it may even top the 107 degree heat and the dust from hell.  So follow the jump for my bottom 5 of ACL 2009.

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So we survived the weekend that was the dillo dirt sludge of ACL and we’re ready to provide a bit of reflections from our experience.  We’ll start things off with a quick recap of some of our favorite acts from the festival and who impressed us the most.  This is only our list and we based it on our time and taste so let us know if you saw something great we forgot about.  Follow the jump for our Top 10 acts of ACL.

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Continuing our coverage of ACL artists this week, we bring you an interview with Portland based Sub Poppers Blitzen Trapper.  We talk to leading man Eric Earley about his brand new EP, his upcoming LP, and a few other things that we were curious about.  Follow the jump for the full interview.
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These guys made one of our favorite albums of last year which produced one of our favorite songs, so I think it’s obvious that we need to run an ACL spotlight on Blitzen Trapper.  Follow the jump to read more about an ATH favorite.

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Fresh off the release of their It’s Frightening, White Rabbits returned to Austin, riding the wave of praise heaped upon them by various media outlets, ATH included. We ventured to Emos salivating at the chance to hear “Percussion Gun” live, as that clearly is one of our songs of the year. Local Austin band The Boxing Lesson opened up the evening, but they were practically done with their space-electronica when we made it into an empty indoor Emos. Follow the jump to read the full review.

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So when we thought making an albums of the year post was hard, this one proved to be even harder.  How do you take literally thousands of songs and narrow it down to the best 40 of the year?  Not too sure how to answer that question, but we tried.  Each of these songs scream 2008 in our ears.  As evident by this list, the year in music was quite a good one and we had some tough choices to make.  We’ve got some of the songs streaming for you or links to the song on youtube.  Follow the jump to see if your favorite tune of the year made the list.

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A few days ago, we gave you part one of our albums of the year list.  Today we bring you the best of the best from a wide range of artists who brought the noise this year.  We’ve fought it out amongst our ATH writers for weeks and these are the albums that we all loved.  These 15 albums went into thunderdome and emerged victorious.  Follow the jump to see if your favorite band made the Top 15 of 2008.

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Contenders for record of the year, Blitzen Trapper, will be playing a Thanksgiving Eve show at Mohawk on Wednesday night.  The bill is actually pretty impressive with Pink Nasty and Parson Redheads opening things up for the Portland based band.  Even more impressive, New York band O’Death will be playing on the inside stage in between the main acts outside.  Tickets can be bought now for $8.  Here’s one of my favorite pop songs to come out in several years “Punctual as Usual” by the Parson Redheads.

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Download: Parson Redheads – Punctual as Usual [MP3]