ATH & ACL 2018: A Weekend One Recap

As you likely know, many of your faithful ATH crew members ventured out this weekend to take part in this thing called Austin City Limits Festival. Have you heard of it? It’s kind of a big deal. As always, the festival was run smooth like a baby’s bottom and a good time was had by all. Part of what we do to earn our keep is to offer opinions on the music side of things and overall thoughts/concerns from the weekend. Each member of the team who attended this weekend will share their own opinions.

Follow the jump for more from me and Nicole with a little gallery from around the grounds by bgray.

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Fest Preview Friday: Frontmen Worth The Hype

One week! We’re one week away from another weekend of fun times, great tunes, tasty beverages and tastier foods at Austin City Limits 2018. Have you figured out which bag you’re going to take to comply with the new bag rules? Have you scoped out the list of food vendors so you know what local restaurant you’re gonna support when you stumble through a crowd of hungry people for the goods (hello, yes, I’ll take 8 orders of Kimchi fries plz)? Do you have appropriate rain shoes/gear on deck for when Zilker inevitably becomes a mudpit at the first drop of rain? No? Get to stepping, the time is almost here and to the best of my knowledge our Amazon overlords won’t be delivering to the fest via drone. On a musical note, I’ve got a preview for you today of some performances that I’m expecting to be dynamic and exciting not only because of the sweet tunes they’ll be playing, but because of the men and women who will be commanding the stage. Read after the jump for this lady’s hot take on which performance are must-see for weekend one.

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ACL Gimme 5: Neighbor Lady

ACL season is here sports fans, and as always, ATH will be doing everything in our power to prepare for the festival. A couple of years ago I started a new concept of asking bands to create a short 5 song playlist filled with songs featuring only artists playing the festival. Lucky for us, my dear friends in Atlanta based band Neighbor Lady thought this was a great idea and made a playlist for the site. If this sounds intriguing to you, which it should, hit the jump for the songs and for short blurbs about each.Neighb

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Night Drive Shares A Cover

Our friends in Night Drive have covered Perfume Genius and Radiohead previously, tagged as summer covers. They also do “Psycho Killer” live, but if you haven’t heard it, that Radiohead is one of the best things to get you all swirly-eyed-lost-in-the-moment at any Night Drive show.

The latest release is a not-quite-summer cover has us reimagining The National’s “Anyone’s Ghost”. It goes slightly uptempo to disco levels and adds a pile of synthy harmony with more movement in the phrasing of the lyrical delivery versus the original. The song builds and diverts from the source material the further along you listen.

Top Albums of 2017

Lists are arbitrary and burdensome, but why not join the fun everyone else is having? We gathered our lists, separate lists for all of us, then combined them into one that had 50 albums. What you get here are the four writers/contributors of ATH, giving you their meaningless opinions on what we thought was the jam in 2017. It’s alphabetical, and we put the initials next to it so you could track down your enemy!

 

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A Festival, A Parade Share Dark Alt Rock Single

afapA Festival, A Parade are a four piece out of Newcastle Upon Tyne who have got a Frightened Rabbit meets Preoccupations vibe with their heavy dark rock. This new single below, “If Dogs Could Talk,” has all the elements you’d expect from an alt-rock song: cutting riffs of electric guitar that duel throughout, furious drums with lots of cymbal crashes, and the deep vocals of Joe Allen that keep the song in that grumbling, low tone. This band has only been at it for about a year, so you can expect a bright future from these gents.

Bonus points if you can guess which track by The National that it appears this band has generated their name from.

 

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Festival Recap: Eaux Claires

oh clair bannerEau Claire, Wisconsin is a long ways a way from Austin, but not too far away in terms of mindset: here, we call our city the Live Music Capital of the world, and in the Eau Claire is the Music Capital of the North. Nestled in the Chippewa Valley and overlooking the the river, we were treated to three days in the woods with 22,000 of our newly formed friends celebrating music, arts, and the spirit of the river valley. At the center of it all was the man who dreamed up such a festival: Justin Vernon, who, alongside Aaron Dessner, brought all of us together in essentially his backyard to experience something greater.

Read on for our recap of the inaugural Eaux Claires Music and Arts Festival and see some pictures from the fest.

**Feature Photo Courtesy of Graham Tolbert

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Festival Preview: Eaux Claires

Screen Shot 2015-07-02 at 10.00.28 PMSometimes the ATH crew ventures beyond the Live Music Capital and gets to experience rad festivals. Last summer, I had the pleasure of traveling to Barcelona for Primavera Sound, and while Spain may not be on the horizon for me this summer, Wisconsin is. In a few short weeks, we’ll be hitting the grounds of the first ever Eaux Claires festival, the love child project of Justin Vernon (Bon Iver/Volcano Choir) and Aaron Dessner (The National). While we’ll give you updates live from the festival so you can live vicariously through us and figure out which acts you need to see when they make their way through our neck of the woods, you can read on for the top five things we’re looking forward to about the inaugural festival.

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Stream This Pfarmers Debut FOR FREE

pfarmersHey man, we’re always just looking out for y’all here at ATH, so I wanted to let you know that the lovely folks at Jurrasic Pop records are letting you stream the new Pfarmers LP, Gunnera, for free for a limited time. Pfarmers is the project of The National’s Bryan Devendorf, Danny Seim of Menomena, and Dave Nelson of St. Vincent…so really with all that talent you should probably give it a listen. Everyone likes free, legal music, right?

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