Spring Break
Austin's Fun Fun Fun Fest lives up to its name
Matt Goodman
Issue date: 11/14/08 Section: OPINION
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Taking place last weekend mere blocks away from the Texas Capitol at Waterloo Park, the third-annual music festival spanned four stages devoted to indie, punk, hip-hop and electronic, and comedy or more low-key acts.
And the festival brought out the big guns: The National, Deerhoof, Islands, Trail of Dead, a one-time Dead Milkmen reunion, Bad Brains, Kool Keith, Dan Deacon and Clipse - artists all talented enough to headline their own tours.
Because of its setup, fans didn't have to schizophrenically dash from stage to stage to stay within genre confines. But even for the daring, more musically varied folks, all stages were no more than a five-minute walk away from one another. It was more of a chore to choke down the swirling dust that continually plagued the festival.
Saturday was dominated by some of the better acts in indie rock. Parts & Labor kicked off the festivities, adding sporadic electronics and noise freak-outs to its fairly standard mall punk.
At the punk stage, Young Widows brought some bite between all the garbage "punk" fluff that populated stage three.
Walking from that to Bishop Allen was an odd transition, but its entertaining, easygoing pop brought smiles to a number of faces that warm afternoon.
One of the festival's highlights was The Octopus Project, which followed Bishop Allen on stage four. Its raucous live show was full of instrument switches, sound experimentation, people dressed in oversized ghost outfits, awesome audience interaction and a huge amount of energy. All this added to its dance/shoegaze sound that dominated the stage Saturday afternoon.
…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead played as the sun set, which immediately took me back to the band I knew and loved in high school. Loud, demanding, vicious and insanely talented, the band put on one of the more intense shows of the festival complete with crowd jumping and stage climbing.
Deerhoof was the surprise of the event. Listening to the records doesn't do this band justice. I'm convinced it has one of the tightest rhythm sections in indie-rock, pumping out heavy Pete Townshend-style riff after riff, bringing some balls back into a genre that really needs it.
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