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Get Breaking News on your cellACL 2008, Day 3: the Bad
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November 2008
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1). Gnarls Barkley. For the last performance of a four-month tour, Cee-Lo, Danger Mouse and their tux-with-silver-bowtie-sporting backing band left way too much in the dressing room. The duo's live shows are notoriously unpredictable, both in terms of quality and spontaniety (what dress will Cee-Lo perform in tonight?), and it was highly disappointing that it decided to mail things in rather than let things run amok. To be fair, Cee-Lo did sound like his voice was faltering in upper registers because of wear. But man, make up for it by doing something "Crazy", huh? 2). Neko Case. ACL just wasn't where the New Pornographer's country-folk material was going to shine, and as such, Ms. Case's playing ACL a year and a half after releasing a live album titled Live From Austin, TX was unfortunate. She sang and gestured with little enthusiasm, and her subtle and often simple and short compositions are too compact and nuanced to translate on a big stage such as the AMD Stage. A waste of time very similar to Alison Krauss and Robert Plant's turn on the same stage on Saturday, which possessed nowhere near the power and poetry that it did in an enclosed and dedicated headlinging appearance. 3). Silversun Pickups. I won't say much other than this L.A.-formed psycho-retro buzz-rock act is much more effective as recording artists. As a live band -- and particularly at a large festival like this, not to mention on one of the major stages -- it has no personality, no chops and no clue. It belonged on the festival's smallest outdoor platform, the BMI Stage -- if that. Closing note: shame, shame, shame on Foo Fighters for starting its festival-closing set five minutes early. Everyone else that I saw waited until the performers on neighboring stages wrapped to fire up their sonic engines (that's what you do at fests like these). But Dave Grohl and co. decided to leap into "All My Life" as Band of Horses was closing with a fantastic traditional blues-soul cover that would have been among the fest's best had it not been drowned out by that Foo-ish riffing. Grrr. |
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Comments
Posted by Bethany @ 12:27 PM Tue, Sep 30, 2008
Did you get some crack at one of the tents, and if so, which one? Alison Krauss and Robert Plant were absolutely stunning, and when you throw in T-Bone Burnett...just wow.
The only thing wrong with that set was the one acapella song Krauss sang - and only because Beck was loud enough to be heard clear across Zilker Park.
And Foos weren't the only ones that started early - it happened frequently on the Dell-AT&T area Sunday. I would put more of the blame on whoever was running the staging and timing for those two stages, not the band.