SUNDAY

We headed back to Zilker Park, exhausted and missing parts of our livers from the night before. If my body could talk, it would have said the following: "6th Street is amazing, I'm in love with Austin and this beautiful festival. But please God, kill me."

But we did it up, and here's what we checked out on our last day of ACL Madness.

Flyleaf
God they sucked. Who even invited them to the party?


Tristan Prettyman
It is safe to say I have a new crush. Not only is Tristan a good looking girl, she definitely has a voice to back it up. And she can play guitar. I mean, what else do you need? If you like Jack Johnson or any of the other surf rockers, you'll dig her style. She just spent the summer touring with John Butler and G. Love and her new album makes the perfect gift for any female in your life. Call me?


Against Me!
The Gainesville punkers had a huge hit this summer with "Thrash Unreal", detailing the life-and-times of a thirty-something punk chick who can't seem to grow out of the scene. Their latest release has every Alternative radio DJ proclaiming it "life-changing", and we tend to agree that it is certainly a stellar record. Life-changing not so much, but worth checking out. Live show was good, nothing special. But I heard they were awesome when they were on tour with The Foo Fighters this past Spring.

Silversun Pickups
I still don't understand the love people have for these guys. It's like Smashing Pumpkins with more annoying vocals than Billy Corgan. Their sound levels were all screwed up, and it definitely was not aiding in the recovery process from Saturday night's hang-over inducing rampage down 6th Street. Still not impressed, and from the amount of people leaving the area it was pretty obvious they felt the same way.


Free Dinner
The press area at ACL had food every day catered by some of Austin's restaurants. Great food, great drinks courtesy of Tito Vodka and Red Bull. We missed Okkervil which kind of sucks, but we got a great spot for the most anticipated act of the weekend.


The Raconteurs
We heard they blew the lid off of Lollapalooza in Chicago, and the only reason we didn't see him there was so we could be front and center for Radiohead – and we knew we'd catch him in Austin. Missing Gnarls Barkley wasn't that big of a deal. I'll be the one that comes out and says it, the last album sucked. There. We were in the airport leaving the next day and some girl sitting near us was saying how they were bad. I don't know, I give them hella credit still. Apparently, Jack White slipped a disk making it hard to sing. So he passed most of the vocals over to guitarist Brendan Benson. But they still put on a good show. If anything, it drove home the point that Jack White is a fucking rockstar.

Foo Fighters
Capping off the weekend was probably the best act of the entire weekend. Dave Grohl even said at one point, "what an awesome way to end the weekend, am I right?" With the blue lights highlighting all the dust in the air and the guitars entering into "My Hero". Grohl played an excellent acoustic version of "Everlong" and they jammed out to a lounge-folk version of "Big Me" in the encore. It was the rock songs that made the exhausted crowd jump, though. If you haven't seen them, I suggest doing so. Not only are they good, they are pretty hilarious. I mean, there was a three minute triangle solo [PIC]. Badass.


Problems

Didn't See Lance
Heard he was there from someone while we were in line for yet another dose of tacos (sensing a theme here), but unfortunately we didn't see him. Sources tell us he was just rocking in the middle of the crowd. No VIP for that guy.


Joint Acts
Same as Lolla, same as everywhere. What happened to guest spots with other artists at the festival? The only one we saw was Tegan from Tegan & Sara joining Against Me! for one song. Did everyone get in a fight or something?


Dust
We were told ahead of time this might be an issue. Apparently in past years it's been worse. Soaring temps in the triple digits and clouds of red dirt floating in the air. The heat wasn't unbearable, but the dust by the end of three days was pretty absurd. A lot of people wore surgical masks or bandanas around their mouths like 18th century train robbers. I came home with a pretty bad cold. I'm blaming the dust, rather than the little-to-no-sleep binge in Austin.

FRIDAY RECAP  ::  SATURDAY RECAP