September 28, 2008
ACL, Day 3
- Scott Biram - Biram is an Austin local whose music is a loud blistering dirty heavy can of whupass. I had been told his live show was ten times better than his records. It's true! This was a great show even if it was outside during a nice sunny day instead of late at night in a sketchy dive. I hope to check out his live show more now that I live here. (From the ACL guide: "Biram doesn't croon and strum the kind of pretty, sensitive singer-songwriter elegies that clog the mainstream radio airwaves with cloying melodies, or that commonly end up sandwiched between John Mayer and Death Cab for Cutie on co-ed mix CDs. Instead, he growls, hollers, snarls, barks, stomps and even occasionally yodels his way through the kind of dirty blues that goes down best with copious amounts of whiskey and nicotine in the kind of backwoods juke joints most folks probably wouldn't feel comfortable visiting alone.")
- The Kills - For some reason I'm still not really sold on The Kills, but this show was really good. I enjoyed it far more than their recorded material.
- Gillian Welch (photo above) - I've never seen her live. I wasn't expecting the show to be so energetic. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are both incredible musicians. She played lots of crowd favorites (Revelator, Miss Ohio, I Want To Sing That Rock and Roll) that all sounded much better live (which I always appreciate) along with a couple of new tunes (plus a short visit from Alison Krauss who was at ACL with Robert Plant). Welch and Rawlings were as upset at having to end the set as the crowd was.
- Neko Case (photo below) - Also very good, but not as fun as Gillian Welch. Neko has such a great, powerful voice that it's always fun to hear her live. She played a couple of new tunes, too -- most memorably a depressing Harry Nilsson song ('Alimony') she said will be on the next album. As always, I was mesmerized by the pedal steel. What's my problem?
- I had to leave at this point to go home and work on school projects & reading (real life sucks) so I missed Okkervil River (not crying any tears but it might've been fun), The Raconteurs, Gnarls Barkley, and more (Band of Horses, Foo Fighters). So it goes.
