Austin City Limits Festival Preview

See you in Austin!

Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

The Austin City Limits Festival starts tomorrow, and in a few short hours I'll be on a plane headed to Texas.  If this is your first time on the site, I hope you're arriving here before the festival begins, so you can actually check out all of the previews - you can access each one by clicking on the links to the left. Enjoy the mp3s while you can, I will be taking down all the music that I have hosted when I get back to Nashville on Monday.  The site will remain though, as well as the links to mp3s that are hosted elsewhere.

I want to once again thank the guest previewers who kept my crazy project from being impossible this year - John, JD, Jeff, Chris and Becky did a fantastic job and I wouldn't have been able to do this without them.  I especially want to thank Becky, because after two years of taking on this adventure with her, the festival isn't going to be the same this year without my big sister.  (I promise to only tell you about the heat and the fire ants and the crappy bands, B.)

I'll be covering the actual festival on my real blog, Out the Other, which I suggest you check out.  While I won't be able to post much while I'm in Austin (I can only send pictures and short posts from my phone), I'll have a full recap when I get back to Nashville, and I just listed a few links to keep you entertained in my absence.

If you're going to be in Austin this weekend, say hi if you see me at the festival, or at Local Music is Sexy 2, the Austinist party we're checking out tonight.

See you in Austin!

Van Morrison

from:               Belfast, Northern Ireland
website:           www.vanmorrison.co.uk

I just typed about five different paragraphs to start off this preview, and each one found me gushing like an excited little girl going to see her first concert. But it's hard to avoid that kind of juvenile excitement, because it's... Van Morrison.  Sitting here listening to Astral Weeks at 11:30 p.m., with his perfect, perfect voice floating out of my speakers and my childhood, I find myself having to try incredibly hard not to get teary.  It's not often that you get to see one of the artists that has been included in the list of your "5 desert island discs" since you first played Moondance so, so many times in a row that your discman almost overheated from the effort.  It's not often that you get the opportunity to see a legend, in person.  It's not often that you spend months kicking yourself for not buying tickets you really couldn't afford to see that legend in a legendary venue, the Ryman Auditorium, kicking yourself for missing out on perhaps the only time you might see Van Morrison, ever.  It's not often that you get second chances like this.

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1945 to a mother who was a singer and a father who collected American jazz and blues recordings, George Ivan Morrison was destined to follow his musical path.  Morrison has been performing since the age of 15, when he quit school to join a local R&B group, and for nearly 50 years he has been nearly as prolific as he is talented.  I am most certainly not qualified enough (and slightly too tired) to give a full rundown of his career, but if you are interested, I highly suggest his biography on AllMusic.  Just looking at his discography there makes me want to max out my credit card at the closest record shop - while I have more than a few Van Morrison albums, I own only a small, small fraction of his catalog.

I can only imagine what seeing Van Morrison will be like this weekend - I find myself daydreaming about the set list, wondering what he will play.  I also wonder what it will be like to see the legend with such a massive audience, and briefly I'll worry about how impersonal it might be if I'm not directly in front of the stage.  But my worries don't last very long, because I know it really doesn't matter how many people are in the audience - Morrison's music is such an intensely personal experience for me, I think I'll be oblivious to the crowd as soon as he begins playing.  I may not be directly in front of the stage for his set, but I'll be the girl with tears in her eyes.

"Into the Mystic" (from Moondance)
"The Way Young Lovers Do" (from Astral Weeks)

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

from:               Gainesville, FL
website:           www.tompetty.com
myspace:         www.myspace.com/tompetty

I saved Tom Petty and Van Morrison for the end of the previews for several reasons.  First, they shouldn't really need a preview, in my opinion - both musicians are complete legends, and I'm fairly sure that nothing I can write would make you decide to (or decide not to) see their sets at ACL.  Second, I thought it would be poor form to post tracks by them and leave them up for weeks (plus, I didn't want to be immediately asked to take the tracks down).  Third, and most of all - they are the two artists I'm most excited about seeing at the festival this year.

Tom Petty is one of those artists that I could absolutely, positively never get sick of. While his more recent material isn't played as frequently on the radio, you can be positive that if you listen to a classic rock station for long enough, you'll hear a handful of his songs.  And Petty's rock 'n roll is as "classic" as it gets - from his debut in the late '70s with the Heartbreakers, he has brought a distinctly American style of rock that remains true to its roots while combining British and garage influences with Dylan-like singer/songwriter fare.  With a steady stream of releases for the past thirty years, Petty has remained relevant and successful, earning sixteen Grammy Award nominations while becoming an increasingly vocal critic of the modern recording industry and the demise of independent radio.

This summer's tour with the Heartbreakers comes in support of Petty's most recent solo album, Highway Companion, which debuted at number 4 on the Billboard charts in July, marking the singer's highest chart positioning in the SoundScan era.  The current band is comprised of Petty (vocals, guitar, harmonica), Mike Campbell (guitar), Benmont Tench (keyboard, vocals), Ron Flair (bass), Steve Ferrone (drums) and Scott Thurston (guitar, keyboards, harmonica, vocals, bass). They have already played Bonnaroo this summer as well as a number of shows across the country, and if early setlists are any indication, we should be treated to a hit-heavy show at ACL this year.  And when you're talking about hits that play like old, familiar friends, you can be sure that Petty's set will be a highlight of the festival.

"Breakdown" (from Tom Petty & the Wildflowers)
"You Wreck Me" (from Wildflowers)

Sparklehorse

from:               Bremo Bluff, VA
website:           www.sparklehorse.com
myspace:         www.myspace.com/sparklehorse

Hm.  I seem to have gotten Sparklehorse confused with another band.  I won't even say which one, but suffice it to say, I thought this preview would be a breeze, but as it turns out I know next to nothing about this band. 

Mark Linklous is the man behind Sparklehorse, and he has been performing under the name (with an assortment of his friends) for more than ten years.  After playing with the Dancing Hoods in the mid-'80s as well as the Johnson Family (later known as Salt Chuck Mary), Linklous tried a few odd jobs before holing up in the studio on his farm in Bremo Bluff, Virginia in 1995 to perfect the lo-fi, melancholy, roots-pop sound associated with Sparklehorse.  According to his MySpace page, he set out to "make a kind of pop equivalent to Tom Wait's Swordfishtrombone."

Sparklehorse debuted in 1995 with the Capitol-released Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, which was a modest success and sparked an alternative radio hit in the single "Someday I Will Treat You Good."  Unfortunately, tragedy also came with the tour to support the album, and in 1996 while in London, Linklous overdosed on Valium, antidepressants and alcohol.  After spending fourteen hours unconscious with his legs pinned under the rest of his body, Linklous almost lost both his legs and spent many months and many surgeries recovering.

Linklous returned in 1999 with Good Morning Spider, his first album recorded after the incident, and two years later he released It’s a Wonderful Life, which featured appearances by Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Nina Persson and Dave Fridmann. For the past few years, the musician has worked as a producer, helming works for artists like Persson and Daniel Johnston, and he also curated and produced the Daniel Johnston tribute album released in 2004. This month will see the released of the fourth Sparklehorse album, Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain.

"Shade and Honey" (from Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain)
"Go (with the Flaming Lips)" (from The Late Great Daniel Johnston)

I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness

from:               Austin, TX
website:           www.chosendarkness.com
myspace:         www.myspace.com/chosendarkness

I had never listened to more than one song by I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness before yesterday, although they seem to have been on the lips of DJs, bloggers and friends alike in recent months.  With a sound that has been labeled as "dark pop," the band just never really intrigued me, at least not beyond the silly name that seems to pop up in a ridiculous number of blog post titles.  But yesterday on the way to work I listened to Fear Is On Our Side for the first time, and in the Shakespearean setting of a drizzly, dark morning, I discovered that the band is bleakly appropriate for a yucky morning.

Formed in 2001, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness is a five-piece comprised of Christian Goyer (vocals), Edward Robert (bass), Ernest Salaz (guitar), Daniel Del Favero (guitar) and Tim White (percussion).  The band made its debut in 2003 with a self-titled EP released on Emperor Jones, which I personally haven't heard, but will definitely check out now that I have heard that it is slightly lighter, "semi-danceable," and enlisted Britt Daniel as a producer.  Although I do prefer the sunnier side of things, the gloomier full-length Fear Is On Our Side is still a great listen, and the dark elements that seem pervasive in the album are complemented by '80s, new wave-ish sounds that make the band sound like a Manchester export rather than an Austin band.

"According to Plan" (from Fear Is On Our Side)
"The Owl" (from Fear Is On Our Side)