ACL Fest 2013
While doubling this massive three-day festival over two weekends might’ve been a grand experiment, the only way a visitor might notice that something was different was by hearing a performer ask the crowd, “See you next weekend?”
It went off without a hitch, running as smooth as a well-oiled machine, offering thousands of fans muy-primo performances with plenty of room and eats, arts and great weather to enjoy.
MUSE
MUSE played the enormous Samsung Galaxy Stage, which was a perfect fit, since it features all the bells and whistles that a visual and technologically-savvy band like this can artfully wield. The band came on stage knifing away with the aggressive riffing of “Supremacy” like they were artisan revolutionaries calling a nation to liberate itself from apathy.
It was an immediate payoff for the audience of, let’s say 50,000. And then the power went off – no music, no images on the video screens and no lights. The band was still playing for a minute, but the audience wasn’t getting it. The band sauntered offstage, looking kind of frustrated, yet no one gave us an explanation. It was a big, bad tease and it sucked. But we waited, confident that we would all still be taken to a special place that a million well-placed video images and hundreds of music notes at 120 db could take us.
After an awful wait of 15 minutes or more, the lights were back on, the video screen came to life and the band marched out to “Supremacy” again, playing it in full – only missing the element of surprise of starting the set with the first song from The 2nd Law. It felt like all was finally right with the universe on this night. They lit into the large-sounding and quick-paced “Supermassive Black Hole” with its big, fat and phat basslines. The giant video screen behind the stage (spanning the width of the entire stage) and the screens on either side of the stage displayed shattered glass silhouettes flying around. The swells in the song seemed to naturally move the audience at will.
Frontman Matthew Bellamy played “The Star Spangled Banner” on his guitar sans the Hendrix-ian feedback and divebombs we’ve all become accustomed to. This led into “Hysteria,” which had falling digits behind them a la The Matrix throughout. This was followed by the bombastic Queen-like “Panic Station,” which was accompanied by giant monster animations that danced to the beats on screen. It added a nice humorous element that underscored that this pompous and glorious band certainly doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Things shift to a bit of seriousness with the guitar squeals that Bellamy coaxes out of his instrument before they launch into “Plug In Baby” with all pistons firing. The band as a unit certainly rocks out with the best of them. “Stockholm Syndrome” followed with more power riffing.
“Follow Me” had Bellamy playing his guitar on his knees several times during the song, which featured dancing lasers and giant intelli-beam columns of light that shined down and then rotated out over the audience. I notice a little over halfway through the set that MUSE wasn’t crafting dynamics into their show with soft numbers or ballads, but simply letting the rests between songs do the trick (and allow the audience to catch their breath between pummeling riffs and pounding drums).
“Liquid State” started off with bassist Chris Wolstenholme taking the darkened center of stage nonchalantly with his frets lit up. He handled the vocals for the mid-tempo, pulsating rocker. “Madness” took the band’s visual side a notch higher with Bellamy sporting super-sized sunglasses that displayed giant video images of the lyrics’ words. He would look right into the camera in front of him to fill up the large screens with his face and glasses. With a dark stage and the brilliant white lights, each letter and font stood out. I wish we had numerous photos of this set to display, but our photographer, I believe I was told, went to catch another set. Sigh.
“Time Is Running Out” was a special moment, which had the crowd singing along loudly. Bursts of columned smoke accented the shouts. They finished with “Unnatural Selection” and left the stage. After a moment a video showing abandoned factories and a gang of kids running from something provided a long intro to the first encore – “Uprising.” It was a glorious moment … and was followed by another with “Starlight.” This is one of my favorite songs from the past decade. It’s just a bouncing, upbeat song that also has epic dynamics with both great vocal lines and ethereal guitar sounds.
Bellamy finally got on the giant piano that sat on the stage and played “Survival.” It was a nice moment of reflection before the Beatlesque BGVs were set to kick in … and then the power went out again. The explanation for the first power outage was generators running out of gas, so we assumed it was either more of the same or the city of Austin trying to enforce some sort of noise ordinance, since the band’s set had lasted six minutes past the ten o’clock hour. More dead air…
When the band returned to the re-powered stage, they did not bother to finish the song, but instead Wolstenholme came out and laid into a sweeping, long note harmonica solo like Supertramp’s “Take the Long Way Home.” Then the rest of the band kicks into the grand finale of “Knights of Cydonia.” It was accompanied by a cool desert cactus animation that transitioned to 3-D line art and back to illustration.
I left satisfied. My body got rocked with massive beats, my musical soul celebrated the crafted instrumentation and sung melodies, plus my eyes were tantalized with a super visual show. Well done, mates. Thank you, ACL.
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