ACL Stage Preview: AT&T's Saturday Lineup with Beck, Conor Oberst, Drive-By Truckers and more
They still are, but every year sees their thoroughbred country-rock oats get more and more tender and palatable (and popular) – 2008’s Brighter Than Creation’s Dark is their quietest album to date. But it’s like when a Clint Eastwood character goes to the barbershop – the cleaner sheen doesn’t change a band’s heart. Patterson Hood still writes the best empty bar song this side of whomever (“A World Of Hurt,” to be exact). And the microphone trio of Hood, Mike Cooley, and Shonna Tucker beats pretty much any hand at ACL, so a 2:30 set is a steal, unless you’re the parent of someone in the Band of Heathens.
The Old 97’s start off the day in the hangover slot, playing behind a new album and Rhett Miller’s gorgeous (GoRgeOus!) voice. A quasi-hometown crowd and a lot of folks who once thought about getting the “Murder (Or A Heart Attack)” lyrics tattooed to their forearms means lots of old gems. So if you’re not so hot on Miller’s solo work or 2008’s Blame It On Gravity - a solid album but a tad homogeneous for old fans - you don’t have to be.
On the other hand, you should absolutely love Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah Part One if you’re going to squeeze in her 4:30 pm set. This should not be difficult – her latest album is a revelation. Everyone from Badu’s orbit back in the mid-90’s found their own way to update the neo-soul/Native Tongues vibe (aka: to keep making money in the 2000’s). On New Amerykah, she gets loud. Her beats are beats, and they’re all dressed up with little electronic ticks and booms that might have been blasphemy to the old crowd. And for an artist known – and at times slandered – for her fragility, she goes hard on every track on New Amerykah.
Speaking of slandered artists, Conor Oberst will be in Austin next Saturday. He’s genre-less for the first time in many years, no longer parading around as Gram Parsons or a computer. On “Souled Out,” certainly among his strongest work, Oberst plays with the punch that he brought to “Four Winds” and his other country-er attempts. But this new sound is more authentic when you drop the genre flourishes, and it bodes well for an artist like Oberst, who always seems so darn intentional. In his current state, at least on record, he’s relatively unbuttoned and off-the-cuff; and if it keeps through next Saturday, his set would be much more engaging than some might expect.
