Lazy's Austin City Limits 2024 review: Day 1
Lazy's Austin City Limits 2024 review: Day 1
Foster the People impresses and Jeezy reminds us of his legendary catalogue
This isn’t the first entry! Check out Day 0 here.
Austin City Limits Weekend 2 had finally arrived on Oct. 11, and the Pryce household was ready. We were ready to spend an embarrassing amount on merch, scream our voices away at our favorite artists and enjoy the best people watching available. The massive music festival was here and our year of concert night after concert night was resuming.
During the previous weeks my wife and I collected sunscreen, cooling towels, electrolyte tablets, miniature fans, hats, sunglasses and even new shoes. It became more like preparing for a hike through the desert rather than a music festival but we would soon learn that it might as well be the same thing for any music festival held in Texas before November.
The 3-hour drive to Austin from Houston was less than notable besides the usual Texan billboards telling sinners to choose heaven or be doomed to hell accompanied with a link to a manifesto that for some reason blames Obama for everything wrong with the world. Standard fare. We saw plenty of other vehicles packed full of college kids and early 20-somethings that were definitely headed the same way. As we started to see hills - something you don’t see a lot in east Texas - we knew we were getting closer to Texas’ favorite weird, albeit stinky, city.
Our hotel was perfect, complete with a welcome package for our dog, Diamond, valet service and close proximity to the free shuttles straight to Zilker Park, home of ACL. We unpacked, got hydrated, tired the dog out with a walk and set off for the latter half of Day 1 of the festival. We expected it to be hot in Austin but as we walked to the shuttle it really set in just how scorching it would be. For those uninitiated, October in Texas basically the last month of summer rather than the beginning of fall. 90 degree days in the middle of the month were not surprising at all.
The free shuttles were a conglomerate of school buses from school districts in and around Austin, liberated from their daily routines to take loads of families, high teenagers, day-drunk adults and other folks straight to the festival grounds. The other options were to walk about 30 minutes to the park before waiting in line to get in, commandeering one of the many easy-to-use Lime scooters to get there in half of the time or maxing out a credit card for a super surged Uber. We met a guy who bought his 3-day pass that day catching the shuttle after his Lime scooter died nearby, who also notified us that tickets were already sold out for the weekend. We were in for a pretty gigantic crowd.
We put our masks on (it was dusty at Zilker Park, plus people are gross) and boarded the bus, which took less time than expected, and ended up getting through the front gates in no time.
As soon as we got through the gates the scope of the festival set in. At least 100 people were walking by us at all times, crowds in front of the stages were packed, lines for food looked more like bees swarming a hive and the overzealous sun made it all the more intense. Norah Jones, the OG breathy indie songwriter in my opinion, had just taken the Honda stage as we entered Zilker. We didn’t stick around since we were hungry already and needed to get a hold on where everything was since it had been eight years since our last ACL.
We could sort of hear “Don’t Know Why” as we picked up a plate of nachos to share under a tent, standing next to a picnic table while elbow-to-elbow with festgoers wearing elaborate, cowboy-ish outfits or almost nothing at all. The park was packed to the brim with people and while it was easy to navigate in between stages, the crowd was still an overwhelming swarm every which way we looked. Often, I’d grab my wife’s hand and make our way through bigger crowds together instead of staying separate. The massive waves of people are one quirk of most music festivals that I understand can be an accessibility barrier to most, but we love music so much that we try to push through it.
The Golf merchandise vendor was also present, since Tyler the Creator brings the shop selling his brand with him to every festival he plays. We opted to buy a hip bag and a mystery bag with a fur coat and a hoodie along with our souvenir shirts featuring a play on the Texas license plate. The price was insane but it was more than worth it since my wife was seeing Tyler for the first time this weekend and I wanted it to be commemorated as much as possible.
Finally, we arrived at our first set: WhooKilledKenny, a rapper originally from Austin but based in LA, took the BMI stage by storm soon after Norah left the Honda stage’s crowd relaxed (or bored) with her classic hits from the 2000s. Kenny was equipped with a band, dancers and his own big-headed mascot sporting his baby locs and gigantic cheesy smile.
The mascot was only a slight caricature for the real thing, as WhooKilledKenny put emphasis on every ad-lib and hook that came out of his mouth during his hype, tone-setting, crowd pleasing performance. Kenny was to-the-point with all of his songs about fucking, smoking and motivation to keep grinding, keeping the crowd hype by asking us to sing every hook with him. Kenny could have easily handled a bigger stage, like T-Mobile or Miller Lite, with a consistent stage presence and funny one-liners about his women and money. The best part of the set was his declaration of his love for God and growing up in church, followed by a gospel-inspired track with a hook that simply said, “Bitch, I’m so thankful.”
As Kenny winded down and announced that he would be playing three more songs, we headed over to the ADA seating for the Honda stage minutes before Foster the People were set to take the stage. The stage was already being swarmed with several crowds as we took our seats.
Seven years after their previous album, and their previous ACL performance, Foster’s set wasn’t exactly a performance I knew to expect a ton from. In the present, most Foster the People songs played in popular media or placed onto playlists are from their first album, Torches. Songs like “Helena Beat,” “Don’t Stop” and most notably “Pumped Up Kicks,” for example. For the band known for a song about school shootings, which has somehow become more prophetic than it was in 2011, the barrier and stigma for listeners getting past their first album was a short but less navigated route. That eerie, ominous breathy single doesn’t make way for the funky, earwormy pop that the band went on to make.
Foster the People’s latest album, Paradise State of Mind, is a 70s-inspired, Prince-biting commentary on modernity and the human condition. Some lyrics tackle the intense greed and need for attention that the internet at large, others take a futuristic on losing oneself to love. It’s groovy, it’s catchy and it emulates the era it borrows from very well with Mark Foster’s high-pitched, Bee Gees-like vocals meshing with the bluesy bass lines and high-energy choruses like that on “Lost in Space.” It’s disco, but refined and focused on delivering a specific message for each song.
Foster’s 2024 ACL set was electric and surprising considering the hiatus the band has taken. The band kicked off the show with “Feed Me,” one of the newer tracks, the synths and groovy baseline kicking in as Mark crooned about kissing screens, tasting data and pixelating. The introduction to the “new” Foster continued with the mind-bending “Lost in Space,” still showcasing the slick lyricism and catchy hooks the band was known for a decade ago. The crowd, initially put off that the first song they heard wasn’t the one stuck on their Spotify playlist, began to latch onto the performance more as the spacey single went on. Mark commanded the stage in his sleek, simple black outfit like a less doped-up Mick Jagger, dropping his stoic frontman persona only to speak to the crowd candidly between songs about the band’s hiatus and excitement to be back on stage.
Eventually the well-known songs had to come into the set, and they did not disappoint. Helena Beat sounded like an original recording of the single, as if the band had been performing it ad-infinitum for the last 10 years. Before finishing the set with Pumped Up Kicks, Mark Foster spoke to the audience about protecting artists from censorship while supporting their art, as well as the band’s worry that Pumped Up Kicks. Due to its morbid content, Mark said he assumed it would be the band’s undoing as more and more school shootings happened in the United States. Still, he encouraged more artists to tackle those hard topics without fear of offending others and without compromising their art. The crowd sang every single lyric, the ominous and threatening tone washing over the Honda stage as Mark’s hopeful words faded into the background.
Starstruck from our time at the Honda stage, we pushed through the crowd lining up early for the headliner, Blink-182, to go straight to the IHG Resorts stage for Jeezy. The legend himself, your trapper’s favorite trapper, The Snowman, the Soul Survivor, the original trap motivator, is only matched by Lil’ Wayne and his rival Gucci Mane in terms of influence on rap music at large and trap music specifically. As a legend in the game, it was only appropriate that he was about 20 minutes late for the strictly timed festival set. After that 20-minute period passed, Jeezy’s DJ took the stage instead to play southern rap’s greatest hits … from 2018. And specifically songs by Travis Scott, which was a choice.
Still, the blunt smoke clouded the air and the crowd repeated the lyrics verbatim until Jeezy, formerly Young, took the stage to play hit after hit rather than newer songs from his album released in 2023. This decision was for the best and a better use of time for everyone involved. Why play new music when your catalogue includes “Lose My Mind,” “Trap or Die,” “All There,” “Standing Ovation,” “Soul Survivor” and “Trap Star?” It almost seems like cheating to have legendary catalogue like this to pull from, but between glass breaking sound effects and a hype DJ commanding the crowd, Jeezy took Austin to Atlanta for a limited time only. Like many rappers from the mixtape era, Jeezy even performed verses from other songs individually, like the “My Nigga” remix, between full songs. While he had to cut the set short due to his own superstar habits, Jeezy’s set was a crash course in Atlanta trap music and his status as an established megastar in the genre with 20 years of hits.
By the time Jeezy began performing his last song, we were leaving the merch tent for our second round of purchases before peeking at Blink-182 before heading back to our home base at the Hilton.
Blink-182 began the set with oldies and a couple of new tracks before stopping to crack a few sophomoric jokes that the band members have been known for since their start in the 2000s. The Cali-based band have kept their angst-ridden, crude, but funny, swagger consistent since their heyday, with Travis Barker doing what he does best on the drums while Tom DeLonge and Mark Hopper sounded just like their 20-year-old selves did on both guitar and vocals. Fireworks shot off as the band played hits like “The Rock Show” to screaming fans. In between the guys riffed about girls and sex acts. Just like the 2000s.
I’ve never been the biggest Blink fan outside of the well-known whiny anthems about being 23 and work sucking, but the set was everything a Blink fan could ask for (unless they hate their new music).
It’s official: we finished a day at ACL. Our feet were dirty, our voices were gone, a layer of sweat had fused to our skin and our hands were full of non-refundable goods. The same shuttle that got us to the park was waiting to drop us off where we were picked up.
My wife and I somehow made it to the hotel room after 6 miles of walking in 96-degree weather, multiple hours of standing around and bumping into other sweaty people and yelling at stages. P. Terry’s was calling our name, so we made the long trek to grab burgers and fries before getting ready to do it all again tomorrow, somehow for even longer. Day 2 was less than 12 hours away, this time with a front row view of Remi Wolf, a stellar performance from Say She She and more time relaxing between sets.