Press: ACL CD

[LaurieBlue]

http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/xl/2005/09/cdreviews_09-01-05.html

Just in time for ACL Fest ...
Web posted: Aug. 30, 2005
"Austin City Limits Music Festival 2004"
(Rhino)
 
Here it is, the souvenir album from last year's ACL Festival, just in time for this year's ACL Festival (funny, that). And of course, it could have been three or four times as long. A mere sixteen bands are represented of the roughly 120 that played.

Headliners such as the Pixies (with a tepid-sounding "Debaser" that I'm sure was far more exciting with 50,000 overheated fans screaming along) and Trey Anastasio (a juiced-up, groovy run through "First Tube") bookend the set, while Los Lonely Boys ("Crazy Dream") and the Blind Boys of Alabama (a drum-head tight "Walk in Jerusalem") represent ACL's rootsy roots.

But the balance of "2004" argues for the festival as a home for hipster rock: Broken Social Scene, My Morning Jacket, Franz Ferdinand and Dashboard Confessional all show up. The only vaguely country moments come from Shelby Lynne's "Your Lies" and the Drive-By Truckers' excellent rocker "The Day John Henry Died." The latter is an easy-to-spot highlight, as is Calexico's version of Love's brassy, quasi-Latin classic "Alone Again Or."

It's a satisfying, if frustrating set. Perhaps in the future, when technology and money allow, instead of making a physical CD with one song apiece from a handful of bands, ACL could record downloadable digital versions of all of the sets and let fans pick and choose which full sets they would like to pay to download. That's the sort of cutting-edge musical idealism on which ACL thrives.
— Joe Gross

[Jellyfish]

It's a satisfying, if frustrating set. Perhaps in the future, when technology and money allow, instead of making a physical CD with one song apiece from a handful of bands, ACL could record downloadable digital versions of all of the sets and let fans pick and choose which full sets they would like to pay to download. That's the sort of cutting-edge musical idealism on which ACL thrives.

Word.