After hopscotching across every single city Southwest Airlines serves today I’m finally back home tonight. The last day of Austin City Limits was fantastic, a great way to close out. Neko Case and Gillian Welch were the best vocalists I saw all weekend (my poor decision to skip Allison Krauss for Beck was slightly absolved when she made an unscheduled day three appearance). The Octopus Project was oddly interesting and infectiously excited to play their weirdness for such a large crowd. Choosing Blues Traveler over Okkervil River was probably the bad call of the day but frankly by that point I was so tired I just needed somewhere to sit to quietly breathe my dust quota in peace.
The Raconteurs were intense but sporadic, though overall I was glad to have seen them. Jack White very much gives off the vibe of the rockstar who’s not long for this earth, his OD coming down the line. Maybe he’s made a conscious fashion decision to bring back the heroin-chic thing but I doubt it. We finished off the night with Band of Horses who pretty much played straight through the album Z gave when I was in Newtown. There’s an ongoing debate about the correlation between a frontman’s beard length and resultant cheesiness of a band’s radio-friendly love songs (Christopher Webb trails Iron & Wine’s Samuel Beam in one metric but not the other throwing the math into disarray).
Coming into town this afternoon was really the first time I’ve felt like San Francisco was home. Maybe a deliriously long weekend sleeping on the floor in a Benedryl induced haze is what it takes to make me feel that way. Thanks again to JP for making this all work – she’s got a flickr set up that trumps mine.