I say obligatory, because I've been re-reading my old festival review posts (Intonation ('05), Lollapalooza ('05), Pitchfork ('07)) to figure out if it's always been this much work to get our "money's worth" out of a festival. My conclusion is that ACL was, in fact, a mistake. Next year we'll be doing afterparties only.

Friday
Mates of State where dependably enjoyable. It's funny to see a band like them on a festival stage. They fit better in bowling alleys and tiny pubs. On a big stage, they look lonely, too far apart from each other. It's also odd to see them with other people (strings section) on stage.

We left after about 2/3 of the set, to go see Jenny Lewis at the WaMu JP Morgan/Chase stage. Unfortunately, the stage had an awkward roof and bleachers, so that if you weren't queued up early, you couldn't see or hear her. That was a lot of my issue with the fest, that for every set you had to try to beat the crowd there, or risk completely missing out (unlike Lolla, where you could at least hear/see monitors from a great distance).

Saturday
I got there early for Fleet Foxes, since they sold out last time they were in town. It was a great set for early in the morning (okay, noon-ish), very chilled and comfortable (albeit hot). By the end of the set, though, they had to compete with the leaking sound from other stages. My other main gripe with ACL is that there's much poorer coordination between the stages, so if you're not really close to the stage you want to be hearing, you're going to get a mash of sound.

cupcakepants and hhuynh512 didn't get there early enough to catch the show, so it wasn't quite as much fun by myself. Attempting to meet up with people for The Fratellis was also fail, so I gave up for the evening, since I was going to see Conor Oberst at the afterparty on sunday. After a long walk home, I was sunburnt (hah) and exhausted.

Sunday

Stars were our first set, although not as relaxing as fleet foxes. They're more of a CD band than I live band, I guess. Rather than trying to deal with fighting through the crowds to see anyone else, we stayed in place for Okkervil River (meh) and Tegan and Sara. Sara actually apologized for passing out during the Lollapalooza we saw them at, which was hilarious. Darkness had fallen before they came on, so there were no such difficulties this time.

In the end, even with only getting up for beer/food/bathroom, we were still to tired to make it to Conor's afterparty.