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Car Seat Headrest, Magdalena Bay, Pierce the Veil, and More Reviews From ACL’s Second Saturday
Thanks to new lineup additions and improved returning sets, the second Saturday at ACL 2025 felt like a distinct offering, not a rehashing of last weekend. Texan countrygaze trio Shallowater, Seattle shapeshifters Car Seat Headrest, and tenacious San Diego emos Pierce the Veil all voyaged to Zilker Park for the first time, while the Chronicle team enjoyed performances by returning artists Japanese Breakfast and the Strokes more on round two. Don’t ask us about our allergies, though.
Shallowater Credit: Gary Miller
Shallowater’s Earnest Intensity
Emotional slowcore seemed like a hard sell for an afternoon festival crowd, but Houston trio Shallowater charmed the Strokes fans willing to bake in the sun at T-Mobile seven hours before their headlining performance by being unabashedly themselves. “Howdy y’all,” goateed singer-guitarist Blake Skipper said upon entry, thanking both his audience and Jesus at the top of his pre-set spiel. From there, the frontman, bassist Tristan Kelly, and drummer Ryan Faulkenberry – the latter with a cross on his T-shirt – opened with the slow burn “Sadie,” while an animated horse, subtly shaded with the image of a dollar bill, galloped on the screen behind them. This, and an anti-communist sticker plastered on Skipper’s Stratocaster, offered a quiet look at Shallowater’s satirical ethos: Only a band intimately familiar with faith and devotion would name their alternative rock album God’s Gonna Give You A MillIon Dollars.
“Sadie” and that September LP’s title track bled into 2024’s There Is a Well, where pensive lullaby “Angels” crescendoed across seven minutes and the melancholy “Birdshot” burst from bright harmonic notes to buzzsaw six-string fuzz. Yet, even in those louder moments, Skipper’s playing – layered enough to trick this writer into expecting two guitarists upon discovery earlier this year – felt restrained and intentional, much like the uniquely Texan imagery (expansive highways, the Lone Star flag) the band chose to project onstage. ACL’s camera zoomed in on the musician’s reverberating strings as he plucked raucous, multi-movement closer “Snap,” before he wrapped the band’s festival debut simply: “Thank you so much. We’ve been Shallowater. Have a great day.” – Carys Anderson
Alemeda Credit: Gary Miller
Alemeda Brings the Sass
Olivia Rodrigo’s success has inspired a wave of young women, fans of Gwen Stefani and Hayley Williams as much as SZA and Britney Spears, to dabble in the art of the kiss-off, and I’m not mad at it. 25-year-old Ethiopian singer Alemeda makes the kind of sassy pop-rock adolescents understandably flock to: Tracks like “1-800-F**CK-YOU,” “I hate your face,” and “I already dug your grave” take a spoonful of sugar approach to the most unsavory universal experiences, couching negative feelings in twinkling synths, lightly funky bass, and chunky power chords. Her voice is solid, too. Working all corners of the stage, dragging her mic stand behind her, and whipping her waist-length golden waves in a circle, Alemeda exhibited real stage presence in spite of the afternoon heat, to which she was clearly struggling to adjust (stars, they’re just like us!). Addressing her enthusiastic audience – 2021 single “Gonna Bleach My Eyebrows” boasts over 14 million streams – after nearly every song, the artist introduced unreleased numbers by name and provided context behind each story, from the friendship breakup that inspired “Guy’s Girl” to the pal battling addiction serenaded in “I’m Over It.” Her four-person backing band, for the most part, grounded her glossy melodies, so the occasional pre-recorded guitar track disappointed – though not as much as closing Doechii collaboration “Beat a B!tch Up,” since the buzzy rapper failed to show for her part despite performing at the AmEx stage a few hours later. – Carys Anderson
Dizzy Fae Credit: David Brendan Hall
Dizzy Fae Finds Her Footing
“This is my first festival,” Dizzy Fae told the Saturday afternoon crowd with a laugh. “I will continue to say it because I don’t know if I’ll – well, I won’t be able to say it again!” It was the singer/rapper’s first time in Austin too and, she told the audience, her first time performing in all denim – maybe not the best combo, the Minnesota-born singer admitted, struck by the Texas heat.
Firsts are complicated, high-pressure moments, and Dizzy took her time getting settled on stage. DJ Niyah Badass played a five-minute hype-up set before the up-and-coming hip-hop artist took the stage. Through a flurry of genre-ranging singles, playing on Dizzy’s eclectic range of influences and producer partners and tied together by her innuendo-filled lyrics and dynamic voice, the growing audience quickly caught on. By the time the classically trained singer broke out her SWV cover “You’re Always on My Mind,” all the swaying and snapping had attracted new listeners. Dizzy seemed delightfully surprised that most of the crowd sang along to her final, most-streamed tracks – “Body Move” and “Try” – thanking the audience and cracking jokes. Where this multi-talented artist feels stylistically most confident is still in flux, but a laid-back sense of humor, fluid dancing, and rich, register-blending vocals carried the fledgling performer through the sweat of a first ACL performance. – Caroline Drew
Car Seat Headrest Credit: Isabella Martinez
Car Seat Headrest Unspool Their Epic Rock Opera
Car Seat Headrest’s latest album, this year’s The Scholars, unloaded an ambitious and esoteric rock opera, plotted around various eccentric characters at a fictional university. Will Toledo’s stated aim was to construct a cohesive collection with epic songs that could nonetheless stand on their own, and their late afternoon ACL Fest set on the T-Mobile stage put that goal to the test. The band worked through only six songs across the hour, but the experience was less about the individual hits than overall whole, which felt like tuning to a late-night underground rock signal blurring in and out and meshing together.
Toledo emerged with the fivepiece outfit wearing his ever-present N95 mask through the whole set, but it hardly interfered with the vocals as he launched into slow intro of “CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)” and twisting tourniquet jam of “The Catastrophe (Good Luck With That, Man),” both from the new album. Even newer unreleased song “The Colossus” unrolled with a prog rock pull as Toledo traded vocals with guitarist Ethan Ives, and the songwriter led into The Scholars’ “Gethsemane” with the traditional roots tune “900 Miles.” Behind the band, the visuals played out in various psychedelic filters that contributed to the dichotomy of immersion and jarring dislocation that strafed the entire show. Requisite indie anthem “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” brought the crowd into a roaring sing-along to set up the stylistic blitz of epic closer “Planet Desperation,” which wound for over 15 minutes into the closing cathartic refrain of “You can love again, if you try again.” It’s an apt mantra for Toledo, who remains consistent in continually reinventing himself. – Doug Freeman
Magdalena Bay Credit: David Brendan Hall
Magdalena Bay’s Playful Art-Pop
The premise behind last summer’s brain implant concept album Imaginal Disk was a little loose, but what Magdalena Bay lacked in narrative they made up for in visuals they’re still relishing today. From the otherworldly, papier mâché-esque creatures adorning the stage to the duo’s primary-colored outfits, Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin brought to ACL the world they built on their sophomore synthpop LP. Pixie-voiced singer Tenenbaum slinked across Lady Bird in the flowy blue twopiece, white painted face, and teal eyeshadow she donned in the “Image” music video, flitting between a static synthesizer and a keytar while Lewin played bass and guitar and touring musicians Nick Villa and Myles Sweeney rounded out the gauzy chorus. Instrumental interludes peppered between two-thirds of Imaginal Disk and “Secrets (Your Fire),” “Chaeri,” and “The Beginning,” from bubbly 2021 debut Mercurial World, allowed the vocalist to slip offstage for costume changes: She traded her blue suit for the red one, attached planets intact, from the “That’s My Floor” visual, then emerged in a white sheer skirt and angel wings for “The Ballad of Matt & Mica.” Of course, MagBay’s theatricality went beyond their outfits. At one point, Lewin flanked his bandmate while donning a star-shaped face mask; sitting behind a mini step-stool, Tenenbaum placed a yellow-faced creature on her own head, miming a dramatic vocal run with her microphone without letting any noise escape her cloaked lips. Playing pretend with Magdalena Bay is loads of fun. – Carys Anderson
Pierce the Veil Credit: David Brendan Hall
Pierce the Veil Keeps Pop-Punk Breathing
Emo dreams die for many, but not for Pierce the Veil. After a seven-year hiatus, sparked in part by sexual misconduct allegations against, and the subsequent departure of, then-drummer Mike Fuentes, the post-hardcore outfit released The Jaws of Life in 2023 and is now nearing the end of a world tour. Their new work is firmly within the band’s 2010s-established fast-moving, melodic hardcore soundscape, with Vic Fuentes’ pedal-fuzz voice steadily steering the center. Fans throughout the crowd had evidently picked up the new LP, singing along to “Death of an Executioner” and “Emergency Contact,” among others. Vic, bassist Jaime Preciado, and guitarist Tony Perry seem to be successfully holding up the pop-punk mantle: loud, fast, and emotional with help from skilled tour drummer Loniel “Loni” Robinson.
From their walk-out to “El Rey” by Vicente Fernández to their Collide With the Sky finale “King for a Day,” the band’s first ACL audience appeared rapt. A whirlwind of stringed instrument changes, high-fretted guitar duels, and an unexpected flair for ballerinalike spins showcased the group’s technical precision and electric stage presence. A live-to-screen camera panned through fans clutching the barricade during 2012’s angst-filled tragedy ballad “Hold On Till May,” catching all sorts of faces in the midst of their own melodramatic performance. Even those fans who’ve moved on from emo-punk – in wristband stylings and jagged haircuts at least – had a scream in their heart Saturday for one of the longest-standing acts of the genre. – Caroline Drew
Japanese Breakfast Credit: Lauren Johnson
Japanese Breakfast’s Swooning Dreamscape
The second weekend of ACL served as the final show of Japanese Breakfasts’ current Melancholy tour behind this year’s fourth LP, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women). Although the album expectedly dips more ruminative than breakout predecessor Jubilee, the headlining Beatbox stage set managed to meld Michelle Zauner’s dual hyperactive and reflective impulses into almost dreamlike fugue, accentuated by the elaborate undersea stage props complete with giant clamshell. Bounding onstage behind the backing quartet, Zauner’s streamered dress twirled in the spotlights for “Paprika” as she enthusiastically banged the wreathed gong and floated her distinct breathy high vocals into “Picture Window.” The sweeping sax of “Road Head” emphasized the dreamy Eighties vibe that soaked the evening, while a “Melancholy Inn” neon sign sputtered on for the dark piano ballad “Men in Bars.” The closing rush of “Be Sweet,” “Everybody Wants to Love You,” and “Diving Woman” brought the night back into a danceable upbeat ending. “Almost 10 years ago I came here for South by Southwest, and I haven’t worked a day job since,” noted Zauner in appreciation of Austin. ACL may have felt like a full circle moment for the artist, but she continues to impressively expand it. – Doug Freeman
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