Day two of Austin City Limits Music Festival has arrived! Saturday is traditionally the biggest day of the fest. To beat the heavy crowds who will clog the entrances by late afternoon, we recommend you plan to arrive before 3 p.m. Not sure who to see earlier in the day? Here’s our hourly breakdown of who to see at the festival.
Chappell Roan ‘currently still scheduled’ to play ACL Fest after canceling All Things Go
What to see Saturday at ACL Fest
MARS SALAZAR’S PICKS
12:40 p.m. The Criticals (Honda): Take a chance on the Nashville-based alt-pop duo. Their music is ripe with slick guitar licks and ultra-danceable, funk-infused rhythms. Go listen to “Treat Ya Better” to cement this act as your best choice to start Saturday right.
2:10 p.m. Something Corporate (Honda): Early-2000s rock band Something Corporate announced their first tour in over 20 years in a Feb. 2024 exclusive with Rolling Stone. Vocalist and pianist Andrew McMahon found success with his four solo albums in the band’s hiatus periods, while finding his personal strength as a leukemia survivor who was diagnosed at age 22. He founded the Dear Jack Foundation in 2006, supporting young adult cancer patients and survivors.
2:20 p.m. Eyedress (American Express): Eyedress is Idris Ennolandy Vicuña from the Philippines. Distortion-drenched, soft indie songs “Jealous” and “Romantic Lover” embody the Gen Z sensibility of repressed emotion atop wistful beats. This is a safe bet for stellar tunes. A real sure-fire swing.
5:20 p.m. wave to earth (IHG): Indie rock trio from South Korea, enough said!
6:20 p.m. Kenny Beats (Tito’s): Kenny Beats is an acclaimed hip-hop producer for major artists like Rico Nasty, JPEGMAFIA, Key Glock, IDLES, Joji, FKA Twigs, and Ski Mask the Slump God. In 2022, the 33-year-old dropped his first solo album “Louie” as a tribute to his father who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The album hosts guest vocals from Vince Staples, JPEG MAFIA, Thundercat and Remi Wolf. It led to a feature on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert in 2023.
7:20 p.m. Vince Staples (IHG): Starting off in Tyler, the Creator’s hip hop syndicate Odd Future, Vince Staples (yes, that’s his real name) has forged a successful rap career through his collaborations with Earl Sweatshirt, Mac Miller, and Schoolboy Q. In Feb. 2024, “The Vince Staples Show” premiered as a limited series on Netflix and three months later his sixth album “Dark Times” came out as his final release on Def Jam Records, following his 10-year run with the label.
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RAMON RAMIREZ’S PICKS
11:55 a.m. Godly the Ruler (Miller Lite): “You come from paper. I come from razor blades” this Nigerian-born Chicagoan whispers with aplomb on a techno banger. He’ll sing-rap with nasally, emo intonation like Juice WRLD. He finds sorrowful falsetto on “Call and I’ll Answer.” He raps OK, too. The scouting report on Godly is he’s an internet age weirdo here for an early meltdown.
3:10 p.m. Telescreens (BMI): Twenty years after the Strokes ripped off Lou Reed and became extremely famous, there are scenesters with guitars in the East Village again. You always have to be wary of guys who want to rock by way of old-timey revival. Some of them are very uncool but ultimately harmless like Greta Van Fleet. Others are daring, like Telescreens, in that their idea of rock is more about cool moments and nonchalant cigarette smoking. In order for the music to work, the songs require slick production and memorable choruses, which they have in spades.
3:20 p.m. The Beaches (T-Mobile): With apologies to my co-worker Phil, who Slacked me a live YouTube video by the prog-band Geese, I’m not going to watch a prog-band called Geese this weekend. That’s more of a weekend two wave for me. In fact, I won’t recognize the T-Mobile stage until this slick Toronto rock quartet, think Haim — crisp vocals and perfectly dialed-in new wave production, gets up there and sings oddly specific breakup songs about muses who made their therapist cry.
6:10 p.m. Benson Boone (Honda): I’d like to think I’m an outlaw, much like Benson Boone. Guys like us see the world differently. It’s a frontier. And coloring inside the lines? Sorry partner, I literally cannot. Oh, we’ll love you hard—but only if you let us wander. So will this 22-year-old Cancer, fresh off a big set at the MTV Video Music Awards, wield the moment and its pyrotechnics and deliver a cornerstone set? Taylor Swift called him “so legit” this summer, after all. The kid was plucked from TikTok onto American Idol, and then turned “Beautiful Things” into a viral snippet on TikTok. Those are two astonishing feats that require talent and charisma. While his extremely basic pop balladry makes Noah Kahan seem like Malcolm X, I can’t wait to see him rise to the occasion.
6:20 p.m. Khruangbin (American Express): You know you’re old when you read the ACL lineup and you’re like “These cats are headliners now? I just saw them at that brewery 12 years ago.” This Houston jam trio has ascended from the drum circle circuit and now boasts enough cache to play at sundown. That’s in part due to the ever-present pop single “Texas Sun” and a relatable chorus from guest singer Leon Bridges. But I think it’s more to do with 2020’s Mordecai, a psychedelic and starry-eyed record that dropped mid-pandemic, when we needed something richly textured on repeat.
8:20 p.m. Dua Lipa (American Express): Twenty years ago, jam nerd Trey Anastasio was an ACL headliner. Without Phish. The festival catered to boomers and college-educated elites whose iPods virtue-signaled their (extremely uniformed) deviation from the mainstream. Today, ACL is a pop-first festival and Dua Lipa is one of the biggest stars in the world. She’s a globetrotter whose myriad hits work everywhere. You’ll be surprised how many of them you’ve internalized.
DEBORAH SENGUPTA STITH’S PICKS
11:55 a.m. Obed Padilla (BMI): I get it. An artist you’ve never heard of playing one of ACL’s smallest stages a bleary 55 minutes after gate time is a hard sell. But the Cali lowrider packs a trunk full of horn-laced, Chicano rap bravado (“your girl’s favorite shade of brown” is one of my favorite boasts of the summer), classic hip-hop confessionals and wavy surfside singalongs.
2:05 p.m. Brittany Davis (Tito’s): The keyboardist for Stone Gossard’s Pearl Jam side project Painted Shields describes themself as a “vessel” of sound. Raised in the church, Davis’s soulful debut “Image Issues” draws on gospel, hard funk and cosmic jazz. Davis breaks down the struggles of being Black, non-binary, blind and poor in America with world-weary insight and brutal candor.
3:10 p.m. Say She She (Honda): This year’s mid-afternoon disco break comes equipped with a brand new cover of the Jackson Sisters’ 1976 classic “I Believe in Miracles,” paired with a b-side of the French pop song “C’est Si Bon.” The transatlantic trio weaves tight harmonies into joyous siren songs.
6:20 p.m. Khruangbin (American Express): Chair people rejoice! While it feels lovely to spin in slow circles to the Houston trio’s easy sunset jams, it will feel just as nice to sit down, close your eyes and let your mind follow the sound.
7:10 p.m. Jungle (Miller Light) or 7:20 p.m. Reneé Rapp (T Mobile): While I will likely join the crowd of newly-minted Tik-Tok fans breaking it down to “Back On ‘74” with U.K. groove machine Jungle, I am contractually obligated to tell you that the biggest breakout pop star of 2024 who is not named Chappell Roan is playing on the other side of the park.
8:20 p.m. Dua Lipa (American Express): “Training Season” is officially over. It’s been five months since the Albanian-British pop phenom celebrated the release “Radical Optimism” with a double duty host/musical guest gig on “Saturday Night Live,” three and a half months since she left Glastonbury breathless, and a week since she added a new slate of dates to the 2025 Radical Optimism Tour, many of which promptly sold out. If “These Walls” (and our Spotify algorithms) could talk, they’d say we’ve been ready.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin City Limits Festival 2024 critics’ picks: Who to see Saturday
