Austin City Limits is usually a shoe-in to win, and this year's festival was no exception. Beat down with brilliance, both in the form of relentless sunshine and amazing bands playing their hearts out everywhere we looked, we took to the grassy knolls of Zilker Park doused in 50 SPF and spent the first day and a half of our show-goings with the likes of Brandi Carlile, Delta Spirit, Ray Lamontagne, the Cave Singers, Kurt Vile, Cold War Kids, Foster the People, Charles Bradley, Bright Eyes, Mavis Staples, Telekinesis, Aloe Blacc, Phosphorescent, Iron & Wine, the Moondoggies, and Fitz and the Tantrums. Every single stage was thoughtfully billed, easing in our late-mornings with incredible starts, and building seamlessly through their lineups during the day to absolute crescendos of performance from the headliners at night.

In between soaking up sun, getting our fill and desperately looking for shade, and dodging errant shower-storms with the camera, we even managed to grab a few photos to prove it all went down. Here's a mere fraction of what we were able to take in -- keep an eye on the site for part II of our photo-review, coming up shortly!

Seattle's own Brandi Carlile, tearing up the giant AMD stage before Ray Lamontagne on day one:

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Yup. There sure are a lot of exclamation points up in that headline, and with good cause: we're heading off for Austin City Limits this weekend, to catch some bands and some tan in the near-hundred-degree sun. Between pre-trip laundering, hydrating, charging our camera batteries and getting all that three-ounce-or-less business handled for the flight, we thought we'd take a minute to let you know about some of the acts we're particularly excited about this year -- especially since there seems to be a particularly strong PNW presence to be reckoned with every single day of the 'fest.

The start of the fest on Friday is kind of like easing in to that hot, soapy, not-too-dirty-yet festival bath. Hometown heroine Brandi Carlile will be getting things going early in the day, and we're hoping her sweet sounds will put us in the right kind of mood to slide over into Ray LaMontagne's late afternoon set -- they're both playing at the AMD stage starting around 2p. As the day darkens, we hope to get a little more gritty with the Cave Singers, and while Cold War Kids and Bright Eyes blow their sets out back-to-back {on the Honda and AMD stages respectively, for those of you following along in your custom-made schedules at home}, we might have to weasel our way forward to get a bigger-than-Bumbershoot-sized helping of Charles Bradley as he closes out the Vista Equity stage just before forever-legend Mavis Staples. As to whether we end day one with Kanye West or Coldplay -- my vote's on Kanye. But seeing as the fest is all sold out except for a few Sunday passes, we might not be able to make it close enough for a photo report. Fingers crossed!

Pending crowd surges (and weather permitting), we hope to also make time to get a little Delta Spirit, Smith Westerns, Kurt Vile, and Santigold into our schedules too!

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Now that summer's officially 86'd, it's time for the inaugural (hereafter annual?) City Arts Fest, which takes over our fair city this upcoming Wednesday - Saturday {Oct. 20th - 23rd}. Laden with an impressive lineup at venues far and wide, CAF is catering to more of the mini-SXSW feel that makes these 'festivals' enjoyable -- think along the lines of MusicFest NW's style -- and for this, we applaud and squee! with joy. There's something about cramming too many people into too small of a space, even with a homerun lineup, that can make a gathering of the proverbial vibes inherently less fun.

And so -- with sneakers laced up and schedules in hand -- away we go with the music! Click the links below for more info on each particular show, including the where & what on how to get yourself some tickets:

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There is an almost sacred resonance evoked by the hymn-like quality of the vocals on Pride.

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