Diamonds in the ACL Rough, Pt 1: Friday AM- Early PM

With all the amazing artists coming to ACL this weekend (The Foo Fighters, Beck, Robert Plant & Allison Krauss, Manu Chao, John Fogerty, The Raconteurs, The Mars Volta, and Gnarls Barkley, just to name a few,) and with the sheer number of performers the festival is playing host to (130 artists across 8 stages,) and it inevitable that some lesser-known acts will be lost in the calamity of musical saturation that is Austin from Friday to Sunday. That being said, finding those acts which are just ahead of the game, those who are broadcasting the future in their 30-minute, sparsely attended set before blasting off into st

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26TH:

Dan Dyer, 11:45AM, AT&T Blue Room:


Dan Dyer sounds like Ben Harper or Maroon 5 with a quarter of the pop sheen and 5000 times the soul. Dyer has captured the smoothness of the 70's lounge movement, the ambience and good vibes of a cool summer evening off the coast of some treasure island of relaxation. The music is intellectually stirring, a hot cup of tea for your spirit with just enough sugar to perk you up, freshen your perspective on the world at large, smell all the roses, and set you gently back onto your carseat or sofa, ready and waiting for the next time you fly away through the speakers - which won't be long.

RIYL: Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, Maroon 5, The Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, The Bee Gees

Autamata, 12 noon, Austin Ventures Stage

Autamata may hail from the rain-drizzled valleys of Wicklow, Ireland, but Ken McHugh's brain must reside somewhere inside a nightclub inside a pirate ship inside an underground cave inside a jungle somewhere in an alternate dimension where the sun comes out whenever it feels like dancin. The "songwriter, producer, and mucho-instrumentalist" draws the line somewhere between Knightrider soundtrack if Hosselhoff was replaced by Rockwell, Built to Spill on disco steroids, and The Postal Service fronted by Nina Persson of the Cardigans. McHugh employs the services of a trio of pixies whose soft touches, along the lines of festival mates Flyleaf's Lacey Mosley's softer moments, add just the right amount of pop sensibility to the eclectic and provocative dance tracks underneath.

RIYL: Natalie Imbruglia, Chromeo, The Postal Service, Nine Inch Nails, Of Montreal, Feist, Broken Social Scene, Blue Monday, J Dilla

What Made Milwaukee Famous, 1:30PM, AT&T Blue Room



Considering the attention this group has been getting lately, they may almost be too well-known to go here, but their sound is so big and so familiar that if you measure these guys in reference to how known they could be, their current fame is but a dust speck on the Stereo of America.

RIYL: Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Trail of Dead, Coldplay, Third Eye Blind