ACL Festival 2019 - Saturday Weekend One
The Cure at ACL 2019, photo by Corwin Wickersham

ACL Fest 2019 Saturday pics & video (The Cure, Childish Gambino, more)

Robert Smith has always had it down. And, to his legions of fans’ delight, even at 60 he seems to have lost none of the distinctive vocal presence that made the Cure’s music so distinctive in the first place. Close your eyes and this could still have been the late 1980s, judging just from the richness of Smith’s high-end warble and his bandmates’ spot-on mix of clean guitars cutting across panoramic washes of keys.

Open your eyes and you might still think you’re in a time warp, because a lot of the fans dancing and singing along in the crowd were in their 20s or younger. That’s how you know the Cure’s music has persevered. It wasn’t just Gen-X-ers doing the nostalgia dive at Zilker, though certainly there was plenty of that, too. But a lot of festgoers who weren’t yet born when the Cure hit its commercial peak have sought out the band’s songs, and fallen in love with them too. [Austin American-Statesman]

After kicking off on Friday, weekend one of the 2019 edition of ACL Fest continued on Saturday (10/5), another scorching hot day in Zilker Park. The heat had Tierra Whack‘s DJ pointing three fans at his computer to get it running, but didn’t stop Kali Uchis from donning an elaborate mask during her afternoon performance.

Saturday at ACL also included sets from Chance’s younger brother Taylor Bennett (who upped his game with a live band and visuals), Men I Trust, Brittany Howard (who paid tribute to Prince with a cover of “Breakdown”), Gary Clark Jr (who debuted a huge new band complete with horns and back up singers for the hometown crowd), Billie Eilish (who played to one of the day’s biggest crowds), James Blake, The Cure, Childish Gambino, and more. Check out pictures from the whole day in the gallery above, and some fan-taken video clips below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST_gVCQVcTM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrvWy_urdXA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=selJnm4KjRk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HbmGJ-Oj8M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk5AjoiVi_g

photos by Corwin Wickersham