Last week was an incredibly busy time for live music in Austin. I saw Charli XCX, LCD Soundsystem, and Khruangbin three nights in a row. The following day was the start of Austin Psych Fest: a 3-day festival held at Far Out Lounge in south Austin. The festival has a slightly convoluted history. It started in 2008 and was initially called Austin Psych Fest and put on by a group called The Reverberation Appreciation Society. The name got changed to Levitation in 2015 (a reference to a song by the 13th Floor Elevators) and It continued under that moniker for a number of years. In 2024, they brought back Austin Psych Fest but continued with Levitation. Now there are two festivals a year put on by the same people but with different names: Austin Psych Fest in the spring and Levitation in the fall.

Austin Psych Fest is what it sounds like, a music festival focusing on psychedelic music. I would argue, at least based on this year's lineup, that it’s not exclusively psychedelic music, but it’s all music that sounds great on psychedelics. It’s a very curated lineup of artists geared to a certain type of music lover: indie rock, psych rock, shoegaze, dream pop, and all assorted niche sub-genres are present. This curation is part of what makes Austin Psych Fest so special. While other festivals try to appeal to every demographic by having both Mumford and Sons and ODESZA. Austin Psych Fest focuses exclusively on a certain type of artist so that every single act is great and perfectly fits their aesthetic.

At Far Out, there are only two stages: Willie (named after my friend's aunt's dog) and Janis (named after Tony’s sister in The Sopranos). At other big festivals multiple bands play at once and you’re forced to make tough decisions on who to see. At Austin Psych Fest there is no overlap between sets so you’re able to catch every single act with only a 5 minute break in between. Trippy visuals are live mixed and projected on stage by the group TV Eye Media. These visuals are more than just a Winamp visualizer synced up to the beat, they’re really neat and totally elevate the experience. Other features include multiple food trucks, free water at the center of the venue, a record shop, and a weird sponsored vape lounge that wouldn’t let me in to sit down because I’m not a nicotine user.

There was a decently sized crowd over the weekend, but it was never so packed that you couldn’t easily find a good spot. I was able to arrive at the stages just as an artist was going on and be able to get relatively close and see everything. I acknowledge I have some tall privilege at concerts, but I’m fairly certain the short kings could also see what was happening. The crowd skewed somewhat older, so it was a lot of people in their 30s - 50s with some younger folks and even families in the mix. Everyone seemed to have positive attitudes and didn’t seem too interested in taking a million cell phone videos of the performances, which was nice.

STRFKR

Friday

I showed up just in time to catch Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The 8-piece group performed their cinematic instrumental music with split screen old black and white film footage behind them. The songs have no lyrics, but the images allow you to project your own story onto the music. It was a really captivating and weirdly emotional performance that had me hooked from minute one.

After them was local band The Octopus Project, which was a pretty fun group even though there wasn’t an octopus as part of the band. I know I shouldn’t have expected that, but a boy can dream. They had a theremin and that’s always fun to watch someone play.

Next up was Explosions In The Sky. While waiting for them to start an old hippy next to me ripped a dab pen and proceeded to tell me about a scientist who made a bunch of predictions a decade ago and how all of them have been proven right. He also predicted we’d achieve immortality by 2030, and this guy seemed to think it would happen too. I couldn’t quite follow, but I nodded my head and agreed with him. Then the band came on and played super loud instrumental music. They sounded really great. That said, it was a little tough seeing them follow GY!BE because they’re both post rock groups and it just didn’t hit for me as much as they did. They also didn’t have anything going on the screen behind them which was a little underwhelming.

Explosions In The Sky

Saturday

I arrived at 4:45, and the first artist I saw was former Black MIDI frontman Geordie Greep. His band sounded great as they performed technically elaborate rock songs about 18th-century literature and his cuckold fetish. The closing track was Holy Holy which devolved into a reggae version of the song in the middle before a climactic finale.

After that, I saw Dummy, who I’d never heard of before. They were really solid and I left a fan. I don’t have much more to say on them.

Next up was STRFKR, a band I’ve seen multiple times. They’re always a little strange to me because a lot of their music is pretty chill, and most of the show they just stand there while playing, but for other songs they have people come out in costumes and it turns into a dance party. They had multiple confetti cannons go off which was obviously fun; everyone loves confetti. Unfortunately, It was pretty windy outside, and I assume it all landed in a nearby neighborhood. At the start of the set the man in front of me was on his phone editing a photo of Grimace (the McDonald’s mascot) for at least 3 songs. He was tweaking the colors and making it really saturated red and green. He then showed it to the woman next to him, who I assume was his wife

Geordie Greep

After STRFKR was Sasami, who absolutely crushed this set. Her stage presence was so strong - energetic, aggressive, and fun. A couple of songs in she yelled at everyone and forced a mosh pit. When the crowd opened up I saw a woman I’m 90% sure was my therapist for a month and a half last fall. That was a very weird realization to have mid-concert. I hope she had a good time.

At this point, it was around 8:45 and I was pretty hungry, so I got a sandwich from one of the food trucks called Knuckle Sandwich. I got the titular sandwich, and while it was actually a really good cold sandwich, I don’t think it was worth the 17 dollars I paid for it. I looked up their menu later and saw that the sandwich normally goes for 12 dollars. They raised prices for this event, which really rubs me the wrong way. Also I saw on Instagram that the head chef has “GABA GOOL” tattooed on his knuckles…

As I finished eating, I saw the beginning of Kim Gordon’s set. I was kinda iffy on her album when I first heard it last year, and seeing it live didn’t really change my opinion. I mean, it’s cool that the 70-year-old woman from Sonic Youth made an industrial hip hop spoken word album, but after about 15 minutes, everything sounded the same, and I thought, “I get it. I found a place to sit down and watched the rest of the set from a distance. I was gonna be there til midnight, and the brief rest was much needed.

Sasami

Knuckle Sandwich

Next up was this post-punk band called Wombo. I was initially bored, but as they went on I started to enjoy it more. At one point between songs someone in the crowd yelled out “Wombo number five,” and that got a big laugh from everyone. Probably the highlight of their set.

The last band of the night was Darkside, who I’ve been wanting to see for over a decade. They came out with so much fog machine that you could barely see them and proceeded to play an incredibly loud and mind blowing set. There'd be long stretches of ambient psychedelic build-up and then intense dance movements with heavy propulsive bass. Lead singer and producer Nicholas Jaar ended the set talking about Texas’s involvement in the Palestinean genocide which I thought was a great use of his platform.

Darkside

Sunday

I had spent the last 5 days seeing live music. Even though I wore earplugs to every show I went to, my tinnitus started really acting up after getting home Saturday night. It’s hard to tell if nothing changed and I’m just paranoid, if it’s temporarily worse from all the shows, or if it’s permanently worse. Either way doesn’t really make a difference because when I got home, I became increasingly neurotic and eventually had a panic attack when the ringing in my ears wouldn’t go away. I laid in bed filled with anxiety until I fell asleep at 3 in the morning after taking some Tylenol PM.

When I woke up, it was still bothering me, and my body was sore from almost a week of seeing concerts. I made the decision not to go, which felt super lame as a music fan who was really excited to see Yo La Tengo, Dinosaur Jr., and more, but I just didn’t want to risk it. I stayed home, did nothing, and felt bad for most of the day. Since this feels like a lame way to end the article, I’m going to pretend that I went and guess how the bands were.

Tinnitus

Sunday (fake)

I arrived at 3:30 to see Dean Wareham play Galaxie 500 songs. As much as I love Galaxie 500, I couldn’t help but feel he was going through the motions. However, at the end, Dean Wareham announced that he was starting a new band called Galaxie 1000 and claimed they’d be twice as good as his old band. He proceeded to play a song called ”Rowboat,” which was clearly their song “Tugboat,” but they swapped out one word. It was transcendent!

After this was La Luz, which was a really fun set! I crowd surfed for 75% of the concert. And I kept hearing people commenting on how tight my abs were as they moved me across the crowd, which I thought was nice but also made me a little uncomfortable. I’m more than just a hot body, I have feelings.

Crowd surfing at La Luz

Yo La Tengo, one of my all-time favorite bands, played a wonderful set of mostly their noisier material, except for a couple of soft hits such as “Autumn Sweater”. Everyone was really feeling them, but they lost the crowd completely with a blue lives matter chant they tried to start at the end.

Finally, the night ended with Dinosaur Jr., who started by proclaiming that “they’re only gonna play good songs”, a move which I thought was genius. Why play bad ones? I was loving hearing their distorted, fuzzed-out rock music, but midway through, lead singer J Mascis tripped over a wire and fell down. While he was recovering the music continued playing. Turns out he was lip syncing the whole time! He started sweating profusely and begging the audience not to tell anyone. We all agreed to be quiet, and the band finished the show.

All in all, it was probably the best day of my entire life!

Yo La Tengo