Day Two | Austin City Limits

Day two brought rainy showers and muddy conditions to the grounds of Zilker. Nothing that was going to stop us from a days worth of great music. With the conditions as described many revelers stayed at one spot for the duration of the day instead of trekking across muddy terrain like us. The day's highlights spanned beyond multiple stages including performances from Iggy Azalea above. She had the Retail Me Not Stage blasting wither own brand of hip hop that has been blazing radio airwaves the last few months. With backup dancers at hand Azalea gave the crowd what they came to see and more.

As we made our way to the Honda Stage we managed to take time to check out some of the finer things the festival has to offer besides music. A village art shop, a craft beer tent, several festival sponsors promoting their latest products, a merchandise booth the size of Rhode Island, and food that would make anybody hungry for seconds. A few weeks ago we had a chance to see Interpol play at The Ogden Theatre to a sold out crowd. With new material at hand it was nice to get a chance to take in their latest album on a live scale. Their performance at ACL brought out a different setlist, they managed to dig deep into the classics and give us a treat worth of nostalgic material that had huge smiles on our face. Throw in a few newer hits in the mix and you had one of the best sets of the day. Early sets from Polica, The Head and The Heart, Empires, tUnE-yArDs, and Lucius made for a great start.

As night began to take over we were bustling around to see where our musical thirst would take us. At one end of the park we could hear the angelic voice of Lana Del Rey, on the other we prepared for another weekend highlighting set from Broken Bells. The masterminds behind Broken Bells consist of producer Danger Mouse and The Shins frontman James Mercer. With a new album just being released it was a chance to see how the sound would translate into a live setting. Not only did they surpass our expectations, but their new production live show blew us away. With two podiums set up from Mercer and Danger Mouse both commanded the set like captains of the starship Enterprise. Throw in a killer light show and you had quite possibly one of the most visual acts on the bill.

Next up was the nights headliners, on one end we had reigning EDM pioneer Skrillex and on the other hip hop royalty Eminem. To say this was one of our biggest scheduling conflicts speaks to the amount of people that packed both stages. We weren't granted photo access for Eminem so we made our way to the mothership to catch Skrillex (reports of him and Diplo crashing a house party comes to us at no surprise). Having the same stage setup as he did at Red Rocks earlier this Summer, we were interested to see how the Austin crowd would react to the grand production of laser lights and smoke. A huge curtain baring the alien symbol from his last album hid the spaceship as crews began putting the finishing touches on his stage. As soon as the tarp dropped all hell broke loose with the signature dubstep sound Skrillex revolutionized. Song after song those in attendance danced and danced, from young old, the headliner proved once agin why he has established himself as headlining material. We managed to catch some of Eminem's set from afar and forgot how many hits he had in his arsenal. Day two left us deaf and ready to finish the final chapter on Sunday.

CHECK OUT OUR DAY TWO SLIDESHOW