After heavy humidity on Friday and an abusive monsoon Saturday night, the usual Texas heat yesterday was practically a relief. If two and a half years in Austin has trained me for anything, it’s standing in a field trying to ignore the skin on my neck begging for mercy.
It’d be easy to call California’s Tim Presley a slacker. The guy certainly looks the part, but such a claim would patently ignore the facts. Over the last three years, the White Fence moniker has written and released 72 different songs.
And that’s not even counting the album with Ty Segall.
To be honest, I couldn’t even see Presley or his band of guitarists on the mainstage. He had the misfortune to be playing in direct alignment with the 5pm sun. It was poetic – dozens of scorching garage rock shredders blowing our heads off from one general anonymous direction. It was delirium, the good kind.
Did I have the endurance? Not quite. As it turns out, a band like White Fence and 86-degree weather can be paired with a shady bench and a snow-cone quite beautifully.
Yet that shouldn’t be taken as a subtraction. I don’t think I heard a more purely physical band all weekend. White Fence taught me what it feels like to get fried, and it’s something I wouldn’t mind feeling again.
This article appears in April 26 • 2013.