ACL: Rose Hill Drive

Bands you love whose albums you didn't - on the next Jerry Springer!

Boulder trio Rose Hill Drive left my jaw on the skeezy floor of Emo's front room the first time I saw them several years ago. They've been through Austin regularly since, but I haven't been able to catch up to them. Until today.

As they stormed through their 45-minute set on the Austin Ventures stage just now, steam rolling through their high watt blues-rock rampage like a cross between the Allman Brothers and Cream, I felt bad for my review of their LP studio debut in the Chronicle's ACL preview.

The self-titled disc comes off like a typical first time effort in many ways: a dearth of songs badly produced by a major label veteran. The threepiece rolled out a number of new cuts that buzzed louder and angrier than a rock-breached hornet's nest, though it was their set's penultimate song that rammed home the performance, the Beatles' "Birthday." That wasn't quite the highlight, however.

That honor belongs to that which I said/blogged was the only thing missing from Peter, Bjorn & John's ACL fist-pumping highlight on Friday: a smashed instrument. Bass-playing Sproul brother Jacob, who'd been having equipment problems all show long, promised to destroy his instrument at the end of set, and did just that, bashing it into the stage two or three times before handing the headless guitar to a couple of kids leaning against the stage barricade when he was done. There's an ACL souvenir for you.

Rose Hill Drive's next album may or may not fall prey to the dreaded sophomore slump, but you can be damn sure that I'll get my hands on it quicker than you can say "Whipping Post" and debut it on my home stereo on 11. If it's not as good as the band's live set, then my stereo better quiver and quake lest it end up like Jacob Sproul's poor dead bass...