By Monrovia Van Hoose
Levitation 2026 kicked off on a hot Friday afternoon on September 11th at The Far Out Lounge. A creation of The Reverberation Appreciation Society, the Austin festival has been growing and expanding its “platform for musical and visual art” since 2008, but maintains a distinctly local atmosphere. The seven bands on the first night included new and longtime rock groups, ranging from metal and punk to psychedelic, and the intergenerational crowd reflected this.
There’s a confusing but benign history behind Austin Psych Fest and Levitation. When the festival debuted in 2008, it was called Austin Psych Fest, and there was no “Levitation.” In 2015, legendary Austin band The 13th Floor Elevators headlined. To commemorate, the organizers called the event “Levitation,” after the band’s song of the same name. The Reverberation Appreciation Society decided to make the name permanent. In the meantime, events under the Austin Psych Fest moniker went on hiatus for seven years due to weather events and the pandemic. Happily, in 2023 it returned as its own festival with its own name. Now fans can enjoy Levitation in the Fall, and Austin Psych Fest in the Spring.
After my past experiences at hot, dusty, and crowded ACL festivals, I arrived at Levitation ready for Mad Max-type conditions. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by the comparatively mellow energy of Levitation before I’d even entered the venue.
Parking was easy in the late afternoon, and there was no line to get in. I had to laugh at myself for overpreparing. The dress code was decidedly “laid back rocker,” not “tense festival goer hypervigilant for an emergency”.
We were spared from the sun’s intense rays by a friendly cloud that settled right over the venue. As I easily made my way to the front of the stage in time for Gibby Haynes’ Butthole Surfers Mania, a gentle rain began to fall. It felt like the party gods were smiling down on us.
The Butthole Surfers
The Butthole Surfers were a major draw for Austinites this year. I’ve loved them since high school, but have never seen them perform. My enthusiasm was revived after a recent interview on Lights, Camera, Austin about the documentary, “Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt.” Knowing the chaotic and challenging history of the band made it particularly poignant when original members Paul Leary and King Coffey came on stage for a reunion song at the end of the set.
I appreciated the meeting of young and old BHS fans in a mosh pit that spontaneously erupted during their set. It’s been years since I’d been near a mosh pit, and as the circle expanded and young people hurtled themselves at one another, I felt a rush of adrenaline like a portal to the 1990s had been opened. The forty-plus crowd made a solid showing as well, some forming a human wall that smaller, less brittle bodies could bounce off of. Everyone helped if anyone fell down, and it warmed this retired punk rocker’s heart to participate in the communal thrashing.
Another link between young and old rockers was a young man, rumored to be part of The New York School of Rock, coming onstage to play a few songs with the Surfers. He wore clothes pins in his hair and threw stuffed animals into the crowd in homage to Gibby’s antics of yore. Plus he could shred and leap into the air at the same time!
During the exuberant BHS set the venue had filled up. By the time I extracted myself and made it over to the small stage to see Melt Banana, Die Spitz fans were beginning to jockey for position back at the big stage.
Melt Banana is a wildly creative art noise duo from Tokyo that has been around since the 90s. They’ve put out several albums over the years, but their latest, 3+5 took over a decade to make. While not the kind of music I generally sit around and listen to, they’re renowned for wild live shows that really “put you in the thresher,” to quote Evan Minsker on the “Punk this Week” podcast.
Die Spitz
After enjoying a few Melt Banana songs, I felt duty-bound to head back towards Die Spitz. By now, the sun had gone down, and the crowd was packed and intense. I don’t mind telling you that I’ve navigated many music crowds over the years. Austin concert-goers tend to be tractable, and since the pandemic, do a good job of spacing themselves out. But metal fans are just different.
I don’t know if it was the heavy metal vibe, the local pride surrounding Die Spitz, or the rapid rise of their popularity, but I had a heck of a time reconnecting with my friend up at the front. If the Butthole Surfers’ mosh pit was exhilarating, the Die Spitz one was large, sweaty, and a little bit scary. Shoes and T-shirts were lost and found, and many surfed the crowd, including lead singer Eleanor Livingston. The band put on a tight show without a lot of banter between songs, and the crowd, of all ages and genders really seemed to be listening. I knew that one of my favorite bands of all time would be next on that big stage. And I pondered to myself: have I lived long enough to see the day that another all female rock band steals the show from my beloved Bikini Kill?
Grocery Bag are a local four piece band with a female singer. They released an EP this year, “Deadvolt,” and a full album in 2023, Break You. They’re straight forward, high energy rock and roll with psychedelic and metal elements. A sound choice for opening the festival. I’m excited to see them continue playing and building their audience.
Power Plant has been around a bit longer and came to Levitation from further afield. They’ve demonstrated a wide creative range in their near decade of releases. Stump Soup, for example, is an hour-long instrumental synth album, while their newest release, Bridge of Sacrifice, has a more traditional heavy metal sound. For my money, their earlier releases “People in the Sun,” and “Dog Sees Ghosts” have a buzzy, fast, herky jerky sound that reminds me of Devo, Suicide, and the Swell Maps.
My biggest discovery of Levitation this year was Sweeping Promises. DJ Rock Dove of KOOP’s Exclamation!, had intimated that Sweeping Promises are a favorite around the station, so I was curious to hear them. And I was not disappointed – they’re a super tight band that packs in the jangly guitars, crazy rhythms, and fuzzy synthesizers. They remind me of The Wipers or Wire but with a rocking female singer who evokes 80s divas Pat Benatar and Patty Smyth. Their new album You Say I Romanticize is outstanding, and worth listening to as a full album. At the end of the night, we’d find out that lead singer Lira Mondal had another really big fan in attendance.
Bikini Kill
I joke to my friends that I’m contractually obligated to see Bikini Kill anytime they’re in town. I’ve been a fan since 10th grade when a teenage boy (of all things!) put their first album on a mix tape for me. If everyone’s got a band that changed their life, Bikini Kill is mine. I was lucky enough to see them twice in their original incarnation in the 90s. I loved the first Le Tigre album (Lead singer Kathleen Hannah’s band after BK broke up). It will always stand out to me as one of those albums that really had something to say. Le Tigre’s live shows were a staple of my life in the 2000s. But then Hannah disappeared from the music scene for some years. Fans found out she had Lyme Disease in the documentary, The Punk Singer. Needless to say, I was surprised and overjoyed when Bikini Kill got back together and started playing reunion shows in 2017. I was fortunate to see them play in Brooklyn in 2019, when they brought Joan Jett on stage to sing the encore, “Rebel Girl.” I was also able to see them when they played The Far Out Lounge in 2022 and at the Mohawk the following night. All that to say, I’ve seen Kathleen Hannah onstage many times in my life. Bikini Kill has always been a controversial, opinionated, political, and galvanizing band. Hannah is an idolized and a reviled figure. With all of that discourse and drama, I think people miss out on the fact that she’s also a funny, goofy, weirdo. Funnily enough, that’s something that she and Gibby Haynes share.
Now that you know how completely biased I am, let me tell you about their headlining set on night one of Levitation Fest. The crowd was even bigger than for Die Spitz, but not as raucous. A friend of mine who made it close to the front reported:
“We were surrounded by underage girls with moms who were also fans, people I’ve seen at shows the past few decades, fan girls and boys in their 20s, 30s, and onward, queers, freaks, and anyone that gave a f*ck. At one point a teenage boy came crashing through a pack of preteen girls to the front. They all chewed him out and I think he eventually left.”(.
When it came time for the “Rebel Girl” sing-a-long encore, Bikini Kill invited the lead singer of Sweeping Promises to come on stage and sing it with them. Kathleen shared that she was nervous to reach out to Lira Mondal, for fear that she might be perceived as “weird.” But, as the story goes, they became friends in a heartwarming example of musicians bridging the generational gap.
As Hannah has said at other reunion shows, she really needed to hear all of their old protest songs in this new political era. Some of their messages remain timeless–“Suck my left one!” – while others could have used a refresh. When the crowd initiated BK’s old chant, “Girls to the Front!” Hannah explained that they created that chant “Back in the day” because they’d play to crowds “with three girls in the front row”. “But, you guys seem united among yourselves,” she told the Levitation crowd. She went on to explain that they don’t want to “police” what people in the crowd do, and spontaneously said, “Freaks to the front.”
This strikes me as the right invitation for this era and this night. If being weirdos is the only thing that Gibby Haynes and Kathleen Hannah have in common, why not unite around that? The word “freak” is ageless, genderless, and a reclamation of what many in the crowd have been called at some point in their lives. Listening to Kathleen Hannah and Lira Mondal sing “Rebel Girl” to a huge crowd of Levitation rockers singing it right back brought the night to a happy ending. Let our freakiness unite us. Our Austin forefathers and mothers would most definitely approve.