“Women who are 7 feet tall can’t be singers, it’s just fact,” a voice reverberated from the T-Mobile Stage before Audrey Hobert’s Austin City Limits Music Festival set. “Please, for the love of God just stop.”
The frivolousness of Hobert’s personality and set can be summed up in her opening gag, where she appeared on stage in a 7 foot tall trenchcoat holding a banjo and wearing Groucho glasses. Towering over the stage, Hobert opened with the first track on Who’s the Clown, “I like to touch people.”
Immediately after ending the song, Hobert moved at light speed to prepare for the next song, “Drive.” She took her trenchcoat off to reveal a second one beneath it and threw it over the head of her props master — her cousin Savannah Kirk — without a second thought.
Before her next song “Wet Hair,” which tells the story of Hobert feigning nonchalance by meeting her ex with wet and unstyled hair, Hobert delivered a monologue on beauty and self-worth.
“There’s this one time when I was on my way to a birthday party, and there were these two guys rating all the girls in the car on a scale of one to ten.” Hobert said. “They turned to look at me and they said three. Once you’re told you’re a three in this life it’s kind of hard to not feel like a three, but I was never a three, I was a beautiful child, now an even more beautiful woman … (Now) they’re working in marketing, and I’m all the way up here against all odds.”
Hobert then went on to perform “Don’t go back to his ass,” which had the headliner-worthy crowd screaming the titular lyric in unison. Hobert addressed the crowd about the gloomy weather, saying that one of her rules for the festival was that rain would stop if she was on stage.
“It’s something that I wrote into the contract very early on, so I’m glad you’re all dry or at least semi-dry.” Hobert said.
Midway through her set after performing “Sex and the city,” it seemed her contract worked, as blue skies and sun streamed over the crowd for the first time in the entire weekend.
Hobert gallivanted across the stage in her ballet flats and polka dot stockings, filled with carefree energy resembling the unbridled confidence of a young girl dancing in her room.
“I really feel like I’m a writer so it’s sometimes very strange, but I sometimes have fun.” Hobert said. “Just fucking kidding, I was born for this shit.”
Nearing the end of her performance, Hobert performed her hit song “Sue me,” accompanied by an erratic dance and fluttery flips of her hair. “Silver Jubilee” followed, which fans assumed would be the finale of the show, before Hobert announced that she would play “Sue me” one last time if fans put their phones away for its duration. This time, Hobert brought out a mini trampoline, where she jumped high while singing “Sue me, I wanna be wanted.”
Hobert’s stardom and levity struck ACL, brightening up the skies before her performance ended and the dark clouds set back in.
