Rina Sawayama takes ACL Fest to Hell (in a good way); catch her again during Weekend Two

Rina Sawayama fans have known since Day 1 that she's the way and the truth, but now, the indie-pop star has inducted the Austin City Limits Music Festival into her sexy, raucous church of self-acceptance and sick guitars. The Japan-born, U.K.-raised artist played the 4 p.m. slot Oct. 7 on the Honda stage and conjured future-headliner energy that kept the crowd agog (the multiple costume changes helped). She performs again at 4 p.m. Oct. 14 on the same stage.

In the early parts of the set, Sawayama took fest-goers on a time-tossed journey, swirling in a white peasant dress through "Hold the Girl," an anthem to loving your inner child. You could practically see the not-dead ghosts of Annie Lennox and Kate Bush holding her up as she threw her full body, as if in the throes of exorcism, into lines like, "Reach inside and hold you close/ I won't leave you on your own."

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Later, she donned a Britney headset mic for earworms "Comme Des Garçons (Like The Boys)" and "XS," firing off anti-capitalist witticisms as she and her two excellent dancers worked through full choreo.

One of Sawayama's strengths — she's nothing but strengths — is her ability to bend genre and references to her will. You could see it in the Shania Twain-worthy ecstay of "Catch Me In the Air" and in the nu-metal-injected "STFU."

And Sawayama's lyrics pulse with her DNA: Her experiences as a queer person and as an immigrant inform every hook and bridge. On "Dynasty," she projected images of Japanese families on the big screen behind her as she sang, "The pain in my vein is hereditary."

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And before set closer "This Hell," a sardonic, gleeful rodeo of a kiss-off to religious extremism and anti-LGBTQ hate, Sawayama told the crowd: "I guess this one is exclusively for the queers." Wearing a scarlet Western ensemble (hat included), she led the audience in chants of "Got my invitation to eternal damnation/ Get in line, pass the wine, bitch, we're going straight to Hell." In Texas!

Did we mention she sounded studio ready the entire set? Sawayama is strength personified. Give her as big of a stage as she wants.

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This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Rina Sawayama at ACL Fest: She's all strength and headliner energy