Laneway Festival - Sydney

Laneway, as far as Australian music festivals go, is an Album of the Week favourite. Usually the bill of artists is pants wettingly good, the set up is comfortably intimate, the 'laneway' concept has a really nice get-lost-in-the-shadows-of-the-city vibe, and there's hot dogs aplenty. Everyone wins.
Let's start with the tunes.

We started our day with the indie guitar driven dance tunes of Portland locals, HOCKEY - "like the sport", singer Benjamin Grubin told us. Der, Grubin.
We really like this record. Sure, it ain't genius or groundbreaking stuff, but it's infectious and laden with great hooks and the very young-looking ("isn't that Johnny Borell?") Benjamin has the effortless sexy rasp thing down to an art. They kicked off with their best track "Work, work, work" and gave the crowd a great start to the day with high energy, hook-laden tunes like radio regulars "Song Away" and "Too Fake". Drummer Anthony Stassi and lead guitarist Brian White were great. Solid.


Next we checked out KID SAM - a Melbourne-based duo made up of cousins, vocalist Kieran Ryan and drummer Kishore Ryan. Holy jeebus. The drumming was crazy town and the vocals were like an off-kilter Jeff Buckley. Yes he was. The bluesy/rock n roll/avant-discordant set was peppered with mid-song rhythmic experiments (that they pulled out for "let's Go Down To The Cemetery") and minimalistic punk-edged tunes like a more-melodious version of No Age. These dudes are well worth seeking out, so hit your search engines. Big things to come...


Scottish indie rock band, FRIGHTENED RABBITS, were freaking amazing considering their early time slot. Guitarist/vocalist Scott Hutchison was intense, passionate, desperate - such a fitting tone for their song content, which covers romantic isolation, loneliness and the most fucked up aspects of relationships you can think of. His performance - complete with flying saliva and closed eyes, captured the intensity to perfection. An audience member suggested to me "Nothing's hotter than an unattractive Scotsman". Hells yeah. As a band, a less attractive bunch of dudes would be hard to find, but you couldn't help but fall in love with all these wistful, yearning little Frightened Rabbits. Highlights were "Modern Leper", "Old Fashioned" and "Keep Yourself Warm" which had a mass of diehard fans storming the barriers and singing along word-for-word.


WILD BEASTS. Oh my sweet sweet jaysus. After their crazy beautiful 2009 record “Two Dancers” we were breath-taken to discover that they can perform a live show that is equally beautiful. Vocalists Ben Little and Hayden Thorpe brought their otherworldly voices as well as their showmanship. This shit is indie-baroque gorgeousness like you can’t even imagine. "Hooting & Howling"/"Through the Iron Gate" and “All The King's Men" were moving, amazing, extraordinary.


THE VERY BEST. Cut to 300, predominantly white folk dancing in the only way we whiteys know how: badly. Yet, we had The Very Best (titter titter) time while revolving our awkward hips and jutting our lame sized booties because we could not freaking resist it. Afro-beats ahoyyyyy.


We bailed out of an incredible, energetic set by The Very Best to see THE XX. Definitely one of our favourite discoveries of 2009, and yet a disappointing performance. True, they had recently lost a band member prior to their Australian tour, but the performance lacked. The sound and the music was absolutely stunning, but we got nothing more from it than we could have from listening to their beautiful record at home. Very anti-climatic on the whole. We look forward to seeing them again once they have their stage show mastered. They’re 20 years old, so we’ll be kind.


We stretched our legs and amped ourselves for BLACK LIPS. Dreams of seeing them had never come to fruition, but now the moment had arrived. Feck dudes. In front of a frothing crowd the Atlanta foursome ripped straight into a cracking set of quick, addictive and crazy-catchy surf punk tunes. Their notorious stage antics – such as Jared Swilley hocking saliva high in the air and catching it in his mouth – a highly practiced skill, were on show, yet no groin exposure, disappointingly. “Born To Be A Man”, “Veni Vidi Vici” and “Oh Katrina” topped the performance. They were the most engaging, enthralling band of the day and they overcame their rep as a “spectacle band” and reminded us of the kind of guitar pop the freaking Beatles made. They’re better than they realize.


So off we went to check out probably the most anticipated acts of the day FLORENCE AND THE MACHNE. Before she arrived on the car park stage the crowd was packed and beaming with energy. Florence Welch dressed in a flowing bat wing type out fit showed everyone why her voice is one of the best going around. And if you were lucky enough to be in the front half of the very long crowd she demanded every bit of your attention strutting from one corner of the stage to the other. The Album favourites ‘Rabbit Heart’ and ‘Drumming Song’ were also the sets highlights and Florence and the Machine left the stage living up to their live performance reputation and earning their Headlining title while the crowd left very satisfied.


At the same time just around the corner EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESION RING were closing the festival and did so the only way ECSR can with their fast paced I don’t give a fuck (but we really do) type set that had vocalist Brendan Suppression climbing everything including a nearby building. They lived up to their reputation of being one of the best festival-closers around and then some.


So the music was amazing. But the rest of it was a little hit and miss.

Organisers underestimated the appetites of the masses and as a result the lines for food were long and timely. The venue was lovely but it just wasn’t anything like a laneway. The charm of the festival was lost because it was just TOO nice a venue. We wanted to get lost in the shadows and bump into walls. Instead there was too much space and the vibe was generally “weird”… Not comfortable or intimate – as we were accustomed to from our previous Laneway Festival experiences.
To be fair, we had a great time, but there’s a little bit of room for improvement. We’ll definitely be back next year to see if that happens.

All Sydney Laneway photographs taken by Daniel Boud

Official Laneway site

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