Returning to its spiritual home of Melbourne, this year's Laneway comes blazing
a trail of success. With other festivals rebranding and reorganising, Laneway
has selected a lineup heavy on blog-love and therefore, in many cases, music
made, mixed and reviewed in small rooms, that sounds great on headphones. Which
raises the questions: can these acts cut it live? And, with festivals more a
rite of summer for Triple J listeners than a gathering of fans of particular
bands, does it matter?
Opening the day at the Dean Turner Stage are Kings of Convenience, a band made for small rooms if ever there was
one. The gentleness of the music clashes beautifully with the loud, beery fun-lovers
who have just poured in off the train. Held almost immediate silence by the
lilting Norwegian harmonies of Erlend Øye and Eirik Glambek Bøe, this is the
first of many marvels Laneway unleashes today. Beginning as a duo, Mrs Cold and 24/25 captivate. Soon, a backing band is brought on for a rousing
take of I Could Never Belong to You and
the brilliant I’d Rather Dance With You, guaranteeing KoC to be the discovery of
the day for many. Disco-folk shouldn't: a) exist or b) sound this good.
While Twerps are on typically
blazing form, at the Eat Your Own Ears stage Brooklyn-based quartet The Men take churning garage rock,
remove any gaps, overlay the results with endless guitar solos and punish it
through Marshall stacks. Their wild, semi-naked drummer could be beamed in from
Sunbury (suburb or festival) and is a total asset, occasionally pushing a
Motorik rhythm beneath their non-stop southern-boogie, it's glorious,
life-affirming stuff. Their set ends suddenly with a guitarist looking at his
watch, taking off his guitar and leaving the stage, the others immediately following
suit.
On the auspiciously named Future Classic stage, Julia Holter is building strange bubbling atmospheres with synth,
drums, cello and a swimming pool's worth of reverb. The music is intriguing and
is composed and arranged rather than felt, her talent enhanced not hidden by
the filters and echoes. Despite this precision, many subtleties don't make it
through the chattering crowd, most of whom are clustered beneath shady trees and
talking over her bewitching tunes.
As the heat increases and shady spots become highly prized, the River
Stage sees Perfume Genius suffer a
similar fate; his music never reaching the heights it does on headphones. His
weak voice is a cloudy, vaguely inert instrument, the reverb rendering his
lyrics indecipherable and his symphonic electric piano and synth playing
reduced to moody noodling. Though his backing band provides some energy, it all
seems confused, and undoubtedly better in a small, dark venue.
Real Estate benefit from bringing dispositions to match the weather, and their
bright chiming riffs and breezy harmonies go down nicely. Though they're not
about to surprise you with distortion or anything, smartly made, tightly played
songs like Suburban Dogs, Fake Blues and the crowd-rallying It's Real remind you why they're here,
and why a large number of people are willing to be badly sunburned to see them.
Recasting memories of Real Estate as a mid-paced snoozefest, Cloud Nothings pull off one of the most
relentless and intense sets of the day. Opening with a blistering Fall In, the pace never drops. Dylan
Baldi’s harsh, ripped vocals wail atop bludgeoning bass and a drummer who
rarely stops playing a fill. As their set plays out though, long, forceful yet
indulgent instrumental sections in songs like Wasted Days and Separation eat
up much of the set. Instead of
playing pithy strokes of genius like Cut
You and Stay Useless - which it
sounds like it took five minutes to write – Baldi seems infatuated with the
sound of chaos, which is face-meltingly awesome, it’s just not showing what the
band can really do.
Nite Jewel (aka Ramona Gonzalez) shows exactly how to take the DIY tropes of 80s
pop (cool reverb, shimmering guitars and spacey keyboards) and make it sound
immediate, catchy and fresh. Gonzalez’s arresting stage presence helps songs
like One Second of Love and She’s Always Watching You feel strange,
engaging and genuinely new.
Despite the festival selling out, moving between stages is easy though
keeping a spot in the shade less so. Back at Future Classic Stage mix-maestro Holy Other is pushing a womb-like mix
of woolly bass, warm pulses, exhausted beats and snatches of vocal; if Burial
has a wife and she were pregnant, this is probably what that zygote is bugging
out to. It’s envelopes but never betrays pressure which is rare, as is a set
that travels perfectly from dark club to sunny day; a fantastic atmospheric
discovery.
Despite the unusual lineup of two drummers, a bassist, a lot of
pedal-operated programming and a hyperkinetic jazz singer, Polica are surprisingly unremarkable. Though initially arresting,
primarily due to Channy Leaneagh’s powerful voice, there is little variation in
sounds, tempo or dynamics throughout their set. Opener The Maker, I See My Mother and
single Dark Star are punchier, but
their reliance on the same effects and sounds wears thin, and anyway, Of Monsters and Men are exerting some
serious gravitational force.
Sounding about as Icelandic as a Big Mac, the biggest crowd pullers by
some measure today are plying a trade in songs that sound a lot like but not
exactly like some song by Edwin Sharpe, Mumford and Sons or a dozen other
bands. The septet play a tight, rousing set; they know when to pull a trumpet
out to drive a melody home, when to let the crowd take over and how to shout
‘hey!’. Mountain Sound and Little Talks get the biggest singalongs
so far today, though the band have surprisingly weak vocals for such strong
melodies.
As the (recyclable) rubbish piles up, the queues for the toilets and
phone chargers grow, and sunburns become the norm, crowds surge
toward the Eat Your Own Ears stage. Canadian duo Japandroids explode onto it in a flurry of volume and charisma and
pretty much embody everything that's been missing so far today; brevity,
showmanship, great songs and energy. The duo rarely let up in their quest for
killer riffs and emphatic ‘whoah-oh’ choruses. Boasting more guitar amps than
could be concievably feasible, every watt is used for opener Adrenaline
Nightshift the gargantuan Night of
Wine and Roses and ‘hit’ The House
That Heaven Built. Here is a band
whose New Jersey/Springsteen-style rock suits the backdrop of towering dockyard
cranes and passing cargo trains and they make a powerful, triumphant sight.
Sacrificing Alt-J for Jessie Ware
we are immediately rewarded with some hilarious banter, made even funnier for
its incongruous setting between some sparkling neo-soul songs. Speaking in a
strong Adele-like South London accent, Ware launches into the spellbinding
title track from her Devotion LP. Her
young, three-piece backing band wait while she tells us of St Kilda’s lobster
rolls, bands we should see and apologises for her clumsy keyboard playing:
‘’onestly, these fingers o’ mine are like fuckin’ chipolatas today,’ she cackles
before casting another glittering spell on us. Night Light, 110% and Wildest
Moments are all glittering highlights of the day.
The taut, edgy rock of Divine
Fits is fitting for music made from Spoon’s Britt Daniels and Dan Boeckner
of Wolf Parade. Though the guitar spirals and smears more than chops, deceptive
simplicity is still their greatest asset. Winning over the crowd, the band’s 50s-rock
in a post-punk framework proves surprisingly flexible, especially for a take on
Rowland S Howard’s near-sacred Shivers,
which they pull off nicely; all calamitous guitars and huge dynamic shifts.
The bizarre mixing skills of Nicholas
Jaar gives audiences the only time they genuinely don't know what's going
to happen next; genre, sound, rhythm, anything. A saxophone/pianist and
guitarist flank Jaar, dressed in a cape, looming over a laptop issuing skinny
pulses, occasional trouser-flapping basslines and meandering Rhodes chords.
Completely unhurried, he teases and taunts us, forcing our attention on the
textures and surprises that epitomize his journey, only occasionally hinting at
a big beat payoff. It’s masterful.
Unable to stop smiling for her entire set, Natasha
Khan (aka Bat for Lashes) seems
happier than anyone to be here. Resplendent in a multi-coloured sparkly gypsy
dress, she dances, swoons, laughs, claps and emotes her way through her rich
trove of songs. With cello, Cocteau Twins-style guitar and busy electronic
percussion and drums, Khan holds our attention almost as well as her striking album
cover. Laura gets a predictably huge
response, but later songs, the synth-driven dynamics of Marilyn and the closing Daniel
allow her to stretch from epic longing to intimate revelations. It’s her
smiling face, beaming down from the big screens that we see before turning to
go, as the happily chattering masses surge through the streets to the
station.
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