In your face, weather: despite all the dire predictions of torrential rain Sunday dawned bright and sunny. Amazingly sunny, in fact, to the degree that people who had clearly lived through numerous Australian summers seemed mildly confused about how to apply sunscreen – and those who did know still did a lousy job, which is why your correspondent is currently sporting an exciting sunburn arrow on his upper chest, thanks to a cavalier attitude to buttoning his shirt.
And there was a lot of sun to be had if you wanted to be there for the early highlights, such as Geoffrey O'Connor (who is fast turning into Australian indie music’s Jarvis Cocker) and DZ Deathrays, who were punishing for this early in the day – as were Total Control whose punk-meets-tribal-percussion thing was even less appropriate for blazing early afternoon sunshine.
On the other hand, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s sunny pop was gloriously appropriate. I’d dismissed the indie guitar kids as being cute and fey post-shoegaze posers, but their lively set and welcome tendency to whack massive guitar overdrive onto their choruses made them my favourite act of the day – and in my personal alternative universe, ‘Heart in your Heartbreak’ is a worldwide number one single.
Of course, this being Laneway there were infuriating set clashes – which I think is less a design flaw and more of a deliberate policy, for reasons I’ll get to shortly – and Jonti was ignored altogether in the rush to catch some of EMA’s set. And once again, her darkly abrasive songs aren’t exactly made for sunny afternoons, but Emma M Anderson is one hell of a performer. Her set was truncated for time (again, a theme to which we shall return) and the crowd seemed to take some time to warm to her confrontational performance, but ‘California’ closed the set to a massive response.
Canadia synth outfit Austra were far more lively than their records would indicate – live they’re more Florence & the Machine than Ladytron, although that’s possibly more because of the amount of billowing fabric on display than the music per se – and Neil Finn entertained the crowd with anecdotes about his son’s bollocks during Pajama Club’s well received set. Then it was off to Girls, whose surprisingly together performance was distracting enough to mean that Active Child was missed completely.
So let’s talk for a bit about set clashes, since that’s what most people tend to take issue with when it comes to Laneway. Part of it is the fact that the lineup is always a strong one, but the reason that I suspect it’s an actual conscious strategy rather than an unfortunate accident is that the venue, handsome though it is, can’t physcially accommodate a headliner that the entire puntership wants to see. It was especially noticeable with acts like Feist, who filled the carpark stage to an unmovable mass of humanity and provided an ample excuse to go off and watch Anna Calvi instead – and trying to split the M83 throng by having SBTRKT at the same time to close the night would have been perfect had the Drums not overrun and knocked the schedule out of whack (and you were great, Washed Out, even if you were only playing to a hundred or so people…).
Keeping everything on schedule would be a nightmare as it was, but it also seemed like the stages needed to coordinate their watches: I scurried away from Girls to catch what I’d assumed would be the last 15 minutes of Laura Marling’s set, only to see the last half of her final song before leaving the stage. Still, it meant I could actually sit down for a bit, catching a bit of Portugal the Man’s lively performance (and people were getting very, very into their rhythmic indie) before spending about 40 minutes trying to get some food – which is my only serious complaint about the day. If you’re going to prevent people bringing their own lunch for a day-long festival, at least have enough food carts to cope with the demand. Apparently Twin Shadow and the Panics were both great, but I saw barely any of them immediately pre- and post-food gathering.
As explained above, getting into Feist was clearly not going to happen – so it was off to see Yuck (better on record) and Chairlift (who had the entire Windish Agency stage packed wall-to-wall – when the hell did they get this popular?). The Horrors pulled a surprisingly large crowd to the main stage, but then again they were the closest thing to rock stars Laneway had to offer, with a swagger that contrasted beautifully with the earnest obsequiesness and/or overt theatricality of the rest of the bill. Well, except for the Drums, who have transformed over the last six months. Gone are the weird alt.surf kids that played Splendour last year, replaced by a road-hardened combo with the sort of confidence that only a killer second album can provide – and while ‘Let’s Go Surfing’ killed, it was new material like ‘Money’ that had the entire audience singing along. Sorry, Toro Y Mori: you couldn’t compete with these two.
The Drums went overtime, meaning that it was an extra-large wave of humanity spashing against the bulwark of audience for M83, as discussed above, and then it was off into the warm night. As always, Laneway was a load of fun – but a few more food options would have made it perfect.
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