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| Photo credit: Dan O'Brien |
03 August 2011
Woodfordia, QLD
Friday July 29 - Sunday July 31
Friday July 29 - Sunday July 31
It’s the Australian festival to rival all festivals, the behemoth among a sea of stilt-wearing imitations; so when Splendour In The Grass didn’t actually sell out (for the first time in seven years) expectations came back down through the roof and settled in the rafters.
This year however, expectations were exceeded putting any ticket sale comparisons aside. Splendour 2011 had it all: sweltering sunshine, greasy food goodness at every turn, hillside ‘deep and meaningfuls’ and a three-day lineup set to satiate every genre palate. The downfall? My cloning inability, I may not have caught every act but here’s how my Splendour went down.
Day One - Friday July 29
Meticulously planned timetable in phone with text reminders? Check. Unnecessary gumboots and bin liner raincoat? Check. Eyes freshly peeled for Jay-Z and Mossy (Alison not Kate) sightings? Check.
I kicked off the day with Perth rockers Jebediah at the Amphitheatre, the quartet ignited the high-school skater buried deep in all of us (exception guitarist Vanessa Thornton of course) with favourites like Harpoon, Fall Down, Teflon and new single She’s Like A Comet. The Kills took the same stage next with Jamie Hince’s rolling bluesy guitar licks and Alison Mosshart’s stunning vocals delivering a mostly Blood Pressures derived set. Apparently video of Kate Moss was blown up all over the Amphitheatre side screens at one point but by that time I was squeezing through armpits over at the Mix Up Tent trying to catch a glimpse of James Blake.
Seated at his keyboard, Blake sang older track CMCK and newer crowd-swayers like Limit To Your Love and The Wilhelm Scream. “This is an amazing place thanks for making me feel so welcome,” he said.
Welcoming the sunset, Sydney folk outfit Boy and Bear played recent tracks Blood To Gold and Feeding Line to a packed G.W. McLennan Tent.
“Apparently Jay Z's here,” said frontman David Hosking. “I don't even know who that is.”
Sadly but expectedly, the highlight was the band’s cover of Fall At Your Feet; senescent Crowded House fans and young hipsters with the latest Triple J Hottest 100 CD united.
After returning from my campsite wearing every inch of clothing I possessed, I joined the ranks of shuffling nanna ponchos and military coats vying for a square of space back at the Amphitheatre. Indie trailblazers Modest Mouse have a supposed ‘cult following’; but looking over what could have been all 30,000 splendourites singing along to Trailer Trash and The View, the sextet’s cult looked more like last year’s World Expo gathering. Frontman Isaac Brock lead musing instrumentals and trilling harmonies over two mics while double drumming team Jeremy Green and Joe Plummer pounded the reverberating back beat in perfect unison. I was convinced every band should have two drummers from this day forward. Float On set apart the stalwart fans, as they used this track to rest while others howled the only song they knew.
The Hives also split the theatre in two; as memorable and energetic as the Swedish rockers were I’ll remember them more for the mixed crowd comments which sat at the tip of either side of the spectrum. Some lapped up Pelle Almqvist’s self-aggrandising between-track-banter and swiftly plonked down on their asses when he requested before finishing Tick Tick Boom. Others however, stood tall, shouted mocking insults and booed the dynamic frontman who shrugged and said amicably, “That booing ain't gonna do no good, I love that just as much. I don't care what you say as long as you say something.”
Kanye West’s performance was nothing short of epic, even if Jay-Z failed to make his rumoured appearance. Rising from the front pit in a cloud of white smoke, the hip hop brat brought the power in droves to make a motherfucking monster out of each of us. Over three mesmerising acts, the rapper and his 20 dancing sirens mesmerised us through his diverse (and heavily borrowed) back catalogue of hits. Tracks like Jesus Walks, Monster, Love Lockdown and Gold Digger each offered a different visual feast with all the pyrotechnics, special effects and mind blowing choreography you’d expect from a Kanye concert, but it was the simplicity in closer Hey, Mama that left an impression. Perhaps it was the fact he went slightly easier on the autotune and distortion he had been so heavily reliant on, or maybe it was because most of us were thinking “I just freakin’ saw Kanye West!”
Day two – Saturday July 30
Woodfordia welcomed another perfect, sun-drenched day on day two after an unforgiving night of around 9 degrees. It wasn’t even noon yet and Splendour was in full swing; yoga classes were saluting the sun while a circle of bongo amateurs channelled their inner Xavier Rudd; a hilarious actress wearing plastic breasts and a merkin was seducing her well endowed dwarf co-star at the Sphincter Theatre, and over at the Splendour Forum tent, a discussion panel including Jake Stone of Bluejuice, Federal MP Wyatt Roy and environmentalist/comedian HG Nelson were debating the moot: Climate Change: Where Are This Generation's Protest Songs. Oh, and I’d been approached for acid twice now, just lovely.
Leaving the forum tent more confused about climate change than ever, I headed for Children Collide at the Amphitheatre. Singer Johnny Mackay was holding his guitar upright and backwards for Into The Sky With Ivy while bassist Heath Crawley managed to make soft rock look hardcore with his neck cracking throw downs and provocatively wide strumming stance. “You’re so fucken’ responsive today,” said Mackay after he played half a track lying on his side at the edge of the stage. After crowd favourite Jellylegs, the singer produced his camera and snapped a picture of us. “Do you guys have Facebook?” he said with a straight face. “Maybe we can be friends and then tag each other.”
Mackay joked his way through the blistering set, he asked if we’d heard their new throwback song Cherries and when most replied with a yes he said, “No you haven't, you fucking liars. I used to trust you."
“We’d like to announce a special guest, Kanye West,” said Mackay before Chris Cheney from The Living End joined the trio onstage for new track Loveless. This band and their music deserve a later slot in 2012.
Over at the Mix Up Tent Foster The People were leading a rave. We could all care less that we knew none of the lyrics to the entire set except one track. Mouths mimed fabricated lyrics to tracks Houdini, Call It What You Want and latest single Helena Beat, before the coveted Pumped Up Kicks started a spinning, fake pistol-slinging riot.
Muscles was the oxymoron of Splendour; the expected disappointment who had promised a live set but stood behind his keyboard, tapping at his laptop and singing embarrassingly out of tune. A highlight did make it onto the Melbourne DJ’s set however, when he played his single Ice Cream twice.
Patience Hodgeson and her frenzied stage antics caught most new fans by surprise, myself included. The Grates’ frontwoman leaped, bounced and even made roly-polys across the stage and over the crowd. Older tracks like 19 20 20 and Burn Bridges were offered the same heavy dose of fervour as newcomers Change, Young Pricks and Borrowed Skin. The Grates’ new bassist/keyboardist Miranda Duetsch and drummer Ben Marshall did well to make us forget Alana Skyring’s departure last year. Closing with new single Turn Me On I can certainly speak for half the hill when I say I wish The Grates had extended their set to save us from the train wreck successor that was The Mars Volta.
“I'm gonna tell you a secret. Omar over here tells me he wants to fuck the shit out of you with his music!”
Frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala was off to a good start as he gestured to his sheepish guitarist. Unfortunately it was all downhill from there as he stumbled through the hour with his stage gymspastics and his whiny tone-deaf vocals. Fixing his hair and gyrating his mic stand he said, “we’ve invited you to our personal rehearsal,” as if we didn’t already guess that when he blundered through an illegible version of Dyslexicon. He could tell a good story though, revealing Def Leppard had them banned from Mexico for four years after the rockers told them it was okay to call the crowd "dirty Mexicans". Donning a plastic horse head for Goliath and Car Crash, the singer attacked his amp and camera before singing “wouldn’t it be finer, to be in your vagina in the morning!” With a strong backing band and a magnetic stage presence, all Cedric needs is a voice coach and to perhaps ditch the skinny jeans to accommodate his scissor kicks.
The Living End were always going to deliver an unshakable set of hits you knew every line of, even if you didn’t want to. Chris Cheney climbed Scott Owen’s double bass for White Noise and the mosh pit seemed to pulse in unison for West End Riot. Closing with their stupidly long album title track The Ending Is Just The Beginning Repeating; it will forever be impossible to get sick of watching these guys live.
Saturday’s headliners Regina Spektor and Janes Addiction couldn’t have offered more contrasting sets. If you weren’t nice and close for Spektor at the G.W. McLennan Tent then you couldn’t quite feel the weight of her vulnerable performance. Tracks like Better which she played from a grand piano and her acoustic guitar execution of That Time were completely lost on me so it was back to the Amphitheatre for Janes Addiction. They may have used the exact same backdrop they’d donned in 2008 when they played Soundwave but all was forgiven when the grunge rockers played tracks from their 1988 record, Nothing’s Shocking while two aerial-dancing sapphics lolled and swayed above them like hanging meat.
Dave Navarro hung close to the front of the stage, pleasing his groupies and 52-year-old singer Perry Farrell smiled and beguiled his way through Ain’t No Right, Jane Says and Been Caught Stealing. “Everywhere I go I steal shit,” he said. “I’m very good at stealing, I stole these shoes.”
Farrell danced with maracas for final track Three Days while a gagged dancer simulated fellatio on him; Janes Addiction left us dirty inside and out – there’s a reason these guys still pack stadiums.
Day Three – Sunday July 31
Splendour In The Grass really isn’t your average festival bear; the smarty-panted organisers saved most of the mellow artists for Sunday with acts like Hungry Kids Of Hungary, Friendly Fires, Kaiser Chiefs and of course Coldplay all scheduled to round out the weekend. Coldplay was indubitably the highlight but there were other moments of magic too: like when Hungry Kids Of Hungary threw giant white beach balls in the crowd before Let You Down and Set It Right, or when The Vines covered the OutKast track Ms. Jackson and how Pulp incited mixed emotions as we danced along to Do You Remember The First Time? and Mis-Shapes while still digesting Jarvis Cocker’s comment - “this may be our last time ever in Australia.”
Coldplay opened with Crossfade and a tear jerking Yellow as fireworks and colourful side screen images lit the sky. Chris Martin thanked us for sticking around to see them. “I know you've been here for fucken’ weeks and you've lost your trousers and your shoes..” He played In The Sun and Violet Hill on acoustic and dedicated The Scientist to Pulp.
“This song is about Scott and Sharlene from Ramsay Street,” he joked. “No it’s actually about Alf from Home And Away.” Us Against The World was met with roars of laughter; a little Australiana homework and he’d won us over completely.
Martin had us sing happy birthday to drummer Will Champion after new track Charlie Brown, just one of four newbies spread through the set. Releasing Champions balloons into the air Martin made us promise not to tell Rupert Murdoch about his environmental indiscretion.
Coldplay were the only headliner to perform a three-track encore with Christmas Lights, a Winehouse Rehab tribute preluding Fix You and new single Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall. Paper butterflies swarmed the stage, fireworks penetrated the night and Martin juxtaposed his band's music by smashing two guitars.
As we struggled our way through the exits immediately reminiscing our splendid weekend surfeited with live show luminaries and fresh-faced up and comers, it's evident Splendour In The Grass still hold the crown.
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