As I live a stone’s throw from its new home of the showgrounds (lane? Um, suuuuure), a few of my laneway goers came by for pre-drinks (beer for them, berodkas for me), and we headed around the wrong way through the rain to the venue. Due to the downpour, the organisers had decided to move everything indoors to the pavilions, meaning that while it was nice and dry, the echoey acoustics combined with rain drumming on the tin roof left the sound somewhat hindered. I’m going to make mention of that now so you can read my review of the bands in the context of this situation. A lot of people found this situation irritating, but to me Laneway did the best that it could, and to be honest, I didn’t really give too many hoots.
First stop was Yuck, the 90’s grunge band of 2011. I hadn’t got mega into their stuff but I enjoyed the familiarity of their songs, not just from what I heard of them, but also in how much it sounded like something I would have heard on the radio 20 years ago. (YES 20. WHEN DID I GET SO OLD). To me they’re a bit like Screamfeeder with a more American accent and it’s just the kind of nostalgia people seem to be up for these days. And it worked well, as we bopped along to the easy to enjoy/sing along tunes, it made the rain seem less present and felt more like a summer afternoon of sun and cider and relaxing. Cider from the bar did help this cause. Note: they also had a good snare.
After Total Control finished, we heard a bit of the DZ Deathrays, a band that is getting a lot of people talking, but aren't really my thing. They imposed upon the audience a loud, grating explosion of raw punk, a bit too harsh for my ears but definitely energy expending, and woke me up a little from my zoned out fuzziness. It was however a little repetitive and ear flooding so I was happy that it was only a temporary placement until Girls' set was about to start.
Girls picked up where Yuck left off with their vibe: hazy, laid back and sunny, with slightly more of a Beach Boys feel than seattle grunge. Their new album heights were reached with "Honey Bunny", "Vomit" and "Saying I Love You"… as well as some blissfully catchy songs from the albums I hadn’t yet heard. Lead singer and ex-cult member (yep!) Chris Owens was as pretty as the music came with a subtly sweet, emotive voice, sporting flowers on stage to increase the prettiness of the vibe. So much pretty! As did Yuck, Girl’s set was assured to provide the feeling of relaxation, without being boring. It was perfectly timed, and got me back into the haze I was after Yuck.
We decided to catch a glimpse of Feist as there was some lag between Cults and Toro Y Moi whom were supposed to be playing at the same time as her. At this time, hours into the day, I finally located a friend I’d been madly texting back and forth to meet up with. I don’t remember it being so hard to find people at Laneway ever, but it was probably the packd like sardines situation that it was, that made it so difficult. Furthermore, I probably go on too much about this, but as Laneway grows as a festival, so too does its audience and popularity, threatening that it may become another large scale monster affair.
Feist was riding this tour off the back of her reasonably well received new album 'Metals' which, while not pure pop perfect as 'The Reminder' was, is suitably sexy and a definite grower. Hence, the few songs were heard were from it, and were lovely live representations of their album selves. Her voice was as touching and exquisite as the first time I’d heard her at Laneway’s second year. The atmosphere was much better then (it wasn’t p**ing down rain and you could also see her face), but it was still a pleasant, warm vibe. I heard later, as we scuttled off for some grooving, that she had been given electric shocks by the microphones a few times, which would predict further electronic difficulties later in the night. Ok, so the sound wasn’t great and no one could be blamed for that, but electrocuting the performers isn’t really cricket and I hope someone responsible was strongly told for it.
Next was Toro Y Moi which I had become enamoured by very quickly over the last few months, thanks to their album 'Underneath the Pine'. They came on with an energetic bang, and got myself and gig buddy 1 dancing and grooving along with the rest of the audience. The sound issues didn’t matter; the bassline was enough to turn up the dial to ‘dance’. It was one of my most anticipated spots of the festival and I was happy to unleash my love for their album right with the band members. "Still Sound" was the danceable peak amongst chilled downs and jumpy ups, with a nice amount from the new album so that there was a lot I could bounce around to in recognition. Chazwick (ha! that's his real name!) had a strong voice despite previously mentioned sound distortions and presented the lyrics with ample laziness, true to those on the album. While they played for a shorter time than I’d hoped, I was very satisfied with what I saw.
It was food and Horrors time soon after, my other highly anticipated act of the day. I’d been obsessing over the Horror’s last two albums (and their first, but not as intensely) for many a year now so the opportunity to finally hear them perform was fraught with excitement but also worry… as I had seen a few youtubes that suggested they weren’t so good live. I needn’t have worried though. They delivered extremely well and played a lovely selection of their best parts from 'Skying' and 'Primary Colours', including all of the built up instrumentals that I had come to love. Lanky and odd frontman Faris Badwan’s voice was a little touch and go with some of the songs, which you can’t help if you’re a monotone crooner used to a bit of enhancement on album tracks. But it worked well anyway, as well as totally on form guitar screeching, and drum fills making my hands imitate them on their own accord.
There was nothing from 'Strange House', and it’s a sad fact that they appear to have neglected their raw gothic debut following, as it really is their background which gained them publicity, and got them to where they are today. Their maturer sound however, is excellent and they displayed that with prowess in their preformance. Each live rendition was a fitting tribute to how darn excellent they are at songwriting and how far they really have come. They even played a shortened version of the deliciously indulgent "Sea within A Sea". I wanted so much more from them. Come back and do a non-festival tour please fellas!
By the time the Horrors had finished my happy music cup had been completely filled to the point of spillage, so I contentedly wandered, ate and stood with my gang, not particularly waiting in anticipation for M83, but looking forward to hearing some familiar ambient electronic pop. As I chattered it became clear that m83 was going to be late. Twenty minutes.. thirty minutes… forty minutes went by, and the crowd was finally getting a bit anxious to see them come out. I wasn’t that bothered, but I had a friend waiting for me to go with her to see Toro Y Moi’s DJ set after the festival ended. Compared to the Kanye crowd at BDO, the crowd didn't appear that bothered either- it wasn’t until about 45 minutes of waiting that we heard any ‘BULLLLLSHITT’ chants, a decidedly larger amount of time longer than 10 minutes of BDO crowd impatience.
Again, there was no explanation as to why things were taking so long, but apparently if you were more of a social tard than my group, there were announcements being
made on facebook and twitter, alerting fans to the fact that technical issues again were marring the timely performance. I’d like to think not everyone is glued to their phones while in a moshpit (as I surprisingly wasn’t) so that does bother me that a microphone wasn’t picked up and a few words said.
Finally, almost an hour later, the frenchies appeared to play their set. Front man Anthony Gonzalez said a few words of apology and then launched into the excellent track "Teen Angst" from ‘Before The Dawn Heals Us’, which I was really happy to hear, expecting all new stuff. I’ve heard that their setlist was different from what it might have been due to whatever technical problems went down. But maybe that was a good thing, as I was pleasantly entertained by the few tracks from their earlier albums which they may not have played otherwise, including "Sitting" from their 2001 debut. The sound really wasn’t that bad, but I wonder if it was due to pre-recording rather than the actual live band.
They did play what everyone wanted to hear, including of course "Midnight City", which blew the crowd away as it promised to do, and while it’s been bordering majorly on overkill, I instinctively belted out ‘THE CITY IS MA CHURRCH!’ at the top of my lungs with everybody else. It felt like it was played extremely early, but it was only followed by one more song,"Couleurs" from 'Saturdays = Youth'. Thus, sadly, M83's set ceased reasonably quicker than desired, as soberly predicted by lawyer gig buddy, due to 10.30pm curfew constraints.
The night was not yet over and despite a ridiculously long day, our tired, weak legs carried us over to Woodland bar to see Toro Y Moi do a DJ set which we hoped would make us go crazy with delight. My friend who met us enjoyed it, and we did dance with all the energy we had left. However it was a rather large anticlimax as the songs he spun were a little lifeless, repetitive and all build up with no satisfying peak (and yeah, okay, I didn’t recognise any of them). Eventually we left the scene for a drink at Rics and then a stumble home much much later than I had anticipated. As predicted, it was a goddamn full blown motherflipping epic day, one that I could turn into one of those crazy all-in-one-day movies, like "Human Traffic" or "One Sweet Day" or "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" or "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" or "Go" or "Run Lola Run" or "25th Hour" or "A Single Man". I did die at the end.
I give the day 8 and a half blockbuster rentals out of 10.
