North Byron Parklands, Byron Bay
July 22-24, 2016 :
Some say it’s dirty. Some say it’s exhausting. Some say it’s the best experience of your life. We’re talking the three days of music, culture and looseness that is Splendour in the Grass. As a Splendour virgin, AMELIA PARROTT gives you her take on this year’s action as a first-timers to Australia’s most popular music festival.
Man, that amphitheatre is huge
The appropriate reaction when walking into the natural amphitheatre at the North Byron Parklands is, “Holy Shit!” It is one hell of a big space and while the sheer vastness of The Amphitheatre is undeniably impressive to a first-time Splendour-goer such as myself, over the course of the weekend it proved a challenging beast for some artists to wrangle.
One of the first big acts to step on stage was Sydney-based purveyors of Brit-pop, DMA’s. Since being thrown under the international spotlight with the release of their self-titled EP in 2014, the trio has performed at some of the biggest festivals on the planet, including Glastonbury, Reading and Coachella. And while you couldn’t fault their performance musically, the lads just failed to connect with the crowd, especially those perched on the surrounding hillside.
Brisbane rockers Violent Soho were one of the acts who managed to dominate the space, pulling off a high-intensity set that would have had even the bar staff on the highest peak of the surrounds feeling as if they were right down in the thick of it. There wasn’t a dull second to their hour-long set, which included favourites like ‘Viceroy’, ‘Like Soda’ and ‘Neighbour, Neighbour’, a rare outing of ‘Jesus Stole my Girlfriend’, and, of course, the epic ‘Covered in Chrome’.
Melbourne troubadour extraordinaire, Courtney Barnett, was another who seemed at home on The Amphitheatre stage. While the hate-it-or-love-it nature of her sound meant she may not have had the biggest main-stage crowd of the weekend, Courtney charmed those present with her signature brand of mundane storytelling. She opened what would be her last Aussie set of 2016 with ‘Dead Fox’ before delivering ‘Depreston’, ‘Pedestrian at Best’, ‘Elevator Operator’, ‘Avant Gardener’ and ‘Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Come to the Party’ among others. Top stuff!
Paying homage is important
When playing times were announced for Splendour, hardcore Cure fans would have no-doubt rejoiced at the thought of the epic three-hour set that awaited them on Day Two of the festival, while millennials may have found the concept a little baffling – “Who are these old dudes and why have they got a longer set than Flume?” Articles surfaced in the lead up to the Festival providing tips on how to stay the distance. The truth is, with 13 albums and a reputation as your favourite band’s favourite band, The Cure, deserved every minute of the three-hour set given to them. And for those punters who weren’t so on board, well, a festival was the perfect setting to attempt this three-hour feat, with indie darling Matt Corby and producer Santigold offering up tasty alternative on nearby stages. The Cure’s set was, in a word, comprehensive, with 30 tracks and four encores – a fan’s dream. For those not intimately familiar with their deep back catalogue, the bulk of set, while deliciously en pointe musically, may been a slow burner. The constant fish-eye camera view on the big screens, presumably a stylistic decision, coupled with pretty low volume did nothing to help those seated on the hillside connect with the action on the stage. To say you didn’t have to work hard to stay the distance would be a lie. However, it was so easy to forgive and forget in the eurphoric moments when these bona fide music legends dropped tracks like ‘Pictures of You’, ‘Friday I’m in Love’, ‘Just Like Heaven’, Fascination Street’, ‘Close to Me’, ‘Lets Go to Bed’, ‘Boys Don’t Cry’…. the list goes on.
The Strokes are still effortlessly cool
I mean, effortless to the point where they were 20 minutes late to the stage and Julian offered little to no stage banter. “I haven’t got anything prepared so, fuck it, lets play some old stuff,” he mumbled before the New Yorkers hurtled into ‘Barley Legal’. While the antics between tracks were admittedly pretty subdued, you certainly couldn’t argue set the set list the boys brought with them – ‘The Modern Age’, ‘Soma’, ‘Heart in a Cage’ ’12:51’, ‘Reptilia’, ‘Is This It’ ‘Someday’, ‘Hard to Explain’ ‘New York City Cops’, and an encore of ‘Last Nite’. They delivered the “old stuff” in spades, much to the delight of their unconditionally adoring fans.
Cedric from At the Drive In is still fired up after all these years
For those who don’t know, At the Drive In are responsible for what is arguably one of the most unforgettable moments in Australian music festival history. Promoting the release of their record Relationship of Command, the Texan post-hardcore outfit visited Australia for the first time in 2001 to play the Big Day Out. Fed up with the crowds unwillingness to respect the festival’s rules against moshing, 10 minutes into their set frontman Cedric Bixlar-Zavala went on tirade declaring, “It’s a very, very sad day when the only way you can express yourself is through slamdancing,” before calling audience members “robots” and “sheep” and bleating at them. Tragically this all went down earlier on the same day as Jessica Michalik lost her life after being crushed to death in the most pit during Limp Bizkit’s set. True to form, Saturday’s Splendour set saw Cedric total a stage light and speak out against the festivalgoers he’d seen looking like they were “straight out of a lookbook”. “Be yourself,” he demanded. The band’s set was just a loose as the frontman’s tongue and temper, with the crowd going mental over a Relationship of Command heavy set featuring ‘Arcarsenal’, ‘Pattern Against User’, ‘Invalid Dept.’ ‘Enfilade’, ‘Cosmonaut’ and ‘One Armed Scissor’. Circle pits all over the place!
Covers proved popular
Many Splendour acts explored their roots over the weekend by busting out covers and mash-ups. NZ crooner, Marlon Williams, with his Yarra Benders in tow, presented a standout set full of nods to his country and bluegrass influencers, including Ralph Stanley, Billy Fury and Johnny Dowd. Michael Kiwanuka covered Hendrix, Flume did Hermitude, and as if The Preatures’ Isabella Manfredi wasn’t rocking the killer frontwoman vibe enough at what would be the band’s final show with guitarist Gideon Benson, midway through the set they whipped out the Divinyls’ ‘Boys in Town’ just to hammer it home.
But the prize for best cover of the weekend has to go to The Avalanches. Their Saturday night set, one of the most anticipated of the festival was a well formed masterpiece. Opening with a stripped back version of ‘Reckless’ by Australian Crawl, their compelling set also included a glimpse of ‘Come Together’ and ‘My Generation’ but it was guest vocalist, Eliza Wolfgramm, who really smashed it out of the park with a mash-up of ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’ and Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’. A perfect pairing that left the crowd wanting more. Come back single ‘Frankie Sinatra’ also got a great reception and Spank Rock did a fine job filling in for Danny Brown on vocals, despite having to hold his phone right up in front of his face to read the lyrics just to keep up with Brown’s rapid fire delivery. They closed out their first festival performance in 10-years, fittingly with ‘Since I Left You’ the title track from their seminal 2000 debut.
Splendour is better with friends
Anyone who’s been to a festival will know the immense joy of being reunited with a lost buddy after hours spent wandering alone through from stage to stage, bar to bar, stinking toilet block to stinking block. Yes, festivals are undoubtedly better with friends as a punter, but it seems like this year’s Splendour artists also embraced the crew mentality to great result.
After pulling off arguably one of the best triple j Like a Versions of the year with his soulful rendition of LDRU’s ‘Keeping Score’, Paces, again called on the original Australian Idol, Guy Sebastian, during his at the Tiny Dancer stage on Day Two. The pair performed the much-lauded cover, as well as their Vacation colab, ‘Desert’. Tkay Maidza made an appearance for a couple of bangers, a remix of Martin Solveig’s ‘Do It Right’ and the Paces-produced ‘Switch Lanes’.
But it was Flume, closing out The Amphitheatre stage on Sunday night who really got by with the help of his friends. Harley put together a Splendour squad, which included the likes of Vera Blue, Jess Kent, Remi, Kucka, Nagiire and Baro, to absolutely smash hit set in front of a near-capacity crowd.
It’s not always a mudbath
While ponchos and gumboots make their way on to nearly every Splendour essentials list, this year the festival gods blessed punters with perfect weather. Who could blame Swedan’s Peter, Bjorn and John, who, during their set, questioned whether they were even experiencing an Australian winter? Three days at Splendour with no rainfall, we were pinching ourselves too!
No transport option is without its downsides
The festival made the news for all the wrong reasons on Friday night after some punters were left standard for hours after a massive cock up with the buses. Queues to purchase return bus tickets blocked the path to waiting taxis, pick-up zones and day parking making for a frankly quite frustrating end to an otherwise awesome first day at Splendour. Big ups must go to the organisers for more than making up for this shit-fight by offering free rides home on the Saturday night. As for the drivers left feeling smug after Friday night’s debacle, well we faced a near hour-long wait to leave the car park on the Sunday night, so it seems there’s a strong case to be made for camping at the festival!
It’s not all about the music
While Splendour in the Grass is, at its core, a music festival, it only takes one pilgrimage to realise that the tunes aren’t the only thing drawing 30,000+ eager beavers to the Parklands each year.
One of the biggest instances of crowd outweighing venue capacity I witnessed all weekend was at Dr Karl’s Great Moments in Science show at the Splendour Forum. It was standing outside room only as Australia’s favourite egghead waxed lyrical about breaking the seal, Lawrence Bragg, discos in utero and DMT.
The crowd was just as big a few hours later when Tony ‘I’ll take that as a comment’ Jones presented a raucous Q&A panel featuring The Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young, Labour’s Terri Butler, Lib Andrew Lamming, American whistleblower Cian Westmoreland and detained-Al-Jazeera-journo-come-Aussie-legend, Peter Greste.
In addition to these intellectual offerings there was craft workshops with Splendour Craft Captain, Patience Hodgson from the Grates, daily yoga sessions, African dance and drumming workshops, Haka tutorials, Hawaiian dance classes, live body painting, belly dancing, circus acts, Bollywood performers, karaoke, a silent disco, the list just goes on and on!
Reviewer : Amelia Parrott