Dalton Park, Wollongong
Saturday 17 – Sunday 18 April 2021
Reviewer : Brooke Tunbridge
Walking through festival gates, it’s a moment many of us would have dreamt of over the last year. I’m incredibly grateful to say this was the reality of myself and thousands of other eager ticketholders at Yours & Owls Festival in Wollongong over the weekend.
To execute a musical festival amidst a global pandemic is a considerable feat, and certainly wasn’t without its challenges for the festival organisers. It was the first major NSW festival to take place since the pandemic began.
In an interview with ABC’s Fran Kelly, Y&O festival promoter Ben Tillman said that they worked closely with high level consultants and stakeholders to create a plan that allowed the festival to take place. This included an additional $1 million dollars spent to meet COVID restriction protocols (on top of the $4-5m for the festival in normal circumstances).
Commenting on the abrupt cancellation of Bluesfest, Tillman says, “our industry really needs confidence amongst artists and people attending [festivals] right now“. It was this line and another from Jerome Farah, an artist on the Y&O line up, that captured the importance of the event in this time. Introducing one of his songs, Jerome explains it was prompted by a comment from someone asking “when are you going to get a real job?“.
The jarring nature of this comment and the losses felt by the music industry over the past year made my heart sink. While there’s an understandable sentiment to wait until the last minute to buy tickets to a live show, support artists directly, through merch and paying for content (if you’re in a position to do so). The music industry needs a whole lot of love!
Y&O Weekend was full of just that – love, learnings, and as expected, an alarming amount of pattern-on-pattern outfits. While the set up was very different this year, with four separate sections and rotating stages, it’s good to know some things like festival fashion and the presence of a chip on a stick stall remain unchanged.
Day 1 Highlights
Adrian Eagle, quite possibly the sweetest person alive, bringing JK-47 onto stage and enlisting the crowd as a choir to sing along to Amy Winehouse’s ‘Valerie’.
Cry Club still performing their almost acrobatic set whilst on a rotating stage (the same goes for Haiku Hands). Both acts bringing an electric presence the crowd then replicated.
The talent at the RAD stage, notably Adam Newling, who struck me as a more mellow version of Peter Bibby, raspy and energetic in the right moments. With a stage full of friends, including Ruby Fields on backup vocals at times throughout the set, he powered through his tracks to a crowd of appreciative fans.
The patience of Winston Surfshirt as his set was interrupted to urge people back to their seats. While dancing was approved, it wasn’t made clear until the day of the festival that the crowd needed to stay at their seats and dance, rather than flock to the front of the barrier, which is what happened throughout the day. When he was able to return to the stage, he reiterated the message singing “stay in your seats” throughout. Funky as always, however it’s a shame his set had to be cut short (due to the Peach section as you’d discover if you’ve read any comments from Y&O posts #fuckyoupeach).
While many artists enlisted the crowd as a choir, Tones and I brought her own choir/dancers along. Dressed in capes and set in each corner of the stage, perfect for the four section crowd situation. Whilst I hadn’t seen Tones & I perform before, those around me commented on how much confidence she had developed and how much of a difference it made in her performance.
Along with her hits ‘Johnny Run Away’, and ‘Dance Monkey’, she had a few covers in the mix, including Flume and Chet Faker’s ‘Drop The Game’, the first song she learnt to loop on keys and a song she will “play in [her] set until the end“. Whilst Tones and I was interrupted to reinforce the restrictions, she promised a surprise for the crowd. A surprise that was worth waiting for, the crowd roared as fireworks burst into the sky. It prompted a united feeling of accomplishment and relief; we did it, we’re at a music festival in 2021.
What So Not built on this momentum, closing out the night with his set of non-stop party anthems, including a new collaboration with DMA’s that’s not yet released.
Day 2 Highlights
With a refined plan to combat moshing, a refreshed crowd, and sunshine, Sunday’s atmosphere was infinitely better than the slipping patience of organisers and the crowd the day before.
Jerome Farah, a voice you might recognise from Tash Sultana’s ‘Willow Tree’, brought sweet soul sounds and lyrics with substance, his track ‘Mighty Might’ touching on his experiences of navigating culture and identity…”too white to be a black kid, and not enough to live that white kid life, am I ever gonna quite feel right?“. While covering deep topics, his set was uplifting and the perfect way to ease into the second day of the festival after Teenage Joans and Greta Stanley‘s stellar performances.
Crowd favourites, Hockey Dad compared spinning on the rotating stage to the teacup ride, as they ripped through their well-known tracks to their hometown.
Cosmos Midnight‘s take on the stage was that they were “rotating slowly in the setting sun like a kebab/rotisserie chicken“, which was my favourite impression of the set up. Their set sent out a wave of infectious energy across the crowd which carried on all the way through to PNAU.
Before PNAU and their light show, Lime Cordiale mesmerised the crowd, with their praised Like A Version ‘I Touch Myself’ proving to be the highlight, while Hayden James pleased the crowd with a mix of old favourites and a taste of new mixes.
Donning fluoro and full of energy, Kira Divine was the spirit of PNAU. The enigmatic dance act gave it their all, in what was the perfect celebration to close the festival. Hopefully Yours & Owls Festival is the first of many!
