St. Jerome's Laneway Festival
Alexandria Street, Fortitude Valley
Saturday 28th January 2012

By Mitch Alexander

The tweets rang out loud around midday on Friday, a day before the first Laneway festival for 2012. The forecast wasn’t looking good, so organisers were taking precautions and moving all stages indoors. This wasn’t all that big of a deal, as the majority of stages at previous Laneway’s were already undercover (not to mention last year's outdoor stages suffering in the blistering sun). But in the fallout of Kanye’s late showing at BDO due to rain-related mischief, maybe Laneway’s organisers were assuring their audience that things would run a lot more smoothly. That they weren’t leaving Brisbane’s weather to chance. And you’ll forgive us for being a bit jumpy when it comes to a light drizzle these days.

The ticket might say Alexandria Street, but we all know Laneway happens at the bottom of the Ekka grounds where all the barnyard friends are usually kept. The livestock might be gone, but there’s plenty of bleating and general milling from the early crowd inside the first cavernous building, housing the Zoo & Big Sound Stage at one end and the Young Turks Sound System at the other. The rummage sale area is a nice touch, because what festival experience would be complete without an acrylic wallet emblazoned with a cartoon from your childhood, or a brooch for $15? I jest, but it’s additions like this – and an ad hoc art gallery on the other side of the wall – that construct the festival vibe. As opposed to a 'clown car of bands playing after another’ vibe, say.


Geoffrey O'Connor

Local-ish band The Medics are giving their best effort to make me want to be somewhere else – we get it, you really like the delay pedal – and soon I’m in the company of a sparse crowd watching Geoffrey O’Connor with equal parts curiosity and…no, almost entirely curiosity. It’s sparse new romantic pop with synths-a-plenty, lorded over by O’Connor, who manages to look both eternally pre-pubescent and old enough to teach senior Chemistry. Channelling the awkward sexiness of Jarvis, O'Connor and Co. deliver bountiful melodies and it’s a non-demanding introduction to the day.

It's seeming like the main musical theme here might be early '90s slacker guitar rock, as The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Yuck face off at different stages around 1:30pm. The Pains Of… are the more spirited of the two acts, playing the type of up-tempo life affirming songs of heartache that nicely soundtrack driving with no particular place to go. Frontman Kip Berman appears elected unopposed to bandmember-in-charge-of-banter, and having escaped such responsibilities the remaining group are free to disengage from the show and put on a workmanlike performance. Beneath his cap, it’s difficult to tell if one of the guitarists has a face.


Yuck

Yuck mine a similar vein of slacker sounds at about half the tempo, but their hooks and choruses are much stronger. Debut album standouts ‘Get Away’ and ‘The Wall’ prompt a more excitable response than their genre counterparts, enough to coax a friend to come along and watch in the final minutes of their set. Those final minutes are when Yuck decide to pull out their least song-based song, more a random collection of super fuzzy guitar chords and syllables mashed together over the course of eight minutes. Way to make me look like a noise rock-loving chump, Yuck.

Stray thought #1 – Smoking areas. As a recently reformed smoker — because who are we kidding? It’s fun to do and public transport isn’t going to wait for itself — I don’t ideologically have a problem with smoking areas, even when they’re large fenced off cages wherein you feel like you should be eating grain. It does seem bureaucratically inane when you’re shuffled back into the area by a security guard because you’ve strayed 10 centimetres away from the imaginary line that prevents passive smoking, but that’s neither here nor there. What is objectionable however is that these cancer bays are always located in the most uncomfortable spot on site. Some are separated from the action by a trek requiring a packed lunch and a Sherpa, others are placed at the bottom of a chemical toilet. The DOSA (Designated Outside Smoking Area) for the Car Park Stage rubbed right up a speaker stack, meaning either you could suck that cancer stick down in a minute and feel terrible soon after, or wait for your ear drums to burst…which probably isn’t that great either. Perhaps it’s an implicit public health initiative from Laneway, but don’t be haters. All the cool rock stars smoke, right?


Seriously guys, I just want a quick smoke.

Of all the places to hear bands today, the Zoo & Big Sound Stage seemed like the one where audio quality was most likely to be considered an added bonus rather than a vital feature (something the organisers mentioned in an online apology the following day). Except maybe DZ Deathrays, who prey on the weak of eardrums and belt them into submission with waves of screaming guitars and vocal chords. The law of depreciating gains is definitely in effect here, because after you’ve heard one 90 second blast of sonic obliteration, there aren’t too many other gems they’re stashing in their repertoire.

If a band that take their cues from Teenage Fanclub rather than an Eli Roth movie are more your style, Girls were offering sanctuary. They even have flowers adorning their speakers -- that’s how you can tell that they’re lovers and not fighters, man. (That I’m impressed by strapping plastic flowers to microphones as a stage setup either shows how easily impressed I am by some things, or how lazy your average indie rock band is these days.) For a band painted as laidback Californian revivalists, they pop and spark and glisten with energy and the guitar solos of a bygone era. The setlist wore a sense of predictability after a while – slow song, slightly faster song, super bouncy song then repeat – but there’s no point trying to outrun the power pop bliss of 'Lust For Life' when it finally bears down on you.


Girls

Stray thought #32 – fashion. Granted, getting fashion advice from me is like receiving advice from Charlie Sheen on how to not be a dick, but here's two cents worth. For the ladies, everything was tastefully eclectic, with most selections coming from the ‘wacky best friend’ costumes of the last 20 years of American sitcoms. The gentleman vibe was a bit more restrictive, but no less pleasant: Ryan Gosling on a boat. And having been to the Gold Coast Big Day Out a week earlier, being in an audience where it didn’t look like a surf shop just exploded - and a prominent lack of hilarious costumes – was refreshing. And the festival didn’t feel any less patriotic without a surplus of four foot long Southern Cross back tattoos.


Anna Calvi

It’s almost shocking to see the wasteland that is Anna Calvi’s crowd five minutes before her set starts. She was a thing, right? The BBC said she would be huge in 2011, but it seems like that hasn’t transposed to Australia. Or maybe it did, but that was then and this is now. Possibly everyone got tired of reading the same two things about her in every story, the first being BBC’s predictions and the other that Nick Cave thought she was pretty tip-top. I know I did. Crowd numbers barely improved as the set went on -- doesn’t matter. Guitar proficiency is a decidedly uncool thing in the fast paced two chord world of indie rock, and while Anna Calvi’s shredding guitar licks are unlikely to change that, her finger fireworks are well received by the crowd. (Unlike her bandmember’s harmonium, which was met with so many ‘what the fuck is that?’utterances that it could have been a song chorus). Of course, there’s also that voice. Like some deep sea predator, at first it comes on all wounded and weak, seducing you before roaring out to crush your spinal column. Or something. When ‘Desire’ reaches its apex, it almost feels like the clouds could scurry away in fear. And don’t worry about Calvi barely making a peep when she’s not singing. It’s not just you, apparently it’s a pretty regular thing.

Stray thought #1,067 – single person bands. Perhaps the real theme of the day is bands that are built around one central member, where all other guitar, drum and sousaphone players are hired guns, presumably paid extra to make zero eye contact with the audience. Laneway 2012 is packed with bands where, if 60% of their members died tomorrow, it wouldn’t make much of a difference.


Feist

Feist definitely came here to rock. Clutching an electric guitar many more times than an acoustic, the dainty Canadian was all meaty barre chords and guitar solos -- like a tiny Ted Nugent without all the gun nut stuff. The set leaned heavily on the darkness of her new album Metals (no iPod commercials here folks), and even early hit 'Mushaboom' was radically transformed into a minor chord tussle. The changes were so extensive that no one really picked up on it until the chorus, and to be honest until that point it kind of sounded like a ho hum cover of The Audreys. The unofficial Stevie Nicks chorus line – three ladies clutching tambourines, with scarves tied to their microphone stands – didn’t always add much vocally, but the sporadic movements and gyrations kept the tone light and even stole a chuckle from Leslie Feist. Extra points for bravely forging through with a microphone that gave off shocks on more than one occasion, and cue tacky references to ‘an electrifying performance’ in various reviews.

If the final sets of the night were a Cheap Trick song, it would be ‘Stiff Competition’. On the main stage there was the French synth-heavy dream pop via M83, the American synth-heavy dream pop courtesy of Washed Out nearby, and the British synth-heavy electronica pop (that has its dreamier moments) of SBTRKT elsewhere. The American and British contingencies had an unfair advantage however, as the minutes ticked by with no sign of M83. Oh sure, there was lots of activity on stage, people running around, crouching, fiddling with knobs, pulling out plugs, but nothing suggesting that a performance was imminent. Eventually the Laneway organisers tweeted that there were technical difficulties – they were quick to not blame the band but rather the omnipresent weather conditions – and thanked the audience for their patience. The tweeting seemed odd, like the non-confrontational alternative to simply saying it into a microphone, but I didn’t mind the hold up.

It allowed me the opportunity to catch the bulk of Washed Out’s set AKA the second surprisingly poor audience turnout of the day. My hope was that it was too dark for the band to realise they were playing to 50 or so people, but the overzealous lighting team squashed any chance of that. The band – mostly the work of Ernest Greene (see stray thought #1,067) - are current torchbearers of American chillwave, and a combination of their lucid three part harmonies and an exact replication of the drum tone from Phil Collins’ ‘In the Air Tonight’ is enough to convince myself I’m not missing out on anything at M83. Literally. From my vantage point I could still see technicians ferret around the main stage. It also brought The Horrors’ frontman Faris Badwan out from the backstage area to watch the set and be tall. He likes being told that his band played a really solid show (they did), but apparently not being asked if he would be in a happy snap. So that’s a double standard, don’t you think?


M83

Minutes before the 10pm curfew, M83 skulk onstage begging for forgiveness. The crowd are quick with their mercy, but I’m not so easily satisfied. If they were trying to specifically win me over, they gave it their best shot by leading off with ‘Teen Angst’ and ‘Kim and Jessie’. But the damage had been done - perhaps it was the final energy drink leaving my system, or expecting too much from the band, owing to their well-crafted pop perfection in recorded format. Either way, the grumbles came quick and fast, not helped by a band still ill at ease and shooting quick glances at their sound crew. The short set shows a few glimpses of brilliance that the crowd has waited so patiently for, but it’s a tease more than the full reveal; a whisper rather than a scream. (Organisers have apologised online for the delay, saying, "It was due to unfortunate and uncommon technical difficulties beyond M83's and our production team's control.").

Despite the disappointment, it didn’t spoil an otherwise dizzying array of sounds -- some intended and some not so much. Still, there are enough positive memories of Laneway 2012 that one can afford to let the niggles slide.

Mitch Alexander

(Pics: Justin Edwards)