Golden Plains
Meredith
Saturday 7th March (Sunday review)

A few years ago, munted to the eyeballs on New Year’s Eve, a tide of uncharacteristic anger began to wash over me. The night’s DJ had been going stoically about his business, casually spinning obscure UK garage tracks, but producing a lukewarm audience response. After about 2 seconds thought I stormed the DJ booth. “How hard is it?”, I asked annoyingly. “How hard is it, with 500 spazzy revellers on tap, to deliver a roof-lifting set?” “Play the songs we know”, I demanded! “Play the songs we know and let us pre-emptively holler the chorus like the skittish buffoons we are in grave danger of becoming!”

Predictably, said DJ ignored my pleas and ploughed on through his hit-free record crate. But after an hour or so, a strange thing happened -- songs that 90% of the audience had never heard began to create a mutually beneficial feedback loop. Against the odds, people were feeling the love -- maybe we were lucky but the musical risk had paid off. Of course,the occasional top 10 sacrifice, usually in the form of Rhianna, helped the boundary-pushing medicine go down.

Such is the basic conundrum facing the organisers of Golden Plains, now in its third year. The “boutique” festival,like its sister event Meredith, is a guaranteed sell out with a captive audience of inebriated punters assured. And like Meredith, the programming team (suspected to be a cabal of community radio insiders but who can tell?) continues to straddle the divide between instant gratification and envelope-pushing marginalia. Some acts, like Gary Numan, seem too big to fail. But in 2009 it was those bands capable of generating their own momentum that made the GP experience worthwhile. This time last week, who could have seriously predicted waving a shoe to Old Crow Medicine Show or nodding along to a vibey Brant Bjork and The Bros?

Early on Saturday afternoon, after struggling to set up the tent in time for the opening ceremony, I ambled down to the Supernatural Amphitheatre to witness the aforementioned Deaf Wish (geddit?) in trademark aural destruction mode. Any lingering fun-time vibe provided by The Harpoons was dispatched in an instant by sonic bastardry of the North Melbourne locals, clearly relishing the opportunity to escape their usual one amp setup at the Town Hall Hotel. Get the 7”.

Next up was Dan Deacon, an apparent favourite of the more coiffured attendees that get to Bush Camp early enough to bunker down for the weekend in close proximity to all facilities. While Deacon’s karaoke crowd participation games are starting to grate, his good pop songs don’t, especially in the case of an impressive ‘Crystal Cat’. On a side note, a presumably fictional (at the time) “guerilla show near the toilets before Black Mountain” did actually occur with witnesses describing a scene of (controlled) anarchy.

In the meantime, an unassuming Brant Bjork and the Bros grabbed the stoner rock slot previously occupied by Ten East(Meredith, 2008) and emerged as unlikely Saturday standouts. Maybe it was the heat haze, but Bjork, on this performance the hardest working man in the genre, gained a legion of new fans with straight ahead tunes utterly devoid of pretension --a rare commodity indeed in an era otherwise dominated by irony-drenched electro. By the time the last Bro trudged offstage ‘My Ghettoblaster’ had unbelievably become a festival moment to savour.

With darkness looming, Black Mountain immediately signalled that the overdriven wonderment of their In the Future album wasn’t likely to be re-created in this environment. Instead, loping jams like ‘Wucan’, a masterful cross-hatch simultaneously channelling Fairport Convention and Sabbath, firmly lodged the assembled devotees in space jam mode.

With the vibe threatening to turn karmic, UK veterans Mogwai, having headlined dozens of festivals over their 11-year career, produced an unflappable set, clearly convinced of their own invincibility. I counted three songs from 1997’s Young Team, but it was recent single, the brutal ‘Bat Cat’, that shocked the mosh pit from its reverie.This was the part of the festival when people started noticing how transformed the 2009 sound was, although whether this was due to a lack of wind and rain or anything tangible was tough to tell.

The similarly-gnarled Of Montreal were an out-of-sequence disappointment, the band clearly struggling with their re-born reputation as poptastic superstars. ‘Suffer for Fashion’, the glee-inducing opener from 2007’s storming Hissing Fauna album, went mysteriously unplayed, a strange decision given the willingness of other outfits to revisit the hits for a festival audience. In the main though, Kevin Barnes’ vocals were way too far back in the mix to make an impact – a shame given the masterful back catalogue he has to work with.

This meant expectations for You Am I, with broad-based inebriation setting in, were ratcheted up a few notches. The pre-show speculation centred on whether Timmy Rogers and co. would stump up 14 singles in a row or choose a more difficult route to glory. The answer was clear as soon as the band launched into a (vaguely hepped-up) version of ‘Damage’, followed closely by ‘Heavy Heart’ and a measured run through of ‘Gunslinger’ from Convicts. Refreshingly, it appears Rogers, fresh from a stage outing in Woyzeck, is now content to do his own thing, with the lingering bitterness of the major label follies banished permanently from view. Even so, old favourites ‘Berlin Chair’ and ‘How Much is Enough’ still got a predictable airing towards the end of the set, generating the day’s first impassioned singalong. Shortly thereafter, I headed to bed, although all reports suggest the 3am set from Northside Records crate-digger Chris Gill was impressive indeed, with skerricks of old-school funk heard occasionally through the sleep haze.

SUNDAY REVIEW \ GOLDEN PLAINS 2009 PHOTO GALLERY

(Pics: Kristy Lee)