Live review, photos - Splendour in the Grass 2010 - Saturday

Splendour in the Grass - Day 2
Woofdford, Queensland
Saturday 31st July 2010

DAY 1 | DAY 3

by Marcus T, Andrew Crook, Ariel Katz

(Pics: Tim O'Connor)

AC: A great excuse to exit my tent before the condensation evaporated came with the Marieke Hardy curated special event Women of Letters, which in this festival incarnation mostly featured men - the idea was that some performers would dedicate a screed to “the song they’d wished they’d written”. A smartly-attired Alex Gow from Oh Mercy described growing up in Bentleigh and his personal awakening the first time he heard The Triffids’ ‘Wide Open Road’. His letter to fellow sharp-dresser Dave McComb, even amid all the heart-on-sleeve moments on the music stages, probably counted as one of Splendour's most poignant moments. The song, Gow said, was the raw fuel that expanded his writing, even though he knew he could never get that close to perfection. A special mention goes to Mark Lang from Skipping Girl Vinegar who described coming home drunk one night to Johnny Cash’s cover of Trent Reznor’s ‘Hurt’ on Rage, with the subsequent YouTube video even receiving strong applause given that nearly everyone present had probably done the same thing.

Gow reappeared with band in tow few hours later at the McLennan tent and ably demonstrated that at least some of the McComb magic had rubbed off, with a freewheeling version of ‘Lay Everything on Me’ mining a well of personal insights with a keen eye on the writerly benefits of a hook. ‘Get You Back’, revelling in the always bad idea of turning up on an ex’s doorstep, was filled with even more yearning than the recorded version, a good sign that Gow’s musings have further to run beyond Oh Mercy's moderate success on Triple J.


Amphitheatre

MT: After regretfully missing Jonathan Boulet due to the rare privilege of sleeping in at a festival without waking up feeling liked a steamed raisin, I found myself side of stage for Band Of Skulls who sound VERY MUCH like the White Stripes don't they just? This is nothing new. Fortunately the black-clad English trio have the songwriting smarts and foot-stomping crunch of bands twice their number, the hair, swagger and general musicianship to ensure that eyes stay forward. They are burdened however with the kind of familiarity to Jack and Meg that will never permit them to breakout of their own accord, eternally performing a life of perfectly serviceable heavy-blues-rock that will fill out mid-afternoon slots - albeit satisfyingly - forevermore.

AK: If we’re being honest the first I’d heard of Band of Skulls was when we were stuck in the camper trying to get through the gates of Woodford on Thursday night. Russell, Matt and Emma’s brand of blues rock is definitely very akin to that of Jack and Meg White’s, but with more of a hulking bassline. Their kick drum nearly pierced a hole in me at that early hour, but that’s probably got something to do with the Coopers I drank the night before. 'Death By Diamonds and Pearls' was a highlight, as I’m sure is to be expected by people who have known the band for more than five seconds. NB: their bassist is a total fox.

AC: Clare Bowditch, another Women of Letters star, has certainly adopted an altered stage presence following her sojourn to Berlin, appearing with a mumu, inserting unscripted screams into many songs and taking time out to mock Julia Gillard’s accent, (which went down well with a Queensland audience still stewing at the assassination of favourite son Kevin Rudd - we saw at least five Kevin ‘07 t-shirts over the four days, suggesting trouble for Labor among the area’s younger voters). Sound problems at the start didn’t auger well for the set, and tracks off Bowditch's new '80s-aping album Modern Day Addiction sat uneasily with classic older material like ‘Divorcee by 23’. A highlight was a bouyant ‘You Keep Running Around the Park’, physically illustrated by guitarist Tim Harvey sprinting around the tent’s perimeter in jogging gear. Bizarrely, recent single ‘Bigger Than the Money’ was followed by a desperate plea for everyone to buy the new album which she waved around on-stage. An unhinged Bowditch is clearly aiming tap her inner agonism as a foil to the straight-ahead folksiness of five years ago, which while disorienting on Saturday, is by no means a negative.

AK: Of all the Splendour acts I saw, The Drums was my favourite. Each one of the four gents took to the stage in a different coloured shirt and a whole of cute. I’ve liked their album a lot lately, but what doesn’t translate on wax is lead singer Jonathan Pierce’s personality and sentiment. Clearly a Smiths and Joy Division fan his hip shakin’, hand flickin’, body twistin’, overly theatrical style really suits their lyrics and punchy sound. It didn’t feel contrived. 'Best Friend' – a song about Pierce’s dead best friend – translated so much more poignant live than ever on record. Watching their tambourine player Jonny on 'Don’t Be a Jerk' was like watching cupid jimmy-jangle. It was the campest and cutest display of percussion I have ever seen.  “This song’s about having a lot of fun, it’s the only thing that matters” was how one song was introduced, but that rule applied to them all. I recommend you witness their chirpy ditties in real life, it’s most certainly a lot of fun.


The Drums

MT: I kind of hated the Drums. Nothing turns me off a band more than attempts to avert attention from their overcooked influences with a zany stage presence. I'm all for theatre when the music can demonstrate it, but nothing that the Drums did today shifted the Morrissey-meets-Joy Division template from its rusted on position established when these guys were toddlers. If art is meant to be a window to the soul/mind/life then the Drums' is walled up with LP covers we already know inside out.

AK: Operator no thanks. There were more people walking away from the main stage than there was walking to it for Operator Please. They weren’t entirely bad, they just don’t seem legit I guess. 'Loops' sounded good, as did their “live mashup” in which they asked their audience to partake in a little bit of, “white boy/white girl crumping” but something about the band still doesn’t feel right. 'It’s Just a Song' was terrible, largely due to it’s annoying vocal yelps. They weren’t appalling, but nor were they appealing. 


Bluejuice

MT: Bluejuice have moved past the point of simply being a band and firmly into the "entertainment" business, the kind of spectacle that people tug the shirtsleeves of friends about hurrying along to. Co-vocalists Jake and Stav are formidable showmen, and at this showing, rendered their bandmates near-obsolete as they chewed up the stage. Their gear this evening was decked out in glow-in-the-dark tape, fluro spraypaint and a black banner (all of which Jake later said cost them a measly $400), whilst the dynamic duo were dressed as "Yetis". Which consisted of huge woolly leg warmers, a skin-tight grey legging and groin ensemble - cuffed with fluro bands - and a woolly jacket over bare chests. Like so much of what Bluejuice does, it accentuated the foolishness that lives alongside the bands groove-based meditations on relationship screw ups and various other inner-turmoil, turning self-condemnation into shared cathartic rave-ups. Their crowd spilled far outside the Mix Up tent, 'Vitriol' and 'Broken Leg' getting the kind of hysterical reception that bands far more serious and self-congratulatory would consider their due. Bluejuice just seem to think it's great fun.

AC: There is still something completely revelatory about the UK's Magic Numbers, and after six years of perfecting their live show they were the clear highlight of Saturday’s lineup – the festival slot allowing the band to run through a greatest hits that never was. It’s not often that the adoration increases as a set proceeds, but even those half familiar with the material were reminded just how awesome bassist Michelle Stodart - who mounted the front-of-stage amps with serious intent on several occasions - can be live. ‘Forever Lost’ got a mass singalong, and new song ‘Hurt So Good’ had each half of the tent providing duelling melodies. The main criticism of the band – that the underlying tweeness gets too much after awhile – was completely missing from what edged close to a robust celebration of lovelorn outsiderism. Don’t write them off yet.


Tame Impala

MT: I was curious to see how Tame Impala would hold up in the huge amphitheatre domain. They played as the sun set and it was a perfect slot for them - enough daytime heat haze for their extendable laconic jams to soothe the frontal lobe and enough groove and riffery to suggest the oncoming evening (as well as in more than a few instances, the band following them: Wolfmother). What set the Perth quartet apart however was Kevin Parkers' voice. Honed from touring, his smooth, dreamy croon drifted out as the pole opposite to Andrew Stockdale's shriek, and as such, it bent the fringes of the warm smoke dream Tame Impala inhabit. They're the Beatles locked in a fuzzed up Cream's body. Or just Dungen. Or perfectly expansive and intricate enough without being essential.

AC: Expectations were fairly low for Wolfmother following the Cosmic Egg debacle, but that didn’t stop the band erecting a huge 9-metre tall motif of a sphinx at the main amphitheatre and ambling on regally to play the album’s title track to a lukewarm reception. The appeal of vocalist Andrew Stockdale has always been one or two catchy riffs repeated endlessly, and a 6 minute version of ‘Woman’ proved that his new bandmates could still do the business without completely disappearing into an extended freak out haze. But the truth is that Wolfmother, along with several other mid-decade Modular favourites slotted in over the weekend, are in a terminal popularity spiral. For Stockdale, playing to 10,000 people at Woodford on a drizzly Saturday night probably isn’t a bad way to go out.

Back over at the McLennan tent, the crowd had begun building for the Paul Kelly festival/karaoke show that after last year’s airing at Meredith has taken on legendary status. A hepped up Kelly leapt and bounded from stage to drum kit and back during ‘Careless’ and ‘Sweet Guy’, songs released over 20 years ago, but whose hooks are known to everyone. The “shaking in his seat” line from ‘To Her Door’ prompted the loudest shout-along all weekend, all the more telling given that most of the audience wasn’t born when it was released. But it was an amazing, acapella rendition of ‘Everything’s Turning to White’ performed by Vika Bull that stunned the masses - no mean feat at an event built around boisterous radio acts. That elated feeling on leaving the tent was tempered by the gnawing doubt that a songwriter of Kelly’s calibre will ever be seen in this country again.



MT: Pulled in as a last minute ring-in for exiting UK duo The Ting Tings, Art vs Science seemed like the preferred choice to those around the outer campsites - more than once the sounds of their omnipresent singles rang out via car stereos and shouted singalongs as we moved through the tent city. Having such huge singles presents a set of issues for the band; are people just patiently waiting for the hits? Can they produce more? Is it all just beer chugging and guitar solos? Pausing work on their debut album to appear at Splendour for the third time already, it was at least a moot point at this moment in the greater scheme. By the time the band arrived at 'Friend in the Field' a handful of songs in, girlfriends were on shoulders and a forest of hands waved like reeds in the current. They're one of the few bands on the Mix Up stage to not have to rely on backing or click tracks to perform - fat synths included -  and like Blueuice and Foals before them, this live attitude gave a visceral edge to the trio that would shame most "dance/rock" bands.


Crowd lockout

Leaving Art vs Science to try and catch a glimpse of Florence and the Machine at the amphitheatre stage provided the first hint of troubles with crowd control. Word reached us that the amphitheatre was over capacity and that the gates to the upper and lower levels had been shut. Sure enough when we arrived at the entrance, hundreds of festival goers were jammed around the gates mouth, yelling at security guards to let them in and security guards yelling back at them to move away. Stalemate. At first the slow stream of punters being allowed access seemed to sate the crowd. But when the gate was shut seemingly for good, the locked out crowd swelled to near a thousand. With clear vision of amphitheatre revelers exiting though a side entrance, it proved a tipping point. Voices began screaming for the fence to be pushed over and soon an attempt was made, only for the newly arrived police force to form a supporting force across its side. A megaphone was introduced but ineffectively, and the situation threatened to boil over into violence. Suddenly, and after a good twenty minutes of police telling people they weren't getting in, the gates were opened. Good sense finally reigned. Not to mention Florence Welch's pulling power underlined.


Amphitheatre

AK: I was lucky enough to find myself watching Florence and the Machine from side-of-stage and it was amazing. Welch's evident excitement, bounciness and vocal ability is incredible and just so very likeable. Dressed in a long white witchy-looking wedding dress, complete with hooded cape and signature red hair, Welch stood as some sort of distant talisman to the tens of thousands in her presence. She played her new track 'Strangeness and Charm' amongst a slew of slower ballads, but it was tracks like 'Kiss With a Fist', 'Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)' and 'Dog Days' that were what the punters came for. They say that star power is when all the girls want to be her and all the guys want to be with her. Florence has it.

AC: Staunch Paul Kelly fans Band of Horses are tailor made for festivals given that most of their songs feature massive whoa whoa whoa choruses and widescreen fill-the-room reverb. Even if vocalist Ben Bridwell was drunk and rambling about his “rape” at the hands of a kangaroo before the show (“it’s OK, I fingered it”), stadium tunes like ‘Great Salt Lake’ and ‘No One’s Gonna Love You’ from Everything All the Time are impossible to object to, as they were when the band last played Splendour in 2008. The sameyness accusation doesn’t matter a fig when you’ve only got an hour to play with - as sweet spot after sweet spot cascaded out into the lukewarm night.

AK: Ahh, Julian Casablancas! That wind swept hair, that studded jacket, that accent! The way you stood cradling the microphone. The way you referred to Florence and the Machine as, “Flo and the Mo” and then said that we should all enjoy ourselves but, “no presh!” were moments in itself. The crowd was absolutely off chain for The Strokes and it was pretty special to be standing in the middle of the "cauldron of humanity" as you put it. 'Reptilia' was followed by 'Last Night' before they left the stage only to return shortly after for an encore. Off. Chain.

MT: I've never been a wide-eyed Strokes fan but it's astonishing how firmly the majority of their set has become lodged in the public consciousness. It was hard to tell if the band themselves were going through the motions - such is their laconic calm - but Casablancas at least took the spotlight off them with his nervy quips, chuckles and general focal point. The efforts to recreate his distorted vocals on record just sounded like a busted PA, but as a sea of humans hurled themselves around a field in Queensland to the imagined nightlife, girls and cops of New York City, the moment at least was crystallised.

DAY 1 | DAY 3