Live review: Laneway Festival

06 February 2012

The biggest problem with Laneway Festival is that, despite rushing from stage to stage like a madman, you can’t possibly see all the acts you’d planned to. Unlike Big Day Out, which is curated to appeal to a wide-range of tastes, and Homebake, where the lineup is unified by nationality not genre, Laneway is very much a niche festival, albeit a sizeable, P4K-y niche. These timetable issues actually helped the flow of the festival; with audiences divided fairly evenly into thirds, that usual festival crush was non-existent.

Pains Of Being Pure At Heart were on at an unreasonable 1:30pm, and enjoyed by far the best sound mix of the day; their Billy Corgan-meets-Belle and Sebastian sound was massive but never muddy, the vocals were clear as a bell, and by the end of their set the audience at the Car Park Stage had filled out substantially. Neil Finn’s Pajama Club seem to be going the low-key route; where Finn could have dined out on the Distant Sun bridge forever, he seems content playing Flying Nun-esque pop mid-afternoon to a smallish audience. His wife, Sharon Finn is the star of the show; her bass lines anchor the songs and add a sexy, serpentine quality to the band’s sound. Givers and Portugal. The Man were similar in sound and attitude, if not scope. It makes perfect sense the two are playing sideshows together, but Portugal were far more impressive; their psychedelic, epic sound losing nothing in a festival setting.

San Francisco’s Girls are usually unimpressive live, but seemed to shine in this setting. Frontman Christopher Owens appeared a lot more confidence this tour; instead of hiding behind a sea of hair and reverb, he relished his frontman roll, proving himself more than capable of holding an audience. Anna Calvi played to a surprisingly small crowd, but enjoyed by far the most attention from photographers (obviously due to her personality). She showcased her formidable and oft-hidden shredding skills; of all the acts to play guitar hero at Laneway, my money would not have been on the dainty Calvi.

The Horrors eschewed in the epic portion of the evening with a set that weaved glide guitars into a wall of sound, all anchored by Faris Badwan’s ever-impressive vocals. Luckily, the mix on the Car Park Stage seemed to highlight the shoegaze elements, rather than burying them, as is the case with most outdoor setups. M83 closed the stage, with a euphoric set that stuck mostly to material from double set Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. Kim and Jessie from Saturdays=Youth was substantially slowed down, trading the visceral rush of the album version for a subdued, stoned sound. Anthony Gonzalez was clearly elated throughout the set, yelling ‘Sydney’ numerous times, running around the stage like an excited kid towards the end of the evening, and generally feeding off the waves of energy from the crowd. Midnight City was undoubtedly the highlight, and as the saxophonist entered the stage and curled into the outro solo, I swear I saw Molly Ringwald standing in the audience, just taking it all in...