Live Review: Splendour In The Grass, Day Two - North Byron Parklands

27 July 2014 | 1:04 pm | Mitch Knox

An "utterly enchanted" day two

More Splendour In The Grass More Splendour In The Grass

I’m not sure if it’s just exhaustion-induced delirium that’s making me feel/say this, but as I sit here writing to you on this damp and wintry Saturday night (technically Sunday morning), I’m struck by the thought that today very well may have been one of the best days I have ever had at a Splendour In The Grass festival.


This is despite the fact that, going in, I could count on one hand the number of acts on this year’s line-up that were able to evoke anything close to an emotional response (or, really, just a response at all), and has everything to do with the fact that, going out, that statistic had changed considerably.

Festivals are what you make of them; it’s easy for Splendour to turn into a three-day sadgasm if you get all hung up on every little shitty thing that happens to you or every little shitty band that isn’t on the bill that you wish totally was. In contrast to what your mother taught you, it’s kind of impossible to make decent lemonade when all you’ve got on your person are sour lemons.
Bearing that in mind, once I arrive at the grounds (on easily the most picturesque Saturday morning in recent Splendour history) for Day Two, making my way past the giant, inflatable shark and the similarly giant and inflatable Lionel Richie’s Head, the first guy I see is wearing a very honest T-shirt that reads, “I’M FAT – LET’S PARTY,” and I make a promise to myself to have at least as much fun as he does today, and set off for my first mystery act, Tora.
As it turns out, this luminous Byron Bay-bred electro-pop five-piece – triple j’s Unearthed Splendour comp winners for the year alongside fellow up-and-comer Airling – are an ideal note on which to start proceedings: energetic without being raucous; relaxed without being sedate.  These Eyes, a staple of the Unearthed station and occasional drop-in on triple j’s main broadcast channel, sells the band’s strengths with ease as the not-insignificant crowd before them laps up the grooves.
Sure, the vibe isn’t exactly at “10pm at the Amphitheatre” heights, but I’ve seen much bigger bands in this exact spot struggling to hold people’s attention with far greater trouble than this young and already-accomplished act.

"Its dancy-yet-angular-and-aggressive disco-beat composition."

On to Circa Waves, a group of endearing, evocative Liverpudlians who were just as much of an enigma to me, before, over the course of their set, I ended up walking away scrawling “get more Circa Waves” onto the back of my hand in pen. Seriously, whatever infectious disease they have is impossible not to catch; as a beach ball bounces back-and-forth overhead, they seamlessly work their way through their list of polished indie-rock ebullience, including next single So Long – which the band only half-jokingly plug as a “Splendour exclusive” – and freshly finished track Forget About It, which is an absolute highlight in its dancy-yet-angular-and-aggressive disco-beat composition. Things wrap up with energetic and jangly crowd-pleaser Get Away, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what we want to do, after a set of that quality.

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The 1975Fellow Brit act du jour The 1975 suffer a belated start to their set – “for reasons beyond our control”, in fairness – and, despite the mass of shrieking young folks eagerly waiting in front of them, never quite seem to recover to be able to hit the performance heights for which they’ve been so enthusiastically renowned of late and which we know they are truly capable.
(Side note: maybe I was just still riding high on the wave following the Amphitheatre pit’s sing-along to Toto’s Africa, which was playing on the PA while we were waiting for The 1975 to start, because that… that was simply epic.)
To be totally honest, sugar-voiced, dreamy frontman Matthew Healy, with shirt unbuttoned to mirror-checked precision so that only the top of his totally bitchin’ chest tattoo peeks out, seems more concerned about making women swoon than actually putting on a good performance or staying on key, at least early on – but they pull it together to execute an assured set that features mononymous highlights such as Talk!, Pressure, Chocolate, Sex, and – what else? – Girls, which is taken in with exceedingly shrill pleasure by the band’s fans.
Actually, you know what? Maybe I’m just not the right demographic for The Perks Of Being A Wallflower in band form. At the end of the day, the people who loved this show really loved this show, and that should matter more than bemused criticism from a man flummoxed by chest tattoos and Healy’s jarring Ezra Miller/faux-French aesthetic that he’s got going on.
However, do you know what I am the right demographic for? Future Islands. Holy. Shit. Far and away, this was the set of the day for me. The cult US synth-pop outfit have an incredible energy and stage presence that is incontrovertibly unmatched by any of the peers with whom they share bill space at this festival.

"In the interest of full disclosure, you should know – I fucking hate Tune-Yards."

Why is it always the dudes that look nothing like the guy from The 1975 who always end up being the most entertaining on stage? Just look at Tim Harrington from Les Savy Fav, and you get a good idea of the school of showmanship to which balding, buttoned-shirt-wearing Future Islands frontman Samuel Herring ascribes. The man is nothing short of a revelation – emotionally and physically engaging, his sensuous dance moves during second song Sun In The Morning – and consequently the rest of the set – are a true cause for smiles, while mid-set highlights Tin Man and Long Flight keep the energy flowing freely on the way to their triumphant rendition of most recent single Seasons (Waiting On You).
On the other end of the spectrum, however… there’s Tune-Yards (I’m not typing it like a 14-year-old’s oNlInE hAnDlE, sorry. I am not doing it. I am upset that more people are not asking 35-year-old Merrill Garbus or her collaborator Nate Brenner why she decided it was a good plan). In the interest of full disclosure, you should know – I fucking hate Tune-Yards. I cannot stand that Water Fountain song, to which, yes, we were subjected in the course of the live performance.
As far as I am concerned, hell is pretty close to being forced to listen to a nasal-voiced white woman act like she’s African for an hour, but whatever. Internet elitists love this shit, so I thought maybe if I saw it in the flesh I would be better placed to appreciate the appeal.
And, look, like The 1975 before this, the people who are into it are super into it. Garbus is a delight on stage, technically, all joyousness and colour and bounce and volume – and, to her credit, Jesus, does she achieve some volume – it’s just that, to these ears, it sounds like a dying giraffe being fucked by a drum circle, which is at least in theme with the whole African undertone in their work. Good for them.

FoalsFestival vets and last-minute Two Door Cinema Club replacements Foals are probably the least surprising act of the day, if only because of all the bands I have taken in, it is Foals with which I am most familiar. They are uniformly solid live performers, increasingly so as their career has gone on, though I will always have a soft spot for material from their debut full-length, Antidotes. Like-minded fans aren’t left totally wanting – we’re treated to a truly massive-sounding rendition of Red Socks Pugie, which, despite objectively being a far superior song, fails to get the kind of involved audience movement/response achieved by their much, much shittier single, My Number, taken from third LP Holy Fire.
However, they can’t just play Antidotes tracks forever, and so their set is actually a considered journey throughout their three-album catalogue, with cuts appearing not only from the bookend releases but warmly received sophomore effort Total Life Forever, too, making the whole thing take on something of a Foals-retrospective kind of vibe, which, as the day grows late, is a welcome soundtrack indeed.
Aussie man-of-the-moment Vance Joy is going to struggle to emerge from the shadow of his world-beating hit Riptide. That much is clear, watching him at the GW McLennan Tent, doing his darnedest to convince the sceptics in the crowd that he’s more than a one-hit wonder. He does pretty well, too – Joy is unquestionably a talented composer and performer, and that fact, along with his new single Mess Is Mine, certainly does much to help his chances at longevity, but the truth remains that Riptide’s response utterly dwarfs anything else the crowd puts forward for the captivating Joy, and it was hard to ignore the palpable air of expectation that hung over the set until he busted it out.
Finally, there are few more sublime notes on which to end a day of high-quality music than a session with City & Colour, and this closing Amphitheatre-stage set is an absolute testament to frontman Dallas Green’s ability to make the largest of spaces and most voluminous of audiences still feel like part of the world’s most intimate gig.

"Regardless, Green and band – and, at one stage, just Green – do a wonderful job as makeshift headliners."

Green’s voice, remarkably unaffected from his years flat-out abusing his vocal cords in Alexisonfire, is world-class, and I stand there in the lightly falling rain (it was bound to happen eventually) nothing short of utterly enchanted from the get-go, with instantly affecting opener Thirst setting the standard for what falls short of earning the honour of being set of the day only because Future Islands were so impossibly excellent.

Regardless, Green and band – and, at one stage, just Green – do a wonderful job as makeshift headliners, with another highlight (if we’re not considering the entire set a “highlight”) coming in the form of the melodiously sublime
Comin’ Home
. Sure, Foals might have ended the night on a more party-hearty note, or, given the small-country’s worth of people that attended their set earlier in the day, even Aussie heroes Violent Soho could have made perfectly capable headliners for the day.

Still, there’s nothing wrong with a relaxed finish to a marathon, and as I make my way back to my car to crash out for the evening, I find myself thinking of the fat guy in the self-aware T-shirt, and hoping that he had as celebratory and rambunctious a day as I did.