Live Review: Mullum Music Festival

It’s a great feeling returning to the usually sleepy township of Mullumbimby during the annual Mullum Music Festival. It’s a beautiful, restful place any time you drop by, but you know that for one weekend a year it’s transformed into a vibrant mecca of music and community, and during that window there’s no better place to be.

Friday

With seven venues scattered throughout the township — all within walking distance and accessible with a single wristband — we open proceedings in Village Vanguard, which is located inside the Mullumbimby RSL, a slightly incongruous place to see The Drones’ frontman Gareth Liddiard in solo mode given the nature of his foreboding and brutal narratives, but such is Mullum.

He ushers everyone closer to the stage and rows of chairs spring to life and move in a wave towards him, Liddiard now surrounded entirely as he splays on a stool and strangles the anguishing words out of tunes such as the harrowing Oh My, the sombre Highplains Mailman and the downright disturbing Strange Tourist. In between songs, he belies the intensity of his performance by bantering good-naturedly with wags in the crowd, throwing in covers of Warren Zevon’s My Shit’s Fucked Up and Townes Van Zandt’s Lungs amid his own chestnuts like Shark Fin Blues and a vehement take on recent single Taman Shud that bubbles with a fierce new energy in this stripped-back format.

We wander up the road to the high school — eschewing for now the Magic Bus offering free rides and a mobile party — and find a massive crowd enthralled by the soaring majesty of young Melbourne dynamo Tash Sultana. All of the songs begin in a slow build as she captures sounds and assembles the aural components that she constructs with loops into the skeletal structures, exuding a wild charisma as she dances around and swaps between guitars, synth, panpipes and numerous other instruments with equal dexterity. Her vocals are massive and bombastic but can also be intimate when required, especially during her heartfelt paean to a lost relative, Harvest Love.

Back down at the Bowlo stage, Riverina singer-songwriter William Crighton is staving off illness (which will later manifest as pneumonia and sadly make him miss later festival commitments), but with the help of his band and an adoring crowd he soldiers on manfully and delivers a strong set of passionate, visceral Australiana. When he leaves the stage and comes down into the semi-darkness of the dancefloor to deliver an unamplified solo rendition of Woman Like You — with some subtle harp backing from his drummer — you could hear a pin drop, transfixed punters hanging on every syllable. The beautiful Riverina Kid is delivered completely on his lonesome, but he afterwards returns to full-band construct for the full-tilt boogie of 999, which suddenly has everyone dancing, and when he’s coaxed back for an encore an exhausted Crighton has the whole room cheerfully whistling along to a song about how we’re all going to die; surely, the sign of a captivating storyteller.

We head back down to Civic Hall, which seems the nucleus of the Mullum experience, to find Henry Wagons & The Only Children in full flight, the typically bombastic Wagons rocking his trademark gold jacket, whipping up the crowd to get involved with tunes like the heavily countrified Head Or Heart and the powerful cover of Elvis Presley’s Never Been To Spain that he long ago made his own. During the rollicking Only Sane Motherfucker, he jumps from the stage into the crowd and starts cajoling them to party from within their own ranks, dancing and serenading and coercing fun like a consummate professional. They throw in a stomping cover of The Boss’ State Trooper and then smash through I Blew It with enough abandon to elicit a mass of dancing at the front of the room — it’s always so enjoyable just watching people let loose and have fun — and then finish the frivolities with country music party anthem Willie Nelson, a fitting end to Friday’s festivities.

Saturday

After a wonderfully lazy morning we’re soon back into the music, picking up proceedings at Courthouse Hotel where Melbourne Americana artist Suzannah Espie — the Mullum festival veteran privileged to be this year’s official patron — is in full flight to a packed pub throng. At one point she gets six local female singer-songwriters to join her on stage to run through Woody Guthrie’s Ramblin’ Round, and the seven meshed voices and lightly picked acoustic guitar intertwine to give a wonderful, old-world feel. The backing vocalists stay on for Espie original I Wish I Had A Sister, but the gig’s high point comes later during an emotional rendition of recent single I’m Sorry — an incredibly moving moment.

Back in Village Vanguard, Blue Mountains-bred, Sydney-based indie-folk artist Julia Jacklin opens with the fragile and heartfelt Leadlight, setting the tone for the rest of her sultry and beguiling set. Fronting her four-piece band, Jacklin mines affairs of the heart for their full emotional heft in songs like Coming Of Age and Motherland, before taking a turn in solo mode for the unabashed sincerity of LA Dream.

Her smoky voice permeates painful vistas on tunes like the insightful Pool Party and the contemplative Hay Plain, while the title track from her recent debut album Don’t Let The Kids Win, which closes her accomplished performance, is rife with deep introspection to the point where it verges on existentialism, but it’s all beautifully couched and resonates perfectly.

At the end of Jacklin’s set, Byron Bay’s ‘80s-themed flash mob The Cassettes — comprising seven or eight ladies and a lone bloke — burst into the room wearing camouflage army fatigues and sporting super-soakers, their portable PA soon pumping out Pat Benatar’s Love Is A Battlefield as choreographed mayhem envelops the dancefloor. With a sudden flurry, the army gear is removed en masse at the track’s conclusion to reveal a sea of DayGlo outfits and legwarmers and the party continues with wild routines set to Madonna’s Express Yourself. It’s like the ‘80s never ended, and you can’t help but laugh at their enthusiasm and absurdity as much as anything else.

We settle in at Village Vanguard for another set by Gareth Liddiard, the crowd larger this time with the room almost at capacity but the performance losing none of it’s vitriol or spark. He forgets the words to Oh My early on before giving up in a flurry of laughter, then has to fill a couple of minutes with banter so that he’s not playing at 6pm when the RSL plays the traditional Last Post/Ode To Remembrance, immediately following that sombre moment with Taman Shud (and its lines like “I don’t give a fuck about no Anzacery” and “I ain’t sitting around being Gallipolised”), the timing making that scathing song seem even more punk than usual. He throws in The Drones’ I Don’t Ever Want To Change towards the end but, for the most part, follows last night’s setlist, and it’s just as mesmerising second time through. So much of the music at events like these can be about ignoring or escaping life’s travails, but Liddiard is all about confronting them head-on and it feels just as appropriate.

Suddenly you’re no longer in a small town on the outskirts of human society ... but you’ve been transported to another time and place entirely: here lies the ceaseless beauty of music.

We stick around to catch star-studded bluegrass ensemble The Wilson Pickers bring more old-world charm to proceedings with their amalgam of voice, strings and harp. The five friends display a well-worn simpatico and take turn to drive proceedings, songs like Cold River, Graves Or Gold and Turn To Stone all seeming like they could have emanated generations ago. While the group’s singer-songwriters may all have higher profiles, the band’s secret weapon is multi-instrumentalist John Bedggood, who brings well-heeled musical diversity to the table. On today’s showing you can see why their recent album, You Can’t Catch Fish From A Train, has once again found them nominated for Best Blues & Roots Album at next week’s ARIAs.

Still in Village Vanguard, we catch vagabond Melbourne ensemble Vulgargrad belting out old songs favoured by Russian thieves and the criminal underclass, singer Jacek Koman’s gravelly voice sounding like it could strip paint and adding tremendous authenticity. The foreign language of these ancient missives proves no barrier, and they’re delivered so well it’s like stepping through a time portal. Indeed, so much about Mullum’s immense charm is about this capturing of different moods, the artists prepared to usher you away to different eras, epochs and places, and all you have to do is surrender and suddenly you’re no longer in a small town on the outskirts of human society (in a geographical sense) but you’ve been transported to another time and place entirely: here lies the ceaseless beauty of music.

We finish our night by wandering over to Civic Hall once more to catch Idahoan singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell hold court and, although she’s far away from home, she seems completely at ease in this most rustic environment. Her old-timey band offer the perfect accompaniment for her dusty brand of Americana, the imagery of songs like Boundary County just as evocative here as in her native northwest. Her sound is lush and diverse — touching upon jazz, blues, classic country and even rock throughout the course of her accomplished performance — but her appeal lies as much in her open, welcoming nature as it does in her strong songs and adroit musicianship. She finishes with Otis Rush cover You Know My Love and has people dancing joyously, hooting and hollering in appreciation. A great way to end a scintillating day of music.

Sunday

It’s a tradition that on the Sunday of MMF local musicians of all persuasions grab their weapon of choice and participate in a New Orleans-style Street Parade to kick off the last day of the shindig, a multitude of brass players leading the charge as the eclectic and colourful ragtag bunch wander through the town’s main drag belting out standards such as When The Saints Go Marching In and Down By The Riverside, interspersed with more left-field classics such as the ever-vibrant ‘50s Latin lurch of Tequila. It’s just one massive explosion of joy in the streets, where for 20-odd minutes, music is everyone’s sole priority or concern; there should be more of it.

At midday, Village Vanguard becomes home to some meta melding of musical minds in the form of The Sonic Lab’s Bread & Butter sessions, which finds often disparate artists from the festival’s fertile bill joining forces for a one-off foray to see where their shared vision may take them. It begins with Yirrmal — the Indigenous singer-songwriter from North East Arnhem Land — leading the ‘all star choir’ (basically everyone else involved in the sessions) through an amazing version of Neil Murray’s My Island Home, his voice massive and ultra-expressive whether singing in English or his native tongue.

Yirrmal and Áine Tyrrell then team up on Shane Howard co-write The Bridge, and the next hour continues in this revolving-door fashion: among many highlights, we’re treated to Claire Anne Taylor and JoJo Smith nailing Neil Young’s Comes A Time, Andrew Morris and Suzannah Espie doing their best Kenny and Dolly impressions on Islands In The Stream and Liz Stringer and Ben Wilson running through Tom Petty’s You Wreck Me. Too much fun.

We hang around and watch some more of The Wilson Pickers, then head down to the Bowlo to see Liz Stringer in action on her own terms, leading her band through a selection of inherently Aussie country-tinged rock. She focuses on tracks from recent album All The Bridges, songs like Live On Love and Half-Filled Cup slotting seamlessly into her set, throwing in a cover herself (which she admits is a rarity) in the form of Icehouse’s Great Southern Land before finishing with one of her own older numbers, Ain’t No Healer.

Itinerant songwriting machine Jordie Lane has been the busiest person in Mullum this weekend — performing with his full band, in duo mode and as a solo act at different stages of the party — and it’s in this latter form that we find him playing to a full house at Village Vanguard. He is abetted by partner-in-crime Clare Reynolds throughout, the pair feeding off each other vocally with Reynolds bashing on things sporadically for percussive effect and, although their stream of originals go down a treat, the most memorable part of the set occurs when they offer a gorgeously hushed rendition of You Are My Sunshine, getting the crowd to sing a melancholic version of the refrain before segueing it briefly into Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower and back again. Weird but wonderful.

Our festival comes to a close at Civic Hall where young Memphis talent Julien Baker is playing one of her first shows on Australian soil, wringing notes out of her electric guitar as she offers beautiful tales of loss, redemption, heartbreak and solitude to a hushed and respectful audience. Between songs, Baker seems reticent, almost shy, but once into a number she inhabits it completely, and fills the hall with her anguish, her heart-wrenching visions completely mesmeric.

She runs through a slew of tunes from her recent solo debut Sprained Ankle such as Rejoice, Good News and Something, and, despite their often challenging content, they’re all delivered with a hushed beauty, which envelops like a velvet caress. Old Carter Family classic Keep On The Sunny Side makes an appearance, but it’s Baker’s own unwavering introspection that is ultimately so powerful and steals tonight’s show.

And while our specific Mullum Music Festival experience may be done and dusted for another year, the party rages on into the night, people still amongst the action trying to fit in one last magical moment before reality returns tomorrow with all of its attendant rules and responsibilities. But, for now, that’s still a long way off.