Live Review: Laneway Festival

The smell of Texan BBQ fills the air as we walk to the gates of the Sydney College Of The Arts, and we watch a girl totally eat shit on the gravel outside. We come into the art installation area and are greeted with a huge stuffed dead horse installation — uhhhh nice? The sounds of Georgia Maq from Camp Cope's emotive vocals filter over the beats of some producer and it makes for an odd sound. As a Laneway Festival first timer (don't tease), SCA seems like a lovely venue for a festival like this. There are grassy knolls, gorgeous sandstone buildings and plenty of palm trees, and true to its name, plenty of nooks and crannies turned into bars and chill out areas. The Jameson Good Times Trailer Park is a cool little Astro-turfed area, while the Pretty Important Person indoor bar is housed in an old rustic gallery with myriad interesting art installations (there’s a giant rose gold mirror).

After thoroughly admiring a dude's magnificent blue and green sequined jacket (literally peacock coloured) and frowning at another dude's native American headdress (still, man?) at the Park Stage, we head over to Spinning Top to catch our first act, Koi Child. Their chill nu-jazz is perfect to cool down this Sydney crowd who are just getting used to the recent fucking-off of cloud cover. Not bringing a hat was a terrible idea. The band's brass section are grooving hard and singer Cruz Patterson compliments a dude on the very brave choice to wear a red flowered kimono. It's a task in itself observing everyone's fashion choices — someone is literally wearing a garbage bag and a gold bejewelled bike helmet. 1-5-9 is a massive party-starter.

NAO is killing it with her saccharine vocals over at Garden Stage — and we mean killing it. Without knowing what we're walking into we've discovered a seriously amazing set of pipes, shown off in songs like Adore You. Wearing what looks like a traditional African-print two-piece, NAO's dance moves and crowd interaction make her a total package. Not sure why, but it surprises us to find that her speaking voice is just as sweet — and adorable, thanks to the British accent. There appears to be quite a few curious people in this crowd new to NAO, but it's probably safe to say they're leaving converted.

We use this break before Dune Rats to grab some food in the food truck village, alongside the Le Petit Rosé Bar which has deck chairs, umbrellas and a vertical garden set-up. Cloud cover is coming and going but the humidity is a pain in the ass — it's at 60% and most of us can hardly get our beaded foreheads dry.

Australia's favourite stoners Dune Rats put down the metaphorical (probably literal) bong long enough to take to the stage to huge cheers. "Thanks for coming out, it's fucken hot aye," singer Danny Beusa practically slurs. Their first song Dalai Lama, Big Banana, Marijuana literally has the hook "Marijuana! Marijuana!" but the crowd is loving it; there are parasols flying in the air and bubbles being blown. The boys are riding high from the release of The Kids Will Know It's Bullshit at the moment, and thanks to an album feature on triple j, many punters know the lyrics already. We boogie to a cover of Blister In The Sun and WOOO and this set is clearly a time for those surf and skate grommets to shine. The band invite a couple of front barrier punters "who look parched" to do a few shoeys on stage, which leads straight into a massive Scott Green. The echoes of Bullshit ring around the main stages and punters bail from the toilet line to catch the song.

Suddenly a random dude hits on me; we banter for a few minutes and at his inability to take "not interested" for an answer, I give him an entirely fake mobile number with the entirely fake name of Cobain. Sorry, bud. Like I said, it's the surf and skate grommets' time to shine here at Dune Rats. Hope I don’t run into him later.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard manage to cram their entire band into the Park Stage and tear into their noisy, busy brand of psychedelic rock. Shoes and bucket hats are thrown into the air in jest and the peacock-jacketed punter from before is backflipping in the mosh. He's our favourite. As expected, it's a little hard to tell when one song goes to the next, but when that’s what the ARIA-winning band have excelled so well at, who are we to critique? Is the member stage left playing an ocarina? An harmonica? Or just beat boxing? We can't tell from the cupped hands around his microphone. The crowd are digging the band's raucous, manic sound and it seems punters are keener now to party since the arvo breeze has started to flow in.

The Future Classic stage is starting to get pretty packed-out for buzz act Sampa The Great. Rhymes flow effortlessly out of the petite frontwoman as usual and she's got her new caped uniform on to coincide with her whole HERoes concept. The band's future soul sound is easy to move to and the best part is Sampa's strong feminist message. The stage is packed all the way back with grooving people. She really is great.

David Le’aupepe and his mane saunter out for their set as the sun is low in the sky, bathing everyone in a beautiful glow. "Sydney, we are Gang Of Youths from Sydney," he bellows, and there's no denying they possess the star power required to see them continually play main stages. Their bass and drums rumble outwards in songs like Radioface and Poison Drum, the crowd's voices echoing around the grounds.

Visibility at Spinning Top is absolute rubbish at this point in the day — it's so packed our only hope of seeing DD Dumbo is on the large LCD screen. Satan is our starter, though the band are happy to jam a little between songs. Oliver Hugh Perry’s almost quivering, visceral vocal quality carries over beautifully live from the record, and he sings with a wide, glassy-eyed expression on his face. There are tons of punters on shoulders (sheer necessity, really) and one guy is even in a tree. The band's guitar and key lines are tight in songs like Walrus and though this deep in the throng people are chatting and catching up, the front and centre section is engaged and excitable. The crowd does start to thin out towards the back, presumably because people are heading to Tycho, whose set time perfectly clashes over DD Dumbo's.

The hills are entirely packed ready for the day's headliners on both the Park and Garden stages. The hills are actually really steep so it's surprising no one has tumbled down headfirst. Tash Sultana takes the stage and cheers burst out all the way up here — she waves like a new queen. Sultana's astronomical rise is hard to fathom sometimes: she's gone from getting signed to headlining major festivals in only a year. Harmonising candidly with her loop pedal, the warm strums of a song we don't recognise are the first to ring out. The wind flies through her dreads and the view up towards the hill must look stunning as the sun sets. More material we don't recognise next — if this is the taste to a Notion EP follow-up, it's bass-heavy and very interesting. She builds and builds with sample pads, beatboxing, reverb-heavy guitars, keys and even a pan flute, suddenly tearing away from the soundscape to shred on the electric guitar. Notion and Jungle, of course, are what punters came to see and go down super sweet.

Glass Animals kick off with the Bollywood-esque Life Itself to an entirely packed main stage area. The quartet are immediately there to have fun — singer Dave Bayley is fist-pumping and hip-popping the entire time. The mix is a bit strange and rises in volume at certain parts of the song, but this is soon fixed. Their tunes are so fun and absolutely perfect for a festival crowd and, as if to confirm, a punter thrusts up a white plastic chair from the pit, swinging it up and down, while another person has a hula hoop. The opening chords of the glitchy, 8-bit influenced Season 2 Episode 3 sends cheers up as Bayley puts down his guitar to lean closer to the pit. He's a great frontman — enigmatic, active, knows how to work the crowd and best of all, is clearly passionate about it. Their snappy drum beats, crisp synths and percussive flourishes makes their sound pretty unique in the genre and the crowd eats up everything off How To Be A Human Being. Pork Soda is saved for last — when Bayley pulls out a pineapple, holding it aloft as he dances. Best set all day. 

Nick Murphy's crowd is drastically smaller than Glass Animals’, with most of the Park Stage emptying after the Englishmen. Is it possible people still haven't clicked about Murphy's new name? We wonder if he'll address the name change on stage. He's bearded once more, with an epilepsy-inducing light show to back him as he and the band kick into Gold. It's a solid set with a slew of hits like Marcus Marr collab The Trouble With Us, Talk Is Cheap and eight-minute long epic Stop Me (Stop You).

As the clock strikes nine, phat ambient sounds greet us — prepare us — for Tame Impala. The main stages have once again filled out with all manner of intoxicated people and the band break out into Let It Happen. It all happens at once: a drunk dancing patron smashes into our shoulders, we realise there are people dancing on top of the sound tent and some guy carries a mattress into the thick of the pit. Such is the magic of Kevin Parker. When the synth lines take hold of the song, Parker appears a little awkward and looking for something to do, but when he's back on the mic amping us for the drop, we're treated with a massive confetti canon shower. Inflatable eyeballs are being batted around and a guy has made a point to create and lug around a life-sized cutout of himself so he's waving himself in the air — Tame Impala offer a soundtrack to these shenanigans for an hour. We hear Mind Mischief, The Moment (before which Parker announces Laneway is his "favourite festival in the whole world"), Eventually and The Less I Know The Better — all their best loved hits and then some.

It's an incredibly well-run festival — given the calibre and number of acts, it's heartening to see the stages run on time without technical glitches (at least, none we've seen) all day. Signs directing troubled punters to dial 1800 LANEWAY if there are any issues are plenty, as are food stands, themed bars and toilets. A perfect summer festival.