Field Report: Your Complete Guide To The Music's Splendour In The Grass Experience
NO SLEEP TILL RIGHT NOW
Splendour In The Grass has come and gone for another year, and, as always, delivered yet another sensational serve of music and arts to sate its faithful punters' appetites.
Sure, it was muddy, slippery and occasionally downright tiresome (gumboots get heavy, man), but there's no denying the astronomical amounts of bliss and positivity that simply shone throughout the festival grounds, even when the sun wouldn't. It's a mammoth undertaking, so to make your catching-up experience even easier, we've gone ahead and compiled all your need-to-read news, reviews and wrap-ups from across the past few days.
Enjoy in the comfort of wherever you are, safe in the knowledge that nobody has to climb that damn hill to The Amphitheatre again for another 12 months — which should be just enough time for our leg muscles to recover to do this all again next year. Thanks for partying with us once more.
artist reviews
This year's festival brought out some of the best international and Aussie acts doing the rounds at the moment — and even a few who used to do the rounds more frequently than they do now, but still proved to be ridiculously entertaining. Catch up on everything you missed below.
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Friday was the rainiest of Splendour's three days this year, but the moisture in the air did nothing to dampen spirits as punters grabbed the bull by the horns and threw down for the event's first day of entertainment, which featured sets from the likes of Tired Lion, Harts, DZ Deathrays, Client Liaison, #1 Dads, Johnny Marr, Death Cab For Cutie, Peking Duk, Mark Ronson and more.
The sun put in an effort for Splendour Saturday, drying out the crowd (if not the ground) and helping to buoy the second day's festivities, delivered with aplomb by acts including Circa Waves, Dune Rats, SAFIA, The Smith Street Band, Meg Mac, The Grates, POND, The Wombats, Dandy Warhols and an incredible finishing performance from Florence & The Machine.
The marathon enters its final leg with Splendour Sunday and its colourful array of artists to keep festival-goers buzzed to the event's dying breaths. From early winners such as Holy Holy, Wolf Alice, Oh Mercy, Last Dinosaurs and The Districts to late-afternoon/evening drawcards big small such as UV Boi, MS MR, Royal Blood, Alison Wonderland, Tame Impala and big-kahunas Blur, the quality never dips - and neither does the enthusiasm.
sights & sounds
Our on-ground team of writers didn't just spend the weekend sinking beers and singing off-key. Yes, they spent a decent amount of the weekend doing that, but Splendour is a multi-faceted festival, with an absolutely eye-popping amount to see and do alongside the usual pastime of hanging out at stages trying to scab a contact high off the dude that seems to be perennially surrounded by weed smoke.
"Watching Melbourne’s Harts ferociously open up the GW McLennan stage at the festival-early hour of 12.30pm, a punter turns to his friend and, with great concern, asks him earnestly, 'Dude, are you going to vomit again?' ... there is no way, at the first act of the first (proper) day of this year’s event at North Byron Parklands, that the word 'again' should have formed any part of that sentence."
"I was casually minding my own business, thinking about the scrumptious Byron Bay Organic Doughnut I had eaten earlier (post me a cheque), when I passed the so-called Tent Of Miracles ... looking at this guy, on stage, playing 'guitar' on a fake machine gun with fake dynamite strapped to his body surrounded by prop explosives and an unbearable sense of self-satisfaction, I have to say, it didn’t seem really all that miraculous."
"Where's my hand sanitiser? This would be some festivalgoers' fourth day without a shower and you really don't wanna get too close to anyone's pits. Some knickers have undoubtedly also been turned inside out out of pure desperation 'cause all other pairs are wet/mingin' so picking up/shagging in tents just isn't an option Day Three: bros before 'hos and chicks before dicks it is, then."
news from the front
did you know...
...On-site legal advice was being dished out to attendees busted by NSW Police drug dogs?
...Mark Ronson was apparently supposed to be DJing in Perth while he was in Byron - only he wasn't?
...NSW Police ended up arresting 92 people on drugs charges, but were overall "pleased" with festival-goers' behaviour?
...Flares were let off during the sets from both Dandy Warhols and Blur, despite absolutely being banned items?
iphoneography
Our ground team were kept pretty busy running between stages and stalls over the weekend, but found the time to capture some of the weirder and more wonderful things they happened across during Splendour 2015 - see below for a small sample of shots posted to Instagram throughout the event, and check our full page to see the whole spread of moments.
after more? we got you, fam! check out our artist galleries, featuring pics from some of the music's finest festival snappers: day one pt i || day one pt ii || day two pt i || day two pt ii || day three
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