Live Review: Groovin The Moo Maitland

Punters have already packed out Maitland Showgrounds just half an hour after doors. Probably to stave off ongoing Coachella FOMO, festivalgoers male and female have donned florals, boho prints, boxer braids, beaded/velvet/sequinned shirts, legionnaire hats and the odd cow costume (we saw three) to ring in the first of six Groovin The Moo events. We're blessed with a bit of cloud cover but a chilling wind, though it only bothers those wearing huge hats that keep blowing off. Suckers. 

By the time we're in, L-FRESH The LION has the crowd riled up, bringing out female flow-dropper Mirrah to spit some rhymes. Finishing off with an explosive Get Mine, we head over to Moolin Rouge to catch young up-and-comer Wafia. A solid crowd awaits her, though all very young and a bit distracted. Supported by a producer, Wafia's vocals are strong and stunning, and cuts like Window Seat and some new tracks showcase the singer's remarkable potential. When she speaks she's quiet as a mouse, but ripping into an amazing performance of Heartburn she commands the crowd like a veteran. It's met with cheers and an aforementioned cow on someone's shoulders. 

Harts — fresh from losing his mentor Prince — honoured the legendary musician by bringing the rock'n'roll hard and fast to Maitland. Accompanied by just a drummer and his own keys, Harts amps up the crowd regularly by asking, "Are you guys feeling funky?!" People are loving jams like Red & Blue, taking Harts up on every opportunity to sing back "Whoo!" As the LED screen changes to a photo of Prince pointing up to the sky, Harts says, "It's been a hard couple of days. I lost my biggest musical idol, Prince. He was a great man and a legendary artist and a good friend of mine. I wanna dedicate this one to Prince, he's watching over us right now." As fans cheer and dance away to Prince's memory, Harts turns to play facing the photo of Prince. 

Organisation-wise, GTM have kept an environmentally friendly stance front of mind. The stages are sectioned off as booze-free areas, while a $1 discount is given to anyone bringing cans back to the bars — an incentive to curtail littering as well as encourage recycling. There's plenty of loos and plenty of food, everything from gozleme to schnitzel to pulled pork, and bars look fairly fast-moving. 

The crowd is immense for favourites DZ Deathrays — fists are pumping and folks are getting down to Less Out Of Sync. A few tracks in, the heavens open and there's a mass exodus from the pit, but the diehards remain to mosh in the rain harder than ever. The band are tight — especially when they play Blur's Song 2 —  and it's no surprise they're as loved as they are. 

The Moolin Rouge is ready to party when British India come on (Alex Dyson DJing does a good job of warming them up, dropping tracks like Empire State Of Mind). They bust into Black & White Radio and it's boisterous and bold; later Plastic Souvenirs elicits a huge singalong of "Don't you hang up! Don't you hang up on me!" Run The Red Light and Summer Forgive Me are other crowd-pleasers and punters yell the band's lyrics back to them in exhilaration. A Killing In The Name cover sparks about six different circle pits (one right behind us!) and we back away slowly. 

SAFIA takes to a packed out mainstage, first with an atmospheric intro that slowly turns into a phat throb. The trio are keen to lead punters into a mid-afternoon dance and their tunes are just chilled enough to put people in that mindset, before the night's sets start to ramp up. Lead singer Ben Woolner's trademark twang lead us into Paranoia, Ghosts & Other Sounds, the band finally taking the time to introduce themselves to GTM before the beat drops. A rainbow appears over the Channel V stage and we hope that's the last of the rain we've seen all day. The mosh has offered up the most people on shoulders that we've seen all day — an offering to the electro gods. 

Over in the Moolin Rouge, the atmosphere has gotten manic for What So Not. A massive rave has broken out — pink, purple and green strobes power thousands of tripping kids so they can let go of any exhaustion they may have collected throughout the day. A few people start jumping the fence back into the bar area to escape the frenzy, forgoing the huge bottleneck that's formed to get into this stage, while we see a couple of people pulled out of the pit and attended to by St John's. It's hard to see the trap king through the haze of smoke and dancing punters, but it's clear everyone's having a good time in the kingdom of What So Not. George Maple is brought out and together they pay tribute to Prince with Purple Rain, lights purple in solidarity. 

When teen girls are running for their life towards the mainstage, you know Twenty One Pilots have started and are playing Stressed Out. The powerhouse duo know how to put on a show — drummer Josh Dun is all huge, snappy movements, backflips and a big smile, while singer Tyler Joseph, caped in a flowy plaid shirt, peacocks around to steal all our attention. Trap-influenced cut Polarize and dub-esque Ride are tops to hear live, but their set is really just a great showcase of the myriad genres — rap, reggae, rock, drum'n'bass, grime — they seem to encompass, and so well. Donning a balaclava, eerie amid the dry ice, Joseph switches between the bass, piano and a guitar. Twenty One Pilots' show is a huge affair and rightly so. 

The Rubens kick off their set to the bluesy Hold Me Back, followed straight after with The Night Is On My Side. With galaxies and psychedelia swirling throughout their huge logo behind them, The Rubens deliver huge production value. The main stage seems nearly at capacity to watch the Hottest 100 winners, but apart from a throng of arm-waving fans up the front, not everyone is focused or engaging with the band, instead chatting away — the slow-tempo Easy To Love and Lay It Down this early in the set might not be the best song choices to amp up the crowd, though the latter does elicit a solid singalong. The band are tight, intuitive of each other and seasoned performers, but between songs there's a bit of awkwardness in the air. They tweak their instruments and there's silence after that for a bit too long, like they don't know what to play next or know what they wanna say to the crowd. Later Sam Margin explains, "My guitar is broken so talk amongst yourselves." My Gun and Switchblade serve to be crowd favourites, and the crowd lap up Cut Me Loose. To finish, The Rubens pull out Hoops (of course) and the rollicking Hallelujah. 

Atop her trademark AW throne, Alison Wonderland croakily taunts, "Are you ready?! No, you're not!" Dropping a Duke Dumont remix first, the main stage is thousands of people thick, all ready to party. The vibe is mental: Take It To Reality sees Snapchat screens held high. When the beat drops in Run, the whole pit starts throbbing like a heart being kicked to life by a defibrillator. We're given a bird's eye view of what she's doing thanks to a bunch of cameras above her — her hair is slung all over her face in I Want You, and during a remix of Justin Bieber's What Do You Mean she's on the edge of her platform, clapping us on. She mixes in plenty of popular tracks — Spice Girls' Wannabe, Cassidy's Ima Hussla, Missy Elliott's Get Ur Freak On — sometimes taking things into techno territory or taking to her sample pad with some drumsticks. She cuts the music all of a sudden and is very emotional when she introduces You Don't Know, "If you're sad I wanna tell you how important it is to talk to your friends. I don't want ANY of you to EVER feel like you should feel guilty for being depressed." She's out from behind her table for this one, singing along for the first time. She finishes by dropping Massive Attack's Teardrop and Ain't No Sunshine before she — "Can I do it? Can I do it? Can I do it?" — showcases her cello skills to wind down GTM's main stage proceedings. It's sort of an anticlimactic end to the set, but Alison Wonderland's career is at the stage that she doesn't need to give a fuck.