Live Review: Peak Festival

With the 2014 snow season upon us many welcomed it in with blues, roots, jazz, poetry and a whole lot more at the inaugural Peak Festival.

In its first year since switching names from the less crisp Perisher Snowy Mountains of Music, everybody was praying for one thing and one thing only: snow. The acts were spread throughout the many pubs, clubs and hotels within Perisher Valley and although the slopes were greener than they were white, the pubs were warm and the entertainment was superb.

The howling blues rock of Richard Perso kicked things off; Perso came armed with three didgeridoos, three guitars, a kick drum and a voice so deep it's hard to believe he's just 22.

Belle Jar's accordion-driven tracks captured all the tragedy of a darkly lit French bar with a tongue-in-cheek sense of fun. Azadoota offered another worldly element running a workshop on Assyrian culture and the indigenous people of Iraq, before rocking out later that day with their Arabian-inspired Afrobeat jazz tracks. They also managed to have a go at Tony Abbott, Alan Jones and miner birds with the one song.

The three finalists of the Peak Upload competition for unsigned artists were all relatively soft and folksy, but that didn't stop all three of them from inspiring standing ovations at The Man From Snowy River Hotel. Bulli balladeer Timothy James Bowen ended up taking out the prize, which included a mentorship program with headliners The Herd.

Claude Hay didn't need The Gentle Enemies for the first half of his set, building a huge heavy sound with a double guitar, top half bass, bottom half six-string, a drum set he could play with his feet and a loop pedal. He belted out covers of Queen's We Will Rock You and The Beatles' Come Together before being joined on stage by the band, giving him the freedom to jump around energetically whilst simultaneously shredding with voice and guitar.

The Public Opinion Afro Orchestra could barely fit on stage. At one time there were 11 of them up there, but the dancefloor was even more packed, and whether performer or crowd member, everybody was dancing to the funky Nigerian beats. TPOAO felt authentic as they paid tribute to the Afrobeat movement of the 1960s; their tracks bury themselves deep under your skin inducing hip-swinging and arm-flailing.

Snow finally began to flicker by the last day but not enough to offer respite to those who hired skis for the weekend. Dereb The Ambassador taught Perisher a few dance moves, and even invited two young boys up on stage for a boogie. Dereb Desalegn bounced around stage casually as his seven-strong band produced smooth Ethiopian-style soul in another demonstration of the variety of culture on offer at the festival and the truly international nature of it all.

Finally The Herd drew the biggest crowd of the festival as you would expect and exploded into their set with 2020, followed by Emergency during which Shannon Kennedy quipped the real emergency was the lack of snow at Perisher.

Peak Festival is still very much a family event – some of the mums and dads in the audience didn't seem familiar with The Herd but bopped along merrily, until their famed cover of Redgum's I Was Only 19 caused hysteria. The windows of Smiggins Hotel began to fog up as Jane Tyrrell became more involved and more dominant as the set went on. Smiggins hotel boomed for an encore and The Herd obliged.

In the end the lack of snow barely mattered; Peak was an enjoyable mash of culture with some top quality entertainment. As it continues to grow and expand, more and more it's sure to become an event on the festival calendar that's not to be missed.