Golden Plains 2012 Day 1: Being There

When it comes to Meredith’s sister festival Golden Plains, it’s as much about “being there” as it is about the music, writes LAWSON FLETCHER after witnessing an excellent, but predictable first day. Photos by MICHAEL BAINBRIDGE. Day two coverage soon.

The odd thing about festivals at Meredith’s Supernatural Amphitheatre is that the music is both the most and least important thing all weekend. It’s hard to judge whether this used to be different, but it does seem more pronounced the last few years. When the question we used to hear was, “Who are you looking forward to?”, now it’s just “Did you get a ticket?!”

Sure, we come for the music – Meredith and Golden Plains are music festivals, after all – but at the same time all that is really just a pretext, a scaffold around which the fuller experience of these festivals are built. Because being there is what is most important about going to Meredith, participating in both the myth and the reality of its construction for one, well two, golden weekends each year.

The organisers know this, and each year they quietly go about their business, incrementally adding to the myth and the reality of these festivals with practical improvements: a new bar called Eric’s, with highly recommended views; more toilets, lights and camping space; and extra symbolic accoutrements. They know the latter is just as important as the former, and have built up the mythology of these festivals to the point where they are complete with their own tweeting, apocryphal matriarch and arcane, colourful idiom (“the boot”, “no dickheads”, “he pee”, various zany road names). As punters, we speak this language, and participate in and perpetuate this myth so we can live in it, affirm our belonging together in it, if only for a weekend, taking delight as we initiate our green friends into the ways of Meredith.

We marvel at the various assembled elements every time we walk from our campsite down to that hill – the couches, the ferris wheel, the Pink Flamingo, that fucked-up cinema down the back, those lanterns – Meredith is a space mapped out in our collective consciousness as much as it a farm out the back of Geelong. It’s a place both magical and real – there is sewage and electricity and money changing hands the whole time, a vast enterprise requiring hundreds of workers and volunteers, but there is also a spirit, an energy, flowing around the place that sustains the whole venture just as much. There are countless moments, memories and hazy trips happening now, then, and for all time.

Because Meredith is a place suspended in time – a decompression chamber for the daily grind – where no one really cares about the specifics of the music in the end. It’s that twice yearly haven, a utopia that we all look forward to and jealously protect, and we’re fucking going there regardless of who’s playing – because we want that escape, because our mates are, because we always go.

So if this is the case and – if thanks to their brilliant efforts getting the practical and symbolic aspects of “being there” so right, the festival organisers are basically guaranteed a sold-out (or near sold-out) festival irrespective of who’s on the bill – why is it that things feel like they’ve reached a point of stasis?

Perhaps it’s because the lineup at Meredith and Golden Plans feels like its fallen into something of pattern in terms of the structure of the weekend and the kinds of acts playing. Make sure there’s an up-and- coming rock outfit of regional youngsters to kick things off; tick off the funk, hip-hop and folk genre boxes; ensure some solid and dependably brilliant headliners; get in some novelty cover acts and some historical curios (this quotient is bumped up for the more “mature” Golden Plains); and you’re all good. These various types are then all pushed into their respective spots – making sure rock and dance acts are carefully separated day and night – and then as punters we shuffle through the mental deck of previous bands in this slot as we make our judgments as to whether this particular incarnation lives up to the last or best so far.

Having laid down such a strong template, judgment of Golden Plains basically takes the form of a crude comparative relativism. This year’s bill is patchy, as always, but perhaps what it shares most with the last few years of line-ups is that it is safe, held back even. Not to say there aren’t many brilliant moments, but even these were to be expected in some way. Golden Plains always held the promise of being the more music-focused sibling to its buzz-driven bigger sister, but in practice this has just meant a slightly more restrained atmosphere and a much more guarded choice of acts. Many, especially those genre-specific ones like Lanie Lane and Kisstroyer seem calculated to appeal to a particular segment of the crowd or to fulfill a particular part of Golden Plains’ holistic brief. Throughout the weekend there is little sense of risk or excitement in the choices, even if many acts are terrific in their own right.

Perhaps the time has passed for a name to appear that no one has ever heard of, or for someone to do something that is truly surprising, because even those booked to deliver spontaneity delivered it just like they might be expected to. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti plays his part perfectly as the broken pop star, receding behind his undeniably cohesive band in order to subvert the frontman persona. With messed-up levels, abrupt endings, keyboard wooze and Pink singing occasionally from a lyric sheet, the set has the quality of a lurid karaoke session, just as would have been intended. Like John Maus, Pink showers pop with heavy doses of irony, pastiche and camp so people too afraid to admit what they want can enjoy it. And yet live, the best tracks are easily those that hem closest to the band’s nous for straightforwardly sunny, hook-driven pop gems such as ‘Bright Lit Blue Skies’ and ‘Round and Round’. Pity they hit their peak with these tracks only 10 minutes in. From here, the set descends.

While working along different parts of the spectrum, today both Wild Flag and Total Control fulfill the promise of the punk act: putting on a reliably solid show without the bullshit. For Wild Flag, this means doing away with the jamming tendency of Sleater-Kinney and concentrating on the driving, melodic rush of songs like ‘Romance’. Total Control, meanwhile, are a band that look like they could play an amazing set in their sleep. Guitarist Mikey Young (dude is everywhere) maintains a deadpan stance throughout, contradicting the hectic energy he and his band mates kick up throughout their set. With its focus on the hollowed texture of the snare, James Vinciguerra’s drumming, equal parts motorik and garage, is the driver here. But every member does their job brilliantly, and, like Wild Flag, it’s as strangely workmanlike as it is fulfilling.

Having dropped the moniker Howl, Ballarat’s Hunting Grounds also seem to have left behind the raw energy that was about the only thing going for them in their previous incarnation as garage revivalists. The six-piece have since found synthesisers and turned into a “deep” pop rock band, going for the same “haunting but ethereal” emotionalism as a late-career Eskimo Joe. Perhaps that’s a bit too unfair a comparison, but it’s genuinely disappointing to see such a young band opt for this kind of mature, polished sound. A cover of the Beastie Boys’ ‘Sabotage’ was almost the turning point for the set, which improved marginally as the band gained a more demented, risky edge at points in the second half, but it sticks out mainly as totem to the kind of manic energy Hunting Grounds have largely relinquished. While they might find themselves play listed on triple j, in their present form Hunting Grounds lack either the intensity or the novelty to pull off a first set surprise.

The weekend saw a number of questionable timetabling decisions – sandwiching an uber-sincere Bon Iver in between the day-glow oddities of Ariel Pink and an ill-advised Kiss tribute band; smoothed over only by the inordinate break for Bon Iver to set up their 95 stage microphones. Perhaps the most bizarre was the decision to put Seekae on tonight after Dexter. Though his song choices were woefully predictable for such a well-travelled DJ, Dexter at least kick-started the late-night party atmosphere which, it has to be said, rubbed up oddly against Seekae. Focusing largely on texture and groove and downplaying the blissful drop of vocal samples and melodies of songs such as ‘Void’ and ‘+Dome’, Seekae confounds the party-ready crowd with a nocturnal atmosphere of an entirely different mood. Lulled into quantised suspension, a subdued transcendence washes over the amphitheatre, as the Sydney three-piece delivers a set which, perhaps unintentionally, confounds expectations and leaves everyone in a state of circulating bliss. Who knows, though, why they cut short an already trim 40 minutes.

While Melbourne collective //This Thing// would close out day one with a makeshift house party up on stage, which made more and more sense the closer you got, let’s go back to where it really all came together. Because, when you think about it, how do you know if a festival set was really good? It’s pretty simple: when something is different afterwards, when something has changed, when you can separate your night, and on some rare occasions even your life, into before and after that band. This happened only once Saturday night, when Justin Vernon, backed by eight brilliant musicians, took the stage and proceeded to radiate pure, unfettered emotion. Beginning with ‘Perth’, ‘Minnesota, WI’ and ‘Holocene’ – the beautiful opening triptych from last year’s Bon Iver, Bon Iver – the band’s set is truly heartfelt from beginning to end, by turns quiet and chaotic, melancholic and luminescent.

And yet perhaps the greatest paradox of this band is that such sincere feeling is delivered with such poise and premeditation – in this regard, it makes sense Vernon is a fan of Auto-Tune, because like the vocal-manipulator, Bon Iver are masters of conjuring up full-bodied emotional overtones through the most technical of means. While nine people on stage could easily dissolve into bombast, the band members – including two drummers and a horn section – know exactly when to enter and to recede, adding depth and body to the songs but also unexpected bespoke touches that set the live performance truly apart from recordings. In all, the set is as meticulous in its execution as it is sublime.

As Vernon sits down to perform ‘Skinny Love’, the collective unconscious that is “the boot”, stirs to life, and it’s hard not to think that this is deserved in every way, that this is what Golden Plains is all about. It’s a gesture that symbolises the festival as a whole, as much a sign of respect to the music as it is a collective ritual. One bare foot on the earth, one shoe thrust in the air in blissful solidarity; the real and magical converge here. Standing in the crowd, it is truly a beautiful sight to witness people’s shoes aloft and their hearts opened up by this performance. Friends sing together, fathers and sons embrace, lovers kiss – all that cliched, predictable stuff.

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DAY TWO COVERAGE: Tomorrow

MORE PHOTOS: Here