Report: Laneway Melbourne 2014

Laneway continues to gradually expand while retaining its niche appeal. This year’s 35-act slate in Melbourne is more of a Choose Your Own Adventure than ever, writes DOUG WALLEN. Photos by KATIE FAIRSERVICE.

One can’t help but see Laneway’s expansion of the site parameters in Melbourne – not to mention its debut foray into the US – against the context of Big Day Out’s current turmoil and identity crisis. To oversimplify it, the younger, smaller, boutique festival is surging forward (even considering a grow to two days) while the older, bigger, rope-in-the-masses festival languishes in the summer sun.

Laneway continues to do a whole lot right, like programming bands before they peak instead of after, but mostly it has just relied on impeccable taste and common sense. Every year fixes some of the annoyances of the previous year, and so this year has a better-situated ATM as well as more payment options plus more food stalls and many more toilets. There’s also signing events with Kurt Vile and a few other artists at the merch booth. Again, just common sense.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

As for the impeccable taste, it’s there even if you don’t like half the bands. For every big-name act I couldn’t care less about, there’s someone like Parquet Courts or Cass McCombs that most festivals wouldn’t bother booking. And this year, with the Dean Turner Stage moving from Moreland Street down to even further past where the Carpark Stage used to be (and the former DT Stage now the Moreland St Stage), it’s easier than ever for me to ignore the likes of Lorde, Haim, Vance Joy, Chvrches and The Jezabels – pretty much everyone on that stage – even as that whole arm of the site grows into its own mini-festival, pushing further into the riverside Footscray surrounding than ever.

And of course, it’s just as easy for fans of those above acts to stay put in that area for hours on end, relying on bolstered food and toilet services while ignoring more low-key acts like, well, almost everything on the Future Classic Stage.

More than ever before, there’s a Choose Your Own Adventure vibe to this year’s Laneway. That sectioning off of different tastes can arguably reduce some of the cross-pollination that makes festivals interesting, but I’m happy for Lorde and Vance Joy to drive up the ticket sales that let me see Run the Jewels and Dick Diver at the same festival. Whether I’m in the mood for bubbling electronics, crowd-pleasing alt-pop or Pitchfork indie (or rap), there’s a stage for that.

Today’s heat is also an undeniable presence, driving people to congregate in shaded shanty towns under various bridges, but between the free sunscreen and the many trees around the Future Classic Stage, there are options for respite.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

After unfortunate run-ins with English grunge duo Drenge and rising Aussie act Mt Warning, my first positive connection comes with Brooklyn singer/producer Arthur Ashin, who pours himself into tender, emotional electro-R&B as Autre Ne Veut. Teamed with an equally expressive singer and electronics that simmer then build big, he beautifully translates songs from last year’s debut album Anxiety. Ashin and his collaborator have a great presence for so early in the day, as proven by the impassioned, Prince-esque standout ‘Play by Play’.

Cass McCombs’ set is one of my most anticipated of the day, but his murky songwriting and naturally soft vocals have trouble holding me in place under the baking early-afternoon heat. Even standing up the front gives me more respect for McCombs and band than open fondness, though in retrospect I wish I’d simply found a seat on the grass and been more patient in my absorption.

Dressed like a kind of ’90s-rap bogan – or Ninja from Die Antwoord – Kirin J Callinan promises to make “really loud noise” for 40+ minutes. And yeah, his set is described as “industrial” by two different people I talk to later. Backed by a stone-faced rhythm section, Kirin works his way steadily through last year’s wildly scattershot Embracism, giving it the feel of a bastard Greatest Hits more than a proper debut. Coming off like a pansexual cyberpunk, Kirin’s bad-taste-as-art shtick is easy to write off as just that, but there’s unexpected profoundness in his every sudden detour. Plus he’s cracking up the whole time, as happy to laugh at himself as the security guards are.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

After a brief stab at the Rage theme, lots of funny banter, the almost-straight ballad ‘Landslide’ and the penultimate ‘Way II War’ – by which point you can hear a very different-in-tone Youth Lagoon wafting up from the River Stage – he plays the song it feels like everyone’s been waiting for: ‘Love Delay’. While it doesn’t have quite the bottled intensity of the LP version, it’s the only fitting choice to close with. You’d think Kirin’s jagged mood swings wouldn’t play well this early on a hot day, but it very much does.

Sure, El-P played the Future Classic Stage just last year – and ruled – but this time he’s with Killer Mike as Run the Jewels. It’s more a traditional rap set than last year’s live-band approach, with a lone DJ backing them. A heavy presence on his own, El-P has his work cut out for him standing up to the lumbering vocal mass of his partner. But for all their combined swagger, the key takeaway is just how singalong-friendly and anthemic their tag-team work is. I’m only able to catch the last few songs post-Kirin, by which point the crowd is huge and throwing themselves fully into the pair’s dynamite slugfest.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

Savages benefit from an admirable all-business attack, but live they don’t move me any more than on record. The stuffy dourness is more the deal-breaker than the by-the-numbers post-punk; it just plays like angst with no release.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

By the time I make it all the way down to see her, Adalita is already well into it with her ace band: guitarist Lewis Boyes (ex-St. Helens etc.), bassist Matt Bailey and drummer Dan McKay (The Nation Blue, High Tension). The waltz-y single ‘He Wrote’ balances well with the more rugged rock dirges, and of course there’s a poetic justice to Adalita gracing the Dean Turner stage. Mostly I’m reminded how well All Day Venus holds up: having dipped back into it periodically since its September release and seen her live behind it already, the songs only feel stronger with each encounter.

Ditto Dick Diver, who offer a set that’s happily similar to the ones they played at Golden Plains and Meredith and while launching Calendar Days. That’s not a problem for me, and the four deal out their usual cheek and charm to a bigger audience than I’d expected. Closing with ‘Alice’, it feels very much like the end of a victory lap for that Readers Poll-topping second album. Now it’s time to follow it up, gang.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

It takes me time to warm to Unknown Mortal Orchestra, but that wonky fusion of funk breaks, soul falsetto, psych elasticity and blurted classic-rock cues takes on new life apart from the band’s two albums and the previous time I’ve seen them. Highlights come with ‘Swim and Sleep (Like a Shark)’ and especially ‘How Can You Love Me’, the latter closing with an epic solo from Riley Geare, the trio’s third drummer to date.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

I’m on my way to Cloud Control when I get snake-charmed over to the Future Classic Stage by Norwegian producer Cashmere Cat’s slinky melodies. Less appealing are the predictable bass drops – though the crowd thinks otherwise – but mostly it’s a really nice mid-arvo chillout. When I do make it over to Cloud Control, they’re the same as ever: competent and catchy but frustratingly middling.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

Luckily Parquet Courts are up next, with what’s easily the day’s best set. It starts off shaky with the first song, which even the band acknowledge, but from there it’s all killer, no filler. Alternating between slacker and punk impulses, the Brooklyn quartet burn right through their breakout calling card Light Up Gold, from ‘Stoned and Starving’ to ‘Borrowed Time’. Despite having a fill-in drummer for Max Savage, the loping rhythm section powers these songs along, whether they’re evoking Pavement, early Strokes or maybe even the Minutemen. Parquet Courts may be up against Chvrches, whom it seemed like the entire festival was on their way to see just minutes earlier, but there’s a solid and rapturous crowd here, complete with lots of dancing up the front. Like The Men last year, this is a reminder of how vital a four-piece rock band can still sound today when they turn anxiety into urgency and, yeah, really know their way around a guitar. Plus, bonus points for guitarist Austin Brown taking the time to praise Dick Diver’s set.

Starting with Howlin opener ‘What Love’, Jagwar Ma don’t go straight for the big moments like ‘The Throw’. Instead they take their time, stoking their dreamy pop with signature dance and psych flickers. It’s somehow calming and animating at once. Kurt Vile, meanwhile, is similarly sedate but is playing the River Stage, where shade is much harder to come by than at the leafy Future Classic Stage. The audience seems engrossed, and he shrugs off great songs that we know well, but there aren’t exactly any surprises.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

Back up the hill, Earl Sweatshirt is finishing his set with two cohorts. He connects when he’s actually rapping for any substantial length of time, but unfortunately he gets repeatedly sidetracked bantering with his buddies and trying to prod the crowd into more liveliness. I stick around after to wait for Danny Brown, whose belated appearance lasts only a few seconds before a blown amp sends him offstage again – and the rest of us wondering if that’s it.

We wait around for a fair while, and reportedly he does come back and in fact kills it, but by then I’m back down at the river for King Krule. Although I knew that the voice I heard on his 2013 debut 6 Feet Beneath the Moon belongs not to a grizzled old bluesman (as it sounds like) but a skinny 19-year-old ranga, there’s still an immediate disconnect between my eyes and my ears. Playing with a band of equally young mates, Englishman Archy Marshall takes the songs into a jazzier direction live yet still delivers certain ones with the body language of a rapper. For all the jumbling of genres going on, his songs can wind up overly samey, but this set does the trick for the dusk-time cool-down.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

The first of four simultaneous headliners, Four Tet begins beautifully, all pulsing, streamlined and aglow while adhering enough to genre mechanics to prompt movement from us. I’d be happy to see out the festival soaking up more of those silky melodies, but I venture over to catch the opening salvo of Scotland’s Frightened Rabbit, who’ve amassed a strong following in the last few years. They’re fine but feel more like your average rock band than they do on record, with the lyrics not as prominent. But, to be fair, I’m basing that on one song.

As much as I admire Warpaint’s new second album, I’m still surprised just how good they are headlining the Moreland St Stage. The vagueness that puts some people off them is replaced by a much firmer, more confident live presence – especially compared to their sleepier last Laneway set – and yet it’s still with swimming in diaphanous melodies, slippery rhythms and cooing vocals. While it’s annoying that there’s no Melbourne sideshow (hopefully a sign that they’re coming back soon?), seeing Warpaint do the trash-talking ‘Disco//Very’ is the special kind of festival moment I want to put on an eternal loop. Nearly as satisfying is the single ‘Love is to Die’ and other atmospheric corners of both albums. It’s like everything has finally clicked within the quartet.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

There’s still a residual feeling that, as in past years, the night’s biggest and most obvious headliner should be on this stage, but tonight that honour goes to The Jezabels at the site’s far end. Y’know what, though? I’m totally happy to revel in a band as subtle and detailed as Warpaint – usually better suited for headphones than headlining – before strolling out the adjacent exit and into the night.

+