Report: Splendour in the Grass 2013 - Day 2

Report: Splendour in the Grass 2013 - Day 2

“It’s much calmer today.” The middle day of Splendour felt significantly more relaxed than the first. Now that every attendee had vocalised their fear of change, people started to notice where the festival’s facelift triumphed. The actual digs were far easier to navigate than in past years, and dashing between stages was as effortless as any mud-saturated mid-winter event with a tight timetable could be. Gumboots only transformed from fashion to necessity in the final hours of the last night, so when glitter-garnished bindi-wearing punters swinged and danced their way through Jagwar Ma (below) in pink wellies, it felt right that trendy garb was matched with one of 2013’s most hyped acts. The North Sydney-based duo opened with What Love, the first from their ‘Howlin’ debut, with genre-mashers Man I Need, Come Save Me and The Throw enjoying an unmitigated audience applaud. The afternoon set amalgamated 60s pop throwbacks with an enrapturing homage to rave, before facial hair aficionado Chet Faker took to the same stage in a less whimsical though equally impassioned set. A pitch perfect voice, Faker’s delivery was more slow-burn than Jagwar's wild set, at least until he busted out I’m Into You followed by his cover of No Diggity. “Do you reckon we’ve missed the Game of Thrones song?” If you arrived after the first few minutes of MS MR’s set, the answer was yes, you did miss Bones, the dungeons-and-dragons backing track that arguably propelled the New York duo into the mainstream earlier this year. Delivering a high energy performance, many I spoke to dubbed Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow best of the day, a praise well deserved thanks to their sultry gyrating and genuine gratitude to their full house (“this is the show we dreamed of playing when we started out”). Though the Hurricane finale was powerful and dynamic, the most memorable moment of the set was a rapturous Happy Birthday lead by Plapinger to one of her crew. MS MR seemed committed, jovial and keen for a great time – qualities you’d like anyone at a festival to carry, on stage or off. Catching the end of what I thought would be a typically overwrought Cold War Kids performance, I was surprised by how alluring Nathan Willet’s distorted vocals sound live. His hallmark Hang Me Up To Dry howling followed by Matt Maust’s heavy bass in Something is Not Right With Me were invigorating, angsty performances. This was probably the festival’s only set where on-time off-key keyboard chord crushing and agile acciaccaturas wouldn’t have seemed as arbitrary as they presumably were. A climactic Hopital Beds wrapped up a potent reminder of what a fan of Californian indie rock music everyone in attendance once was. The crowd mulled around for Birds of Tokyo who (at least that I saw) were the weekend’s only band who dared perform a few second cover from the Lost Frank Ocean. “Bogans love to breed.” A new friend I made informed me of this ontological truth at the festival. She'd ventured from her self-described “rural” hometown with three of her four brothers to Splendour. But the festival's crowd was comprised of as many family posses as inner city cliques and local punters, all of whom seemingly decided—at once—to find their soul mate during the Saturday evening Empire of the Sun set. A bizarre anthropological scene unfolded as I watched clusters of mates split into more pairs than a mass South Korean wedding, each more doting than the next. Maybe a universal biological clock kicked in to remind everyone that Saturday night—festival or not—is prime pashing time, or maybe the surreal, transfixing neon graphics projected on screen behind Luke Steele was encrypted with subtle messages to procreate. Hypnotic spherical and geometric projections accompanied crowd pleasers Walking on a Dream and We are the People as appropriately romantic blue and purple lights saturated the crowd all the way to the hawker food markets up the back. It was the only time the whole weekend I didn’t find light-up neon spirit hoods grossly offensive. “This is, like, the second time this weekend I’ve seen Alison Wonderland. Besides when I got a picture with her.” Ahead of Flume’s headline performance, a no longer lusted-up stampede “jumped down the rabbit hole” with Alison Wonderland who not only kicked off the day’s grand finale, but also the weekend at Byron Bay Beach Hotel’s annual Splendour eve party. Proficient at making any crowd “dance like Beyonce on crack” the balayaged party-acolyte-come-producer dropped her beloved mix of house, hip-hop and dance beats to a crowd dilated with excitement. Her set appropriately rippled into the electro pounds of Harley Streten aka Flume at the inundated Mix-Up tent where the majority of festival attendees came to revel in the sounds of his insta-hit debut. (As he would say afterwards, "Last year I opened the Mix Up Tent, this year I closed it. A lot can happen in one year." Yep!) The party peaked early for a trio next to me, as the three-story human tower they built came crashing down during the early mix of Hyperparadise, Flume on drum pads. Hyper indeed. Old mate Chet Faker joined his Infinity Prism Tour bud on stage for their Left Alone collaboration creating a nice close for a day that ended where it began. Triumphant.




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