V Festival @ Centennial Park,Sydney (28/3/2009)

Mon 30th Mar, 2009 in Gig Reviews

CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS FROM THE SYDNEY V FESTIVAL HERE.

1:00 Arrive at the height of one of those Sydney days you happily call – œbeautiful’ when you don’t have to stand in its pitiless heat for seven hours. Get into the festival without incident, though promptly discover my program has the outdated playing times on it so is only slightly better than useless. And it doesn’t even show when Vanilla Ice is playing!

1:45 Is way too early for a band as good as The Howling Bells. New songs flash by in a set that’s over all too soon. They’re a bit darker, a touch heavier, but still mining the same rich vein of noir-ish melancholy. Gorgeous.

2:00 Juanita Stein is a dreamboat. That is all.

2:30 “This is a song called Fool For You,” Duffy tells the crowd. “Smooch amongst yourselves.” There may not be any mid-afternoon romance happening, but the Welsh prodigy’s old school soul is done with real expertise, right down to the backup singers who sway and coo in vintage red dresses. “It’s fucking hot,” she observes. It is.

2:35 Duffy is sorry for that bad language before.

3:10 Duffy may be scaring a few indie Nazis away but she’s a seriously good singer and an undeniable star presence. And she’s begging you for mercy, mercy, mercy…

3:30 Am beginning to wonder if a certain mobile phone company are sabotaging their competitors by ensuring the festival site is some kind of weird no-man’s-land of mobile reception. Sneaky…

3:55 Elbow are offering their own version of a choose your own adventure book. Amiable singer Guy Garvey invites us to either yell “another shaggy dog story” or “play you pommy bastards”. The crowd opts for the latter, and they launch into a committed Bones of You. But the atmosphere is flat, an undefinable something missing. “Is, uh, everyone still OK?” Garvey asks. Yeah, OK is the word.

4:05 See five minutes of Jenny Lewis. Pretty Bird sees her in fine voice, but this stage-jumping show must go on.

4:15 The first signs of shade creep over the grasslands as M83 take the stage. It’s clear by the second song (the anthemic Graveyard Girl ) that Anthony Gonzalez isn’t in great vocal form, but it scarcely matters as layers of keyboards bleed into each other to great effect. Saturdays=Youth was one of last year’s best and most cohesive albums and its lush, atmospheric sound is gamely recreated here. Kim and Jesse’s secret twilight world sounds perfect, full of aching nostalgia for an age that may have never existed.

5:20 Razorlight come and go. Golden Touch is as whistleable as ever but they’re unavoidably pedestrian after the inspiration of M83.

5:35 V’s oddly condensed timetable is a problem – this festival badly needs to run for another hour to avoid the kind of frustrating clashes that make its star-studded lineup something of an illusion. It’s Madness, and I only catch a couple of songs from the band of that name. Apparently they were great and played all the hits.

6:00 The Kills, fashionably late even on a festival bill, finally report for duty. Despite their more recent flirtation with electronica, – œminimalism’ is still the word here, alongside – œnasty’,’rock’ and – œroll’. Alison stalks the stage with pent-up malice, shooting looks at the crowd through an unruly mane of dark hair while partner in crime Jamie tortures his guitar into some unholy, primal howling. They’re dead cool, and the best rock band on the bill.

6:40 The Kills are still, ahem, killing it. U.R.A Fever was a bold statement of intent and Alphabet Pony typically raw, but The Kills’ performance is one of sustained excellence; they now have enough material to keep attention over an hour-long set that dips into older songs like sexed-up blues racket Kissy Kissy and the stripped-back Fried My Little Brains.

6:50 “Ohhhhhh, oh and my parents love me! Ohhhh, oh and my girlfriend loves me!” If you look up – œGreat festival band’ in a dictionary, you would see a picture of The Kaiser Chiefs, probably drenched with sweat and leading a good-natured mass sing-along.

No wheels are re-invented here, but only a grouch wouldn’t chant along to Ruby. Still, there’s a mass exodus from their stage (or – œthat stage’ as the program would have it) when Snow Patrol and The Human League begin.

7:15 Behold The Human League: The skirts are still short, the ties still skinny and the poses still stolen from only the glossiest fashion rags. They’re here to play Dare, their 1981 classic, in its entirety. It is to be a triumph.

7:30 Don’t You Want Me indeed. Wow. Phil Oakley’s voice is as pristine as ever, an ice-cool counterpoint to synth-pop songs that are not so much timeless as gloriously evocative of a moment in time. On this, their million-selling hit, he’s injecting menace into a dangerously addictive melody. And Joanne Catherall, improbably enough, actually looks better more than she did in 1981, when Oakley famously plucked her and her friend from the obscurity of a midweek nightclub dance-floor and parachuted the pair into one of Britain’s biggest pop bands.

7:51 Trying to think if I’ve ever seen another band which makes use of a – œkeytar’. Possibly not outside Flight Of The Conchords. But as they play Love Action, The Human League transcend kitsch. This is pop music at its silliest, and best.

8:00 Hello, is this the police? Yes, I’d like to report a robbery. The Human League are STEALING THE SHOW!

8:10 Dare is finished, but The Human League aren’t. They’re back on stage for more hits, including Mirror Man, and, wait for it…

8:25 “This isn’t a Human League song, but…” But it’s genius. Together in Electric Dreams, Phil Oakley’s collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, ensures their set ends on a goosebump-inducing high. Synth pop has never sounded so warm, electronica more human.

8:35 Who knew there was this many people here? A veritable sea of humanity is moving to Somebody Told Me and why not? It’s one of the more catchy songs to have been written about sexual jealousy, and there have been a few. As with their career generally, subsequent Killers songs are not better (nor more grammatically correct – Human anyone?), but they are certainly been bigger. This is Your Life and For Reasons Unknown are enormous productions, the latter swelled by a mid-song anecdote, but mainly unremarkable apart from their stadia-filling ambition.

9:21 A portly British man says to nobody in particular: “This is roobish, mate, roobish. They’ve been roobish since their first album.” The Killers were always going to be an obvious, rather than an inspired, headline choice and playing after the unexpected glory of The Human League, their presence seems oddly anti-climatic.

A day generally free of the usual festival irritants, aside from scheduling clashes, is winding down. The Las Vegas natives may be far from – œroobish’, but they really need to write some more songs that have the urgency of Smile Like You Mean It. Failing that, they could just cover Together in Electric Dreams ...