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Laneway Festival has finally found an applicable term to describe itself: ‘Boutique’. While this explains little and merely adds a small dash of corporate branding to the event, it successfully avoids pigeonholing the event through genre terms or using ‘underground’ as a misappropriated moniker. I guess in some way it does get us a little closer to the heart of the matter. It’s a smaller festival than most (in attendance) and caters to the slightly more unusual tastes in the less than mainstream indie-ish character. Its list of previous acts has been extraordinarily varied. From big bands (in number of members) like Broken Social Scene and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! To trailblazing electronic masters like Four Tet and Daedulus to middle-popularity Australian acts like Temper Trap and Eddy Current Suppression Ring to rock ‘n’ rollers like The Drones and The Hold Steady it has so far provided us with a veritable treasure trove of bands either previously well-known or in need of introduction to the Australian public. While this year may not have had massive drawcards of the same critical quaulity, in the same number as previous years, it certainly had some sense of consistency. On making disorganised and unconfirmed plans pre-festival I realised there wasn’t really a spare moment to take more than a couple of a breaths before tracking off to the next show.

This unfortunately was more a result of curiosity than any avid desire to see the majority of the bands. It ended up being an interesting Laneway. Again it was well organised if difficult to navigate during some of the more popular acts, and the decisions around who played outside and who played inside mostly seemed to work. Somehow though, despite the line-up being dominated by spare sounding indie or electro and dance pop the highlights, for me at least came from the punk. The raw visceral energy of Eddy Current Supression Ring and the reckless abandon of The Black Lips managed to overshadow the more melodic hollow sounds and leanings of bands like The XX, Dappled Cities or Mumford & Sons. I’m no die-hard punk tragic either, this is one musical analysis I feel has the key of balance and non-bias supporting it.

The day kicked off for me personally with a bit of Black Gold, a Brookyln-based indie rock quartet who take the melodies of Elton John and perhaps the sound of The Killers toned down and match it to what are some quite poor lyrical musings. In fact the word musings suggest that they in fact investigate something important. They don’t. The melodies are there and they’re catchy and they’re enjoyable but there coupled to a worryingly mundane worldview that didn’t interest me or seemingly any of the few others around. Kudos to them thought. Two of my mates were looking for tickets outside Laneway, when Black Gold rocked up in their van, leaving the show at the Grandma time of 4.00pm and ducked out the window and handed them four complimentary tickets for nothing in return. For that they added quite a bit to my Festival.

That was the first time I spent inside and the only time for a while. It was time to commence the run of higher profile, outdoor acts that dominated the evening segment of the day. Dappled Cities who I’d seen early this year and thought were quite impressive severely lacked something. Maybe they’d anticipated this and decided to draw attention away by wearing strange shiny, golden, reversed full body jump suits which really only had the effect of melting the band members in the noon-day sun. For some reason (and it was something that a few bands suffered from) there was no body, or weight to their sound. Instruments were mixed down, the volume was insufficient and their was no glue that held together their on-stage sound. In a way they’re an anthem band who need intimacy. They haven’t got the consistent hooks in every song to depend on guitar or synth riffage to carry them. They need a big sound awash with crashing synths and less-than-angular guitar work. But today they didn’t have it, perhaps because they were outside, perhaps in a way because they seemed a little like they didn’t want to be there. While it was still an enjoyable gig and in Australian terms it made the grade. Songs like Vision Bell (Which was sung quite beautifully by Aussie chantreuse Sarah Blasko) fell a little flat, not having the depth of sound needed to carry the semi-catchy riff. Perhaps they’re catchiest song to date The Price also suffered at the hands of fearing boosting synths to mad levels. They’re a band whose appeal is not just musical but visual, humourous, left-of-centre weirdness. They had that today, just not the performance.

Post-punk revivalists and elecslow-pop trio The XX were next to perform on the Laneway stage. And they did so with almost fanatical devotion to the exact sounds that have propelled their self titled debut to teeteringly high rankings in end of year 2009 album lists. The sweet but somehow obsessively dark vocal combination of Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sam sat perfectly against the visual effect of three apparently possessed gothic characters all dressed entirely in black with the stark background of the soon to become well-known XX logo. They played the vast majority of their first album generating crowd excitement during semi-hits Islands and Crystallised. Perhaps they best represented one of the angles Laneway was going for this year. They encouraged quiet concentration yet brought the beat, thumbing digital beats staying true to what they know best. It will certainly be of interest to many people what they release with their next album, whether they have the creativity and nous to generate that next step in their sound.

By this stage I was getting pretty pumped, but was yet to be genuinely overwhelmed. I was wondering where the spark was going come from to set this day alight. Thanks to Eddy Current Suppression Ring it was right then and there. They took to the stage somewhat reserved, looking for all intents and purposes a bunch of normal guys who got the lucky chance to show their wares with instruments and no other fanfare (bar Brendan Suppression’s trademark gloves) Their pointed-skeletal sound seemed to be the most immediate and best match to the acoustics constant across the day. Unsurprisingly they were responsible for the inaugural mosh of the day, which managed to combine a good dose of aggression with the respected conscience to save any who fell. It was a predominantly Primary Colours set that played to their strengths. They’ve quickly become Australia’s premier punk band, but with a unique sound. With a rhythm section smashing through the songs as if they were constantly tipping but never falling off stilts and the peculiar guitar work of Eddy Current who is somehow able to play two simultaneous riffs at once with awesome clarity and power. There was no show boating at all until Suppression disappeared for half a song to climb the railings and stairs surrounding the stage microphone in tow, reappearing menacingly ready to spend his own seconds of thunder moshing with the masses by jumping straight into a head-smashing crowd. It was punk, it was Aussie and unpretentious as all hell. These guys are the shit right now.

Desperately needing a break having lost most of my conscious understanding of the world around me in the thick of Eddy Current, I questioned whether I was going to make any attempt to get well-positioned in the crowd of ‘Aussie-made-English-folk-superheroes’ Mumford & Sons. I knew it would be jam-packed and my interest, admittedly was minimal. While the modest new-folk stylings of these unpretentious chaps is pleasant, it is merely pleasant when it is as its peak. There is nothing intrinsic to them to hate, neither do they give anything past simple folk with a ‘need to grow some balls’ ethos to love. It does confuse me how they’ve been so swept into the Australian musical public’s loving arms. They have commercial appeal, but there are a raft of bands around that offer similar, perhaps only differing in the choice of genre they are reviving. They played the majority of their debut album Sigh No More and as expected the ridiculously massive crowd (allowing NO movement from side to side of the stage) was rapturous in their screaming adulation. The female dominated crowd mixed those that genuinely loved the band with a hell of a lot of people who didn’t seem to give too much of a shit but undertook the obligatory excited exultations anyway. I must admit that they played with relative deftness and did well to draw the limits of passion out of their slight songs. Not something for me but something for many nonetheless.

Mumford & Sons was the only break I got between the high-octane head slamming of Eddy Current and the candy-scuzz punk meets genre bending acrobatics of The Black Lips. And It was only just enough. Somehow these four never-left-teenage-hood Georgian louts were louder, faster and more fucked-up than they’ve ever sounded on record. Even their self-titled record that sounds like it’s recorded in an underground toilet caught in the middle of a bomb raid wasn’t has terse and exciting as this show. They were tight as all hell too. They packed out the claustrophobic Fowlers Live stage and pumped 2 minute punk-psychedelic-country blast after blast, to what was an awesomely ferocious mosh. The surfers came out and the moshers went nuts. It was pure rock ‘n’ roll. Somewhat surprisingly, there were no significant screwed up scatological or sexual shenanigans which I’m told their shows are famous for. They were in such fine form they didn’t need to piss on each other, get their members out or make out with each other voraciously on stage. There was one ultra punk moment when Saint Pe took it upon himself to vomit on stage between verse and chorus of what I think was O, Katrina, causing no hindrance to the blistering performance. It may be obnoxious and irrelevant to mention but this reviewer found himself thrown on stage with no warning after two over-ambitious friends decided he was to surf his way around the crowd. Finding no barrier and no bouncer I was dummy rolled on to stage and the Lips didn’t seem to care. They just kept going on their merry way, punctuating the whole of my laneway with the glory of fuzzed up, piss-off, punk rock ‘n’ roll. After years of general mosh abstinence I had no choice but to completely lose any semblance of control or societal acceptability. Awesome.

I was a broken man by this stage, my neck felt 45 degrees out of place, I’d been elbowed in the face and looked like a bedraggled sweaty mess that would be better off in the shower than at a festival. All the same, it was time to soldier on as I knew there was a bit of genius left to come. Straight away we filed our way into the crowd for the subdued but ethereally magnificent Echo & The Bunnymen. These guys had slipped through my musical fingers for most of my life, which doesn’t make much sense as they are known as post-punk masters who had the hooks and the feel (that’s right up my alley). Anyway, they won’t anymore. It was this perfect combination of hooks; poppy and addictive, with what can only be described as a truly ghostly and pervasive natural sound that shone through on the night. Their set-list resembled their greatest hits package Killing Moon and was packed with mellifluous sounds that floated in and out. Abrasive-smoothness (an obvious tautology) is possibly the best description for most of the show punctuated by smatterings of machine gun guitar, the famous 12-string tear-drop melodies and the slapping bass that gives the band so much unexplained texture. They’re a hook based band, they could of topped the charts in their homeland a whole lot more but their sound may have been too thick, too I guess ‘gorgeous’ (some people might say ‘precious’). If you can leave behind the arrogant iterations from Ian McCulloch whose banter was often plain offensive and doesn’t need to be repeated here, you had a band who while they may have had more potential to blow more minds, did the job you expected from them just with an extra dash of intensity. They’ve got the duelling guitars and the otherworldly synths. Having said this, they could have been louder and their sound just like Dappled could have been mixed with more body, more weight. But when the sun is far gone and you’ve just suffered extreme self-inflicted physical abuse, it was perfect. While I’ve kept song discussion to a minimum in this review (to be honest, my memory of specifics, if not experiential feelings is limited) I do want to make special mention of post-reformation song Think I Need It To which seemed to float over the crowd with even more intrinsic beauty than their older work. In summation they managed to do what any post-punk band should do live: They relaxed me and they exhausted me, all at the same time.

I was predominantly done for and therefore parked myself in the smoking den near the Fowlers fire escape and sat to discuss\absorb the day’s preceding gearing myself up for one last dose of tune with Florence + The Machine. Look, she’s incredibly sexy, she’s so young, she’s got legs up to her eyes and she’s got a charisma all her own (that is soon becoming stock in trade for up and coming female electro-pop acts), that’s that. But her voice which has the power of a nuclear warhead and the clarity of Barrack Obama’s oration, is somewhat grating after 3 or 4 songs. She’s loved I can’t deny it and the crowd sang along with passion. In fact, it was a crazy culture clash to witness genuine bogans screaming along in their ugly ocker accents to every song Florence sang. She’s written some wicked songs and hit upon a style that at the moment sells record. She’s going to be one of those that will be truly tested with her sophomore release. She’s got the visuals, her clothes where decadent, the set was the best at laneway and she can dance and prance like no other (especially when drunken girls aren’t on stage destroying the vibe). But she’s got to pull her musical finger out and show some true variety and she will then deserve the respect that’s been automatically bestowed upon her.

Finishing up my final hearty beverage and eating for the first time during the day I contemplated seeing N.A.S.A whose debut album has quite impressed me, but I was done. Bedtime. No after parties, no stay-up-all-night vibes. Comparing it to the previous two years the music wasn’t as special. The line-up was never going to reach the heights of Laneways past, but it did punch above its weight. But the best part? For all the changes in what ‘popular-alternative’ music has become it was still the punk and the rock ‘n’ roll that lead the charge, and most that I talked to agreed. It was a cracker of a day though, serving up the fun and good times consistently, if not totally because of the music. My recommendation is the same as last year. If you’re an Adeladiean, this is the best we’ve got in festival terms. It was sold out this year, maybe it’s time for a move to a new location, attract some more acts and increase the running time. Three years in and its justified itself many times over.

CHECK OUT ALL THE PHOTOS HERE.