Falls Festival: Day One @Lorne, Victoria (29/12/2010)

Sun 2nd Jan, 2011 in Gig Reviews

What makes a great music festival? When asked, the average summer tent-dweller might cite pleasant weather, affordable booze or a consistently excitable crowd as the definitive elements of a roaring festy success. Those with more nefarious agendas might even hope for loose security (or even looser members of the opposite sex) to achieve that ‘festival defining moment’, but ultimately, whoever you ask, the only real answer to the question is, ‘great music’.

What is great festival music, then? You might say a good blend of young and old, commercial and alternative or even just that there is something for everybody. But much more likely, you’d give a specific reference like this: Hendrix playing the guitar with his teeth at Woodstock, Radiohead transcending the mud and rain at Glastonbury in ’97, or more recently, Neil Finn reducing the attending FasterLouder fraternity to whimpering, awe-struck teenagers at this year’s Meredith.

So, what if I told you that Falls Festival 2010/11 had no absolute ‘defining moment’; no veteran performer scouring hot tears from legions of adoring fans, nor youthful upstarts exploding onto the scene in a blaze of unannounced glory? Could we still consider this festival a success? Would the label ‘great’ be rendered over-hyperbolic? Do these opening paragraphs contain too many questions? Probably, so perhaps it’s time to provide some answers.

Falls Festival 2010 was hot; let’s get that straight from the offset. With the elements conjuring a mayhem inducing wind-whipped scorcher on the final day, Wednesday ushers in a comparatively timid 28 degrees and it’s in these conditions that Eagle and The Worm take to the focal Valley Stage. Finding to their good fortune that there is always a place for music requiring no standing ovation, the jazz-folk orchestra allow their laid back, good-times groove to wash over the determinedly seated sun-revellers early in the day. Although the majority of the set is warmly if placidly received, it isn’t until last song All I Know, with its danced up blues riff, that the crowd comes to life, 2 adventurous dancers becoming 4 then 8 and expanding exponentially until by the song’s close there is a dancefloor filled with abandon. In an arena filled with posters detailing the dangers of drinking and driving, lead singer Jarrad Brown advises “munt hard but be safe” and having given us next year’s TAC billboard tagline, the band waltz offstage to a well deserved applause.

By pulling out a set-saving number at the pointy end of the performance, Eagle and The Worm inadvertently set a precedent that continues throughout the festival, with bands generally relying on their most popular or recognised songs to force an audience reaction. Case in point, The Last Dinosaurs who have no real success with their set of grunge inflected spiky pop until the closing Triple J fave Honolulu eventually prompts a tentative dance party. Similarly, Sally Seltmann underwhelms with her Regina Spektor-lite take on lo-fi twinkle pop, even hit song Harmony to My Heartbeat being too understated to really draw any enthusiasm from a set of punters leaking sobriety and attention span in equal measure. The traditional mid-afternoon lull coming into effect, it requires something a bit different to keep momentum going and luckily the old New Buffalo chooses to reprise her Meredith cover of Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain, which showcases simultaneously her likeable, trembling key work but also the lack of power or distinctiveness in her vocal.