Harvest Festival @ ParramattaPark, Sydney (13/11/11)

Thu 17th Nov, 2011 in Gig Reviews

Perhaps Sydney’s Harvest festival was blessed with a slightly smaller crowd or maybe the organizers had quickly learnt the lessons from the events the day before in Melbourne, but Sydney’s Harvest Festival was (almost) entirely hassle free and lived up to the advertising boast that this was not so much a festival as a “civilized gathering”. Yes, even in Parramatta – so far away from Surry Hills – it’s possible to be civilized.

Back in February, Oxford math-rock quartet This Town Needs Guns were one of the more out-of-place bands to grace the Soundwave line-up. Thankfully, they found themselves a bit more at home when they took to Harvest’s Windmill stage. The main difference between then and now – festival context aside – is the band’s reshuffled line-up. Original vocalist Stuart Smith is out of the picture, after leaving the group to start a family. In his place comes Henry Tremain, a very charming and polite young man with a more than adequate voice that unfortunately just couldn’t seem to shake his nerves that came with this new musical environment. “This is my second ever show with this band,” he told the audience, and his cheeks going bright red had nothing to do with the increasingly humid weather. Still, it was fascinating to watch the band essentially start anew on stage, and Tremain certainly delivered older favourites like Chinchilla and 26 is Dancier Than 4 with a genuine engagement. Here’s hoping that the growing pains cease by the time the band come back for a proper tour.

Dappled Cities have to be one of the most reliable Australian festival bands of the past few years. No matter who they’re playing to or what styles of music come before or after them, the band put in a great amount of effort to get their crowd on-side and it always pays off in spades. Watching vocalist/guitarists Dave Rennick and Tim Derricourt bounce off one another – at times quite literally, as Derricourt’s dancing gets the best of him – is always a joy to watch, locked into each other’s styles like some kind of indie-rock yin and yang. Jamming through established favourites such as Fire, Fire, Fire and The Night is Young at Heart is always a treat, but they also found the time to show off some new material. Normally, the phrase “this is a new song” is interpreted as “please go and pay ten dollars to drink a warm beverage” by most, but those that stuck around were in for a treat. It’s sounding a little darker, a little spacier, maybe even a little weirder. In other words, it sounds great. It’s good to have them back.

Emerging to soft, tinkering percussion and the toned-back sneer of vocalist Hamilton Leithauser, sharply-dressed New Yorkers The Walkmen had a very odd way to begin their performance, to say the least. Then again, it just wouldn’t be in the nature of a band like The Walkmen to do things anything other than their way – and, ultimately, that’s what worked for them the most. They moved from folksy sways to clustered thuds of drums and guitar with ease – sometimes within the same song – and newer material from their last record Lisbon went down with a strong reception. The crowd made it quite clear what they wanted to hear the most, however; and it came in the form of the penultimate number of the setlist The Rat. The second the keyboard let out the ominous tone signalling the songs arrival, the energy swelled tenfold; growing even larger the second Leithauser began to spit bile through the songs’ lyrics, still devastating as all hell after all these years. Not quite the live act many were expecting, but a damn impressive one all the same.

It felt more than a little spooky to look at the main stage of Harvest in the minutes leading up to the arrival of TV on the Radio. This was simply from knowing that the late, great Gerard Smith – the band’s bassist who infamously played with his back to the crowd at every show – would not be there to hold down the band’s pulsing charge of rhythms. The fact they’ve continued on at all is admirable, but the set they subsequently came out and performed proved exactly why they should be.

It was, admittedly, a rough start; with opener Halfway Home suffering major sound issues and taking away from one of the highlights of 2008’s Dear Science. Once this was resolved, however, the band were able to move freely into a sizzling set of reworked older numbers ( The Wrong Way, Staring at the Sun ) and lively renditions of new material (an extended jam on Repetition serving as a major highlight). As they moved the energy levels to probably the highest levels of the day during finale Wolf Like Me, it served as a reminder of what the Brooklyn collective are capable of in the live department. It’s something Gerard himself would surely be proud of.

Similar to The Walkmen earlier in the day, Conor Oberst seemed determined to defy festival conventions and simply play it his way. Hell, if the reception was anything to go by, Oberst probably could have done a reading from The Hungry Little Caterpillar and he’d have received rapturous applause. This was a crowd dedicated to every move made by the Bright Eyes frontman, who had brought the collective to Australian shores for the first time in six years.

Backed by a solid six-piece band – including the ultimate rock indulgence of two drummers – Oberst lead the charge through a series of favourites, including the meaningless-sex anthem Lover I Don’t Have to Love and the bizarrely uplifting Take It Easy (Love Nothing). It’s when the band took risks at either end of their dynamics range, however, that really defined the set. The heart-wrenching acoustic Land Locked Blues from 2005’s I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, had the crowd in a hypnotic sway, broken only by applause for Nate Walcott’s very tasteful trumpet solo. At the complete opposite end of the sound spectrum, Road to Joy was the perfect way to end, a savage all-in freakout of the best kind that sounded like Dylan going electric crashing headfirst into a mariachi band. Let’s fuck it up, boys, indeed.

You would think that a group of disgruntled thirtysomething men singing songs about paranoia, fear, imperfection, heartbreak and the human condition wouldn’t exactly fit in at a music festival. Yet, amazingly enough, The National are a perfect festival band. With one of the biggest crowds of the whole day, the quintet (plus a horn section) made a remarkable impression on anyone that may have thought their brooding indie-rock style may have been lost in translation in an environment such as this. The set was fairly neatly divided between their last two studio albums – 2007’s Boxer and last year’s High Violet – each track receiving rousing cheers of recognition. Sure, it was certainly an oddity to observe en-mass singalongs to hooks like “I’m afraid of everyone” and “I don’t want to get over you,” but it appeared to be a celebration of these emotions – as if every last voice singing back to vocalist Matt Berninger was simply saying “I’ve been there, buddy.”

It’s striking, and often quite beautiful music; and amazingly enough, the nuances and subtleties that make these songs so special on record are able to be retained even in a field with thousands of people watching. Terrible Love ended the performance on a particularly high note, with Berninger wading through the crowd like some sort of dapper bearded prophet, engulfed by the audience as they screamed, as one, “it takes an ocean not to break.” The National are the best indie-rock band in America – and very little is stopping “in America” being subtracted from that title.

As it turned out, those fretting over missing the technicolour glory of The Flaming Lips in favour of The National had nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, those that had been waiting for the anticipated 7:30 start of the fearless freaks definitely did – something had gone seriously wrong, and it took over half an hour to get everything on stage in working condition. Whatever it was, there was certainly a wave of frustration and disappointment in the air as the audience played a particularly dull version of The Waiting Game. Then, it was gone. Almost instantly. In a blaze of blinding lights, confetti, an electric vagina and a crazy man in a plastic bubble, all was forgiven. Like it was ever going to be any different. This is the fucking Flaming Lips we’re talking about, after all – often regarded to be the best live band in the world. Could anyone stay angry at them for too long?

Balloons went flying and, before too long, Wayne Coyne was getting us to sing about a bizarre assortment of individuals who use unconventional items for condiments, tissues and hair dye. It was a seemingly endless spin of euphoria, a psychedelic trip through walls of noise, spaced-out acoustic campfire sing-alongs and the kind of mind-boggling visuals that would have James Cameron crying into his piles of money. This isn’t a band that needs to rely on visuals to compensate for their music, mind you – whether they’re churning out progressive rock or tripping the light fantastic through futuristic pop, they work incredibly well as live musicians. As the anthemic Do You Realise?? brought the (very brief) journey to its end, there was not a face amongst the audience that didn’t have their face covered either in tears, mile-wide smiles or plentiful confetti (and, in some instances, all three). The band were already predetermined to take out the title of best act of the day, and it was only typical that they take it with flying colours. Unquestionably worth sticking around for.

If The Flaming Lips felt like the biggest party in the world, watching Portishead felt like the comedown. Going from such a wild and colourful show to the bleak sepia provided by the English trio – expanded to a sextet live – was nothing short of bizarre. Still, the group had amassed a huge audience to end the festival upon, and they did it with plenty of style. There was plenty to be impressed about in Portishead’s set, but it certainly wasn’t without its faults. For one, the complete lack on interaction completely de-humanised the set – not even so much as a “thank you” from a single person on stage. Sure, it was probably intended to develop and enhance the mystique surrounding the group, and it’s not as if we were expecting a Wayne Coyne-like charisma.

The audience made no secret of their love for 1994’s Dummy, with huge ovations given for the slow-burning Mysterons and Sour Times. And let’s not even get started on what is probably the band’s defining song, Glory Box – seeing that gorgeous slice of soulful trip-hop performed live was worth the price of admission alone. That’s not to say other numbers went unloved, however – Beth Gibbons’ stinging snarl through the self-titled opener Cowboys was a set highlight, as was the merciless audio assault of Machine Gun, which was assisted by some very peculiar visuals of our very own Tony Abbott shooting lasers out of his eyes. Of course.