St Jerome's Laneway Festival @Sydney College of the Arts,Sydney (5/2/2012)

Thu 9th Feb, 2012 in Gig Reviews

Though it’s far from the boutique labour of love that Jerome Borazio and Danny Rogers created eight years ago, Laneway festival remains the brightest calendar entry for those who follow a particularly trendy strain of indie, and all of its’ ebbs and flows. This year, with hardly any veterans to be seen, there’s a lot of first-timers and new acts on the bill.

Unearthed-endorsed locals Sures opened the festival, bringing to the stage that slightly grandiose indie-pop sound that seems to dominate unearthed of late. But there’s something different about Sures – they take more risks, and vary their sound. Yet it’s done in a surprisingly assured way, and you can’t see them straining to stand out like so many like-minded bands do. Which lifts them above the pack, more than justifying their spot on the bill.

Geoffrey O’Connor isn’t so new, but his style is. While he’s been the often shy frontman of The Crayon Fields for roughly a decade now, his new solo material and surrounding live performances have seen a huge shift. He’s now a confident, swaggering performer, beckoning his audience in amongst waves of aching synths that would be cheesy if they weren’t delivered with such conviction. Which is why it only sort of clicks – they’re intimate songs for the night, and like any seduction, the potency fades under the brightness of the midday sun – despite Geoff’s best moves.

Meanwhile, Total Control had no desire to fit the summer festival ideal. “The summer is over, there won’t be another” sung singer Dan Stewart, over and over, to open the set. What followed was a frenetic set, with the band covering material from their album Henge Beat and their various singles, but giving them an even choppier, punkier feel. There were no edges smoothed over, but this played to their strengths – the sheer vibrancy in their playing, mixed with some great songs, made them a highlight of the day.

Pains of Being Pure At Heart followed on the Car Park Stage, playing their brand of feel-good, shoegaze-tinged pop. It was catchy, but from the back it didn’t quite click. Luckily, EMA was the next stage over. She was far more direct – in fact, she went straight for the jugular with a grungier, more confessional songwriting style. And she delivered it well live, giving her songs just enough time to breathe and build, making their peaks a whole lot more devastating when they arrived.

Pajama Club found themselves in a curious position. They’re in some ways a new band, playing new material to first-time listeners. On the other hand, frontman Neil Finn’s extensive career in bands like Crowded House and Split Enz creates a certain level of expectation. But it carries well live – Finn’s songwriting is still great, perhaps even re-invigorated with his new band. While their mix of post-punk and powerpop doesn’t always enthrall the crowd, it’s consistently great – and a cover of Bowie’s Moonage Daydream goes down particularly well.

Laura Marling follows, coming out to an absolutely packed Carpark stage crowd, and shows why with a very assured set. An ambitious stage setup (a 5 piece band, including multi-instrumentalists and double bass) could’ve unravelled under the wrong hands, but it sounded surprisingly crisp – as it did for most of the day on the Carpark stage, a great improvement on last year. And Marling’s performance was tremendous, with her band providing great arrangements to her simple, yet elegant folk songs. It was not only a great change of pace, but also a festival highlight.

Halfway through the day, things start to become tiring. Laneway’s middle-ground between boutique festival and major event means that the fairly small Sydney College of the Arts site – likely chosen for a sense of intimacy and compactness – is a drag to get around. Stages are all packed, and one must often jostle for position to see, which is understandable. What really becomes draining is how packed everything else is. One leaves a stage to immediately find themselves in a busy thoroughfare, and the whole thing is surrounded by brick. Places to actually stop and relax are in short supply, and simply being there becomes an exhausting experience.

Similarly, the festival’s lineup was also surprisingly tiring. This year’s acts almost all have a very upbeat pop-indie sound, and the bulk of the lineup are fairly recent, hyped indie acts. Individually they’re, for the most part, pretty great. But eleven hours spent with a fairly narrow musical focus, and no variety between each stage, can start to feel like a bit of a slog.

This kind of fatigue certainly doesn’t help Twin Shadow, who appear to have everything down pat but struggle to carve out much of an identity of their own. Experienced on their own they could perhaps impress more, but amongst a hoarde of likeminded acts they feel like indie filler. Similarly, Cults failed to connect, despite a war chest of songs from their fantastic debut. It was one of the day’s biggest disappointments.

Read on for reviews of the Feist, The Horrors, M83 and SBTRKT sets.