Live Review: A Day On The Lawn

For A Day On The Lawn, families with their toddlers, hoards of teenagers, older couples, everyone from rock fans to the more ‘free-spirited’ set were drawn to one central Hobart location. 

The fest began at around 3pm with local Hobart band Empire Park setting the scene. They were a great opening act, playing just slightly alternative rock, nothing too heavy. The Botanical Gardens is a beautiful setting for an event like this one, and it was obvious the crowd enjoyed watching the band with the backdrop of the beautiful flowers and trees – though people weren’t really super prepared to start dancing yet. 

Kyle Lionhart slowed things down. His acoustic sound really suited the atmosphere at this time, the sun still shining and families sitting together on picnic blankets under the hundred-year-old trees. Little May were up next: honestly, the best way to describe them is like the periwinkle blue power suit the band’s vocalist Hannah Field was wearing – soft but powerful. The band was the perfect transition between Kyle Lionhart’s heartwarming acoustic sound and Kingswood’s straight rock.

Kingswood don’t mess around with their sound, they get to the point, playing nice, polished rock. During Kingswood, the audience began to really get into the night and start dancing and singing along – always a good sign!

Next up was Spiderbait. Straight of the bat, Spiderbait seemed like an odd choice for the festival. The main crowd in front of them were young kids, anywhere from 16 down to about four years old. Still, while they may have been expected to attract an older crowd, Spiderbait pulled out all the tricks to entertain everyone. The band encouraged crowd singing, got little kids on stage and even whipped out a couple covers, including Janet English singing 99 Luftballons, before ending with Black Betty (obviously). 

Birds Of Tokyo are such a high production band. While their music can be a little slow, they just sounded so good. Everything was super clean and tight and super professional – and the crowd absolutely ate them up! We haven't seen a record from the band since Brace in 2016, but they dropped new single Good Lord last month – hopefully a taste of more to come. 

While we would love to see slightly more diversity on the line-up in future years, overall it appears like Hobart really got into this event, with what was easily one of the largest crowds at the Botanical Gardens in a long time. Super keen to see where this day fest goes in the future.