Live Review: Groovin The Moo

There is nothing quite like a music festival, the unbeatable atmosphere as punters from an array of demographics gather together, getting jolly and going absolutely bananas to an eclectic spread of talented acts all playing on the same day.

With the addition of the sun beaming down on naïve skin... oh, wait, this is Groovin the Moo and, with a predicted forecast of not much more than 10 degrees and a heavy dose of showers throughout the day, muscle-bound bodies were going to have a tough time shining in all their well-defined glory in wellingtons and raincoats. That was until Sydney legends Sticky Fingers took to the stage, with their madman of a keyboardist, Freddy Crabs, wearing nothing but short shorts.

Prior to this eye candy, the festival was opened by a special ANZAC day service to pay tribute to the brave Australians that served for their country before young local talent Jesse Davidson was given 15 minutes to wow his audience as the first musical act of the day. Fresh of the back of triple j's Like A Version, Davidson's awkward, lovable style always impresses and those eager and early to the festival caught an exciting performance. However, even during these early stages, everyone knew what would really be the main “attraction” or “added bonus” for the day: mud. Saturday was not the only day blessed with rain in the regional town of Oakbank in the last week and by early afternoon it had been a game for the patrons of the Udder Mayhem bar to guess who was going to fall over across the open mud-pit theatre acted out in front of them. As a result, many festival-goers found refuge under the Moolin Rouge tent, where absolute groove machine The Delta Riggs had starting setting the party into full swing with their own onstage tiki bar.

Following “Les Riggs” were the first band this reviewer had had within his sights since the initial line-up announcement and claiming the heaviest band of the bill, Northlane, who have recently gone through a vocalist replacement ordeal and are now fronted by Marcus Bridge, who has been the catalyst in allowing the band to take their modern progressive approach to metalcore to new, uncharted waters. This band should be considered special for the heavy music community; from this performance, it's easy to see that they have been passed the torch from past metal icons and currently sit at the helm of Australian heavy music, providing the genre a platform from which to launch itself to the rest of the music lovers of this country — of which, judging from Saturday’s performance, Northlane is doing a fine job so far.

Unfortunately, something that wasn’t doing a fine job for Meg Mac over on the Channel [V] stage was her equipment, as for the first few songs the soul singer was inaudible due to microphone complications. However, once that was sorted, she returned to front of stage to absolutely nail a killer vocal.

International artists are few and far between at Groovin’ the Moo and this year is no exception; however, where they had been employed, these artists shone. One example is A$AP Ferg, who delivered one of the best on-stage performances of the Oakbank festival. Ferg took the notion of crowd involvement and broke the rules and then some, firstly bringing one lucky punter on stage to freestyle (to no success) before bringing the entire nosebleed section up to party with him and his crew; A$AP Ferg performed like an awesome menace and is definitely not one to be missed.

Ball Park Music provided a delectable audio-visual offering for punters to feast on in the mud, proving another standout for the festival, even playing through a quick snippet of a much-loved television theme song (don’t worry, no real spoilers) to act as the perfect sounds to watch the sun go down. This allowed sets from Hermitude and Hot Dub Time Machine to really ignite the full-scale party as the latter nostalgically transported a huge Moolin Rouge tent audience back through the glory days of music to the present. Honestly, Hot Dub’s DJing skills are quite lacklustre but his track selection manifests the perfect nostalgic memories and evokes all of the excitable screams from the crowd as they raised their tune rag high into the air; he is the essential night-starter.

This posed a bit of an issue for the powerhouse brother/sister duo from across the pond, Broods, who came in with their beautiful, soothing melodies, vocal lines and angelic synth leads to an amped crowd. It slowed the vibe, and weary punters made it difficult to make the transition; the duo were noticeably less than impressed. Though renditions of tracks such as Mother Father and Bridges were stunning, the response from the audience clearly fell short of what Broods were expecting. This would not have helped when RL Grime blew the place apart from the mud-encrusted ground up and came close to being the crowd favourite; the beats were huge and sent the crowd mental, hanging off every build-up and turning into a sea of fist pumping arms at every devastatingly intense drop.

So much so, that this reviewer could only tear himself away to catch one Hilltop Hoods track in the form of Cosby Sweater, which was performed with the gusto that you’d expect from the Aussie hip-hop veterans before returning to Moolin Rouge to take an hour-long flight with party pilots Flight Facilities. If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from this year’s Oakbank instalment of Groovin the Moo is that if you don't have a pair of decent gumboots by the time next year’s comes, you will most likely be in serious trouble. But, for now, we wait for the inevitable "take me back" photos across Instagram. #GroovintheMud