Live Review: Laneway Festival Adelaide

By now, Laneway Festival slips comfortably into its picturesque Harts Mill home like putting on a thrashed pair of Converse. Port Adelaide turned on a beautiful and sunny day — a welcome variation on the 'oppressively sizzling' theme prevalent at Aussie music festivals — and a sizeable contingent of punters were up and about early to catch local Unearthed winners, Paradise Club.

Melbourne's Cable Ties had the unenviable task of razzing up their garage-rock crowd in the midday sun, but succeeded gallantly, and chewed through pretty much all of their debut S/T in the process.

Miss Blanks and Billie Eilish split crowds evenly into the 'energetic' and 'mellow' camps, a trend that played out throughout the day's programming. With so much talent and but four stages to put it on, the potential for frustrating clashes was high, but Laneway's timetable was thoughtfully planned.

Alex Cameron's spot was unfortunately crippled by a stodgy mix with too much bass, but Dream Wife and Wolf Alice fared better. From that point on, the front-of-house mixes seemed almost uniformly excellent — clear, loud, well balanced, with bottom end to taste.

Just as well, since the dextrous musicianship and silky grooves of The Internet demand a hi-fi listening experience. Syd Tha Kyd's crack team of neo-soul jammers have first class instruments and are first-class players, providing a pillowy and lush bed for her easy and intimate vocal style. Who'd've thought that this goofily-named side project would end up being the most interesting and substantial branch of the OFWGKTA diaspora?

Back at the Spinning Top stage, with its sweeping port vista, Aldous Harding's folky sound hung on the breeze lighter, but in every way as meticulously, as that of The Internet. You can't turn away from Harding's performance, even if you're unsure you actually like it. Her jaw and eyes and throat twitch in anticipation of every word and syllable, as though wrestling the sounds themselves before forcibly ejecting them, or shuddering under the weight and effort of attempting to doing so. The result is a strange, singular vocal affectation that is sometimes enchanting and sometimes distracting, but always interesting. Beneath that oddness is a compelling singer/songwriter with obvious nods to Kate Bush, and her small backing band brought 2017's Party (and some fine as-yet-unreleased material) wonderfully to life.

Laneway's main arena swelled with the after-work crowd as Mac DeMarco strolled on stage. This festival regularly double-dips its corn chips, and it's a bit disappointing to see bills filled with names that have played in previous years, especially given the 2.3 zillion bands on earth right now. But DeMarco is a crowd-pleaser, and his blissed-out pop sound (Indie-yacht? Strat-rock? Dad-indie?) was eagerly skolled. Forty years from now, today's Laneway crowd will be on cruise liners, and DeMarco will be playing in the lounge bar.

POND continued its subtle metamorphosis from freaked-out pop-psych band into freaked-out psych-pop band, frontman Nick Allbrook doing nothing to quash suspicions that he is perpetually locked in a staring competition with a hole in the seam of the universe. Looking like the lovechild of Sia Furler and Craig Nicholls, he shimmied, grooved, screamed, and cooed, in that impossibly-cool, POND-like way. It'd be easier to jest if the band weren't tight as hell, their performance great, their chops impressive and the mix perfect. POND were fucking great, an absolute standout of the day, and well placed to erase Uncle Tame Impala from the memories of future Oz-Rock historians.

EDM lovers were well catered for at Laneway. Sylvan Esso's set had its fair share of drama, when police chased somebody on foot through the crowd and behind the punter barrier. Back at Harts Mill, Client Liaison's huge sub-bass was rivalled in size only by the two enormous water coolers on stage, but their entire performance leaned too hard on the irony angle (486 PC on stage notwithstanding) and ended up feeling shallow rather than fun.

By nightfall, the crowd was again divided roughly evenly, this time into the 'slightly younger' and 'slightly older' camps — the former at Anderson .Paak and Bonobo; the latter at Father John Misty and Slowdive. Misty's band was in fine form, delivering mostly the mid-paced rock stuff and almost none of the dreary balladry of Pure Comedy. Bonobo's exclusive appearance was strong but not unmissable. Slowdive started, well, slowly — but the intensity was ratcheted up with each tune, culminating in shoegaze whitewash bliss and blinding strobes.

The War On Drugs closed the main arena, tapping into the unlikely vibe of 1980s Bob Dylan. They started strongly, but seemed to slump immediately after — in any case, it was hard to choose between watching the rest of their set, or heading over to BadBadNotGood.

But BadBadNotGood were danceable, swayable, swoonable; an altogether funner way to close out the festival. Their musicianship was, naturally, miles above virtually anything else that was seen today. Slick, tasteful, funky, — you name it. The funny thing is, that those kinds of words were once the antithesis of the Australian alternative music festival circuit, and its audience. No-one could have guessed that such a festival would be headlined by an American instrumental jazz-fusion band, whose t-shirts have a VB can on them.

Laneway 2018 got it right in every way. The location, the sound quality, the considered balance of styles, volumes, genders, band formats, everything. This seemed to be reflected by the agreeable and easy-going crowd, although that vibe may have also been because of apparently lower numbers in previous years.