Day One
There’s a four-day option for the Falls Music and Arts Festival, and while most punters choose to peg their tents on 29 December, the party really kicks off on 28 December. Officially known as Boogie Nights, the evening is billed as a relaxing introduction to the ensuing musical mayhem, and sure, music starts later and ends earlier but that doesn’t mean those in attendance aren’t ready to party.
Standing at the back of the Grand Theatre, a massive Big Top perched above the natural amphitheatre of the Valley Stage, you can see the back of 7000 heads bobbing to the brass of nine-piece Melbourne soulsters, The Bamboos. Out of a festival of 16,000, that early turnout isn’t bad, and they’re not turning in anytime soon. After 12 years together, The Bamboos are understandably adored, their slick mixture of soul, funk and soaring vocals keeping the crowd warm until the torch is passed to cover band Furnace and the Fundamentals. Cover bands usually get a bad name, but by the morning of the second day, that name is on everyone’s lips.
Day Two
Because the party unofficially moved from the Grand Theatre to the bedlam of campsites, where God only knows what was smoked, snorted and sculled, it’s probably safe to assume that most festival-goers missed the Welcome to Country. Triple J unearthed winners The Trouble with Templeton were likely the first port of call for punters, but as happens with music festivals, the best intentions are undermined by reality. It’s simply impossible to see everything.
Those who missed out on the infectious insanity that is King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard did themselves a disservice, though the six-piece outfit, straddling the indie/punk divide, managed to draw a decent crowd. It was the next act that everyone was really hanging out for, however, the unofficial start to the first day being lil’ cutie-pie popsters, San Cisco. In 2011, their breakthrough hit ‘Awkward’ was the tap in everyone’s toes and hit #7 of Triple J’s Hottest 100. It also enticed a wave of festival-goers which almost washed to the top of the amphitheatre. Inoffensive adolescence-inspired pop songs were on order as expected; what was less expected was Jordi Davieson’s easy charisma and command of the stage.
Those hip enough to know that Sharon Van Etten will be Brooklyn’s next indie-darling stuck around for her first Australian performance. This little fact, humbly revealed by the brunette songstress and demonstrating her gratefulness at being here, was as sincere as the crowd was thin. It’s a tough slot to play, early afternoon after an anticipated act, but she did it with grace, strumming her way through a set highlighted by ‘Serpents’.
Up-and-comers Husky ushered in the afternoon, building on their recent run of festival appearances, before another avalanche of audience poured over the amphitheatre for Lisa Mitchell. The Australian Idol-alum still seduces on the back of older hits ‘Coin Laundry’ and ‘Neapolitan Dreams’, but continues to build on her catalogue with more insightful tracks like ‘Bless This Mess’, all of which were rapturously devoured by the young crowd.
Rodrigo y Gabriela proved why they’re an Australian festival staple, plucking, stomping and strumming at each other as if lost in a flamenco duel to the death. Next, Django Django warmed the increasingly cold crowd before The Hives headlined the evening.
Always bursting with braggadocio, always brilliant, The Hives reminded why they’ve been in the business 20 years and why they’re still headliners. Parading across the stage in top hats and tails, lead singer Pelle Almqvist is like the Edward Bernays of music, brainwashing the audience with his insistence on his band’s greatness, forcing them to sit, stand up, shut up and dance. But then their set was as for the fans as a band could possibly make it, playing all their biggest hits, including ‘Main Offender’, ‘Walk Idiot Walk’, and ‘Hate To Say I Told You So’. The only criticism may be that Almqvist stretched the anthemic ‘Walk Idiot Walk’ into a 20-minute indulgence while he fucked with the crowd and riffed on about the Mayan apocalypse.
Once the Swedes had screamed their way off stage, Miami Horror DJs performed to a dwindling crowd. There’s nothing particularly exciting about two dudes and a laptop on a big stage. Perhaps people came back after knocking back their preferred poison at their campsites, but most saved themselves for the next day.
Day Three
Brisbane’s Ball Park Music were the bed-rousing act of the third day, drawing a respectable amount of coffee sipping and sausage munching punters from their sleeping bags, who hung around long enough to catch Jinja Safari’s energetic, Afro-dub antics.
Later that afternoon, experimental low-fi Chicagoan, Willis Earl Beal played the first of two sets (the next on Day Four), while English indie-rockers The Vaccines exploded over a crowd fitting their meteoric success. Frenetic and fun, the West Londoners drew from their two albums, the crowd particularly roused by ‘Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra)’.
Next up was up was London outfit SBTRKT, the musical brainchild of Aaron Jerome. The arena filled up, the top of the hill a similar squishiness to the front of stage, the crowd presumably chemically equipped for one of the biggest acts of the festival. Shirts came off, boys bounced around the grass and wrestled while girls looked skywards, mouthing the lyrics a few seconds late, eyes lidded and euphoric. After an unexpected interpretation of hit ‘Hold On’, SBTRKT relished their 15 minutes with ‘Wildfire’. The laser-show was lost in the afternoon light, the curtains of dry-ice unnecessary, all aimed at concealing a man who already performs behind a mask and isn’t particularly exciting to watch, incredibly overrated yet still unabashedly adored.
If only as many people who had gathered for SBTRK had stuck around for Beach House. But then again, the set from the dreamy Baltimore pop duo was better suited without the monkey-man antics and feigned fanaticism of the young crowd. Washing over the waning light of the day, tangle-haired vocalist Victoria Legrand channelled Patti Smith, blissfully lost behind the keys, her husky voice drifting through the audience, who lapped up her saccharine canticles to long lost loves. A rousing performance of ‘Zebra’ demonstrated her soothing, vocal companionship in a soft, spine-tingling set that included ‘Walk in the Park’ and ‘Luzuli’.
Without the thrumming, sunburnt lads around to keep the crowd warm, it was back to the tent to layer up. The nights are cold in the Otways – three t-shirts and two heavy woollen jumpers kinda cold. When it was time to trek back to the stage came the crowd-splitting decision – The Flaming Lips or Flume?
For those that don’t know, Flume is a 21-year-old electro-artist whose self-titled debut album struck gold five weeks after release. He’s now signed to record labels in the US and UK. The Flaming Lips are alternative rock pioneers who don’t really need an introduction. One is a guy with a computer, the other is a band that likes to bazooka confetti into the air, run over the crowd while trapped in a giant balloon and use gigantic hands that shoot lasers to direct light all over the crowd.
It seems like a pretty easy decision, doesn’t it?
But common sense rarely prevails at music festivals and the young crowd were lured away from the alternative stalwarts for the fresh-faced Flume, one of the biggest success stories of Australian music in 2012.
The Flaming Lips did what they always do, exploding in kaleidoscopic colour, experimenting with sound and art, and Flume, presumably, played on his computer. This division, estimated at 40 to 60 percent, possibly more, wasn’t lost on Wayne Coyne, the wild grey-haired frontman of The Flaming Lips. During some of the band’s most iconic, anthemic songs he frustratingly demanded the crowd ‘C’mon! c’mon!’… not in a celebratory way, but in the way a drunk man wills his flaccid genitals to life.
This pretty much stands for the Falls Festival experience. No matter how good the line-up is, this festival belongs to the young. Unless of course you’re Hot Chip, who are decidedly older than most of the crowd by 20 years, but still rocked out as if they’d just dropped their first ever tab of acid. The audience was along for the ride with them, particularly ‘Over and Over’, which just about everyone sang along to. Then Alison Wonderland took to the decks and whipped partygoers into further frenzy, providing the kind of DJ set Miami Horror fell short with the night before.
Day Four
There’s a kid walking around with devil horns shaved into his head. Two days ago he looked normal. Now twisted knots of blue hair stick out from his forehead. He’s my 20-year-old cousin and he’s having a great time.
In the Grand Theatre, while most were snoozing away their hangovers, Tinpan Orange played a perfectly charming set, their ephemeral folk anchored by Emily Lubitz’s earthy vocals. Aside from latest hit ‘Barcelona’, the trio of Emily and Jesse Lubitz and Alex Burkoy, joined by Emily’s husband Harry Angus (from The Cat Empire), they also performed the theme to 80/90s ABC show Round the Twist, morphing it into a haunting plea against insanity, as well as a cover of Tom Waits’ ‘Way Down in the Hole’.
Down on the Valley Stage, Best Coast lit up the afternoon with their breezy, surf pop, which was perfect, given its adolescent themes, for the crowd made up of gidgets and gromits. ‘Boyfriend’ received a rousing reception, before Bertie Blackman churned her way through a set consisting predominantly of classics. What you may not realise is that Blackman’s sound translates perfectly into a live setting and her mastery of the guitar is awe-inspiring.
Bleeding Knees Club continued the teenage dream into the afternoon, apparently drawing inspiration from Jason Byrne’s previous comedy set, deciding to humiliate a young punter. Following Nazeem Hussein’s set, Ronny Chieng decided to belittle himself during his stand-up, drawing on aspects of the Falls experience such as the toilet sawdust to cleverly identify with the crowd. But it was Byrne, who giggled in anticipation of his own jokes, which mostly consisted of mangling our accent (and why not? It was hilarious), that really took aim at the crowd. It worked well, with the inflammatory Irishman knocking a few 18-year olds into place before cling-taping them together. It was an inspired reprieve from the music.
Swedish sister act, First Aid Kit surprisingly rocked out rather hard with their country-inspired Americana, Johanna Söderberg consistently close to decapitating herself on the edge of her keyboard. Most who saw First Aid Kit hung around for handsome man Matt Corby. The amphitheatre filled with almost everyone else left in the festival, all holding out for his breakout hit, ‘Brother’ and its infectious call and respond chorus. To his credit, Corby has come a long way from his days on Australian Idol, capturing the zeitgeist and reinventing himself as a bearded troubadour, though like many folk acts around today, it’s much of a muchness.
At dusk, something started stirring in the Village. Costumes were donned, floats assembled, and a psychedelic snake of celebration started squirming through the campsites for the Falls Fiesta. This mobile madness ended on the main stage just in time for Falls veterans The Hilltop Hoods to take the stage.
In the evening, Sampology presented an AV show celebrating the 20 years of the Lorne Falls Festival and 10 years of the Marion Bay event. Featuring past performances and interviews with famous acts that had tread the well-worn stage, the presentation cemented the importance of the festival in Australian music history, despite the few who stuck around to watch it.
Irish-indie rockers Two Door Cinema Club brought in the New Year, with the crowd eating up ‘What You Know’ and ‘Do You Want It All?’, detractors who would’ve preferred the Marion Bay New Year-ringers, The Flaming Lips quietened by the performance.
Then there was Coolio. In the preceding days, everyone wondered what he was going to play – 12 renditions of 1995’s ‘Gangster’s Paradise’? Does he have any other songs? He does. But you don’t need to hear them and he was, in a word, terrible. Knowing this, the smart money was on local act DZ Deathrays up in the Grand Theatre. The Brisbane duo’s fuzzed-out, thrash pop was a nice counterpoint to Two Door Cinema’s lighter, more electro sounds and DZ’s performance was as frenetic and fun as they always are.
For those unable to sleep, Alison Wonderland played again, and for those that were really high, Soccer Mum DJs got the band back together to play their party mash-ups until 6am.
With this year’s inclusion of the management team from Splendour in the Grass, a few similarities were apparent, and some transplants didn’t seem to take off. While the Smirnoff tent in Byron Bay was packed at all hours of the festival, the Lorne edition, at the foot of the second entrance to the main area, was mainly empty. This is probably because of the different set-ups of the two festivals: Splendour has three stages to trek between, while Lorne is mainly contained to one area.
Another similarity between the 2012 Splendour and Falls festivals is the line-up. Acts like Alison Wonderland, Flume, DZ Deathrays, Django Django, San Cisco, Ball Park Music, Jinja Safari, Bleeding Knees Club, Husky, and Parachute Youth all played both festivals. Is this just a coincidence or does Falls risk becoming the southern version of Splendour, with different headliners? Most likely it’s the bands at the forefront of popularity at the time, and the need to fill a three-day bill.
And it’s rather inconsequential as Falls isn’t just about the music – it’s more a rite of passage.
The Falls Music & Arts Festival
Lorne, Victoria
28 December – 1 January
