Farewelling the Summer of festivals down at Golden Plains has only taken a few years to become a fixture in the calendar, but this year was destined to be devoid of any golden sunsets or warm autumn dusk. Try ducking for cover amidst constant rain and slipping in the mud, and wearing the weekend’s de rigeur outfit of rain poncho and gumboots.
Before the rain started to fall in biblical proportions, the crowd was treated to an energetic if slightly shambolic performance from Royal Headache. A much hyped Sydney band pumping out power pop reminiscent of The Stems and Teenage Fanclub, front man Shogun looks lost on a festival stage and his geeky marionette moves look waay too calculated. Nonetheless, they’ve got a sure fire hit with new 7” single Eloise which makes a perfect jump from vinyl to crowd on the barrier singing along.
Crayon Fields decorate the stage with tacky fake plastic ivy but it doesn’t take long for their winsome pop to make amends for the stage decoration faux pas amidst the rapidly falling rain. The Good Life is a notable omission from a set that focuses on their most recent releases and hints at plenty of new material in the pipeline.
The Big Pink might be cresting the wave of the next big thing in the UK and Europe, but it takes a bit more than hype to impress the ‘folded arms at the back of the room’ patrons of Melbourne. Their under-attended (okay almost everyone was on the guest list) show at the Hi Fi on the Thursday preceding the festival surprised in that frontman Robbie furze could actually sing really well, but he was probably over eager to put in stadium style stage moves when only playing to 300 disinterested punters. Luckily their set ahead of the impending weather Armageddon managed to work the crowd far more and even if they didn’t impress the few Melbourne coolsies that made it down for their set, they showed that they could still pull off the songs live from one of 2009’s best albums.
After Tone Deaf retreated from the rain we made it back down for Pavement. Feeling like you’d accidentally walked in on the band rehearsing at Bakehouse Studios in Richmond, their ramshackle approach was soon forgiven once they started pulling out hits like Cut Your Hair and Kennel District out of the set list, and Tone Deaf will never forget the shit eating grin of local music legend Julian Wu as he joined them on backing vocals.
Dinosaur Junior was a Tone Deaf icon back in high school, and while we may have moved on, it was still enough to make us think fondly of quick fumbles at ‘supervised’ high school discos while wearing our Dimmeys flannelette shirts, tight blue acid wash jeans carefully ripped at the knees and of course a Dinosaur Junior tshirt. While the massed sound coming out of the guitar stacks on stage muddied the finer points of their more subtle tracks, the incendiary melody of Feel The Pain almost brought us to tears. Hangovers banished we made it down for much hyped Sydney act Jack Ladder. Aparet from the guitarist being Harry High Pants, this band are incredibly frustrating. Their lead singer channels Nick cave, with songs of fire and brimstone, yet unlike Cave, the redemption promised in the form of a chorus or suite of major chords never arrives.
Nashville Pussy reinvigorated our wet souls with a set of balls to the wall down home rock n’ roll grit, all while expounding the virtues of that Aussie band who built a career on a reputation for lacking virtue, Rose Tattoo. And sometimes, just for a moment, you could see Blaine Cartwright channelling Angry Anderson all fired up in his overalls.
There were later sightings of bands but Tone Deaf was jetlagged and also hiding out from the torrential rain, so we’ll just keep it short and sweet as we retire from the Australian festival circuit for the winter on the high note that Golden Plains brings – let the weather be damned.
