As the US shuffles towards its summer music festival season, the massive lineups just keep coming.
Following on from a number of Aussie bands appearing on the bills for big-name American festivals Coachella and Firefly Music Festival, now another collection of local acts has turned up on the Sasquatch! Festival 2014 lineup.
This year Sasquatch! is expanding to a dual weekend format for the first time, taking place over the Memorial Day weekend on 23rd to the 25th May and then again on the Fourth of July long weekend on the 4th to the 6th July. But unlike Coachella, the lineup isn’t mirrored across each three-day run but instead has a completely different lineup.
That means a tonne of bands, and Sasquatch! organisers revealed the enormous lineup for both weekends for the Washington-based event on Monday night in Seattle.
Topping the bill on the Memorial Day weekend is the reunited (and possibly Australia-bound) Outkast, The National (who kick off their Down Under tour on Thursday), Queens of the Stone Age (here with NIN in March), M.I.A., Foster The People, and Haim.
Also playing the first weekend of Sasquatch! is Blue Mountains four-piece Cloud Control. The darlings of Triple J and FBi radio have been enjoying a lot of touring attention since the release of their AMP-nominated second album, Dream Cave. …the Washington event also has its share of familiar Aussie artists.
Joining them on the first weekend is fellow Australian Music Prize nominees, Big Scary. The Melbourne indie twosome already made some in-roads into the US when they signed an international label deal with Seattle’s Barsuk Records ahead of releasing their second album Not Art last year. The album was voted among the Top 5 Aussie Albums of 2013 in the Tone Deaf Readers Poll and earned nominations from ARIA, AIR, The Age Music Victoria Awards and Triple J’s Album of the Year.
Also playing the festival’s opening dates is electro favourites, Cut Copy. They play Golden Plains in March – their first Australian dates for some time – to give audiences a taste of their latest album, Free Your Mind, in the festival setting before heading overseas for Sasquatch! and then Barcelona’s Primavera Sound.
The second weekend of the Washington event also has its share of familiar Aussie artists, sharing space on a lineup topped by Soundgarden, Kraftwerk, New Order, Frank Ocean, Röyksopp & Robyn, Neutral Milk Hotel, Broken Bells, and Spoon.
Courtney Barnett will be celebrating the 4th of July at the festival, adding to her already busy overseas itinerary that includes performances at Primavera, Field Day, Firefly, and Canadian industry conference NXNE this year. A schedule that capitalises on the 25-year-old Melbourne singer-songwriter’s international momentum – as seen in the success of breakout single ‘Avant Gardener’ – the second best Aussie song of the year according to you and one of NME’s fave songs of 2013.
Boy & Bear will also be jetting to Washington to play Sasquatch! this July. The festival appearance follows the ARIA-winning five-piece’s massive two-month, 40+ date regional tour of Australia this April and May in support of their sophomore effort, Harlequin Dream.
If you’re keen to join the patriotic cheer squad for Boy & Bear, Cut Copy, Cloud Control, Big Scary, and Courtney Barnett, festival passes go on sale Saturday 8th February. You could always make the trip to enjoy the rest of the lineup’s many delights too, of course (Major Lazer, Mogwai, Chance The Rapper, Deafheaven, Mac DeMarco, Jon Hopkins, The Horrors – the list goes on).
The Sasquatch! Festival 2014 lineup is the latest in a series of Aussies invading international lineups, including the record 55 Australian artists hitting SXSW 2014 (“the most Australian artists in the US at any one time in history”) and with more American summer events to be announced, while UK’s big name Leeds, Reading, and Glastonbury Festivals have their lineups waiting in the wings, it won’t be too long before we see more Aussie names cropping up on posters in due time.
Sasquatch! Festival 2014 Lineup
