Having copped a public relations nightmare after last year’s debacle of an event in Melbourne, the Laneway Festival had its work cut out to impress the weekend hipsters in a new location at the Footscray Arts Centre on the banks of the Maribyrnong River. It managed to sell out several weeks beforehand and appeared to have beaten the PR nightmare that bedevilled it last year. It certainly helped that the strong line up – booked up to six months ago – suddenly contained some of the world’s biggest acts.
The promoters must’ve been serving up offerings at the altar of good luck when Mumford & Sons topped the Triple J Hottest 100 a mere five days before they were due to play the festival and the massive crowd wedged into the Moreland St stage was testament to their massive popularity in Australia. The band seem almost disbelieving to have stepped off a plane from freezing England to be playing in front of several thousand people in the scorching sunlight. People have shimmied up trees and are hanging off fences and erupt as they play their ode to fucking up relationships, Little Lion Man. It would seem like every girl in the crowd is ready to forgive front man Marcus Mumford his indiscretions, yet they don’t get through a full set, with the power cutting out and a bemused band slinking off stage.
Frightened Rabbit play to a small crowd on the Car Park stage, with the band throwing themselves in to their folk pop up on stage and leaving in a blur of pasty white Scots covered in sweat patches. They’re followed by Eddy Current Suppression Ring who curiously play to probably the smallest crowd they have in a few years – the Car Park stage seeming to be the ugly friend of the festival that no-one wants to be seen with. Despite this the band put in a blinder of a set, with Brendan Suppression jumping through the crowd and over the adjacent fence, performing to an adoring crowd along the banks of the river.
The mystery of the small crowd is soon solved when venturing over to the River Stage to see The XX. A massive crowd has gathered to see the band – who despite the effects of the London media hype machine – delivered one of the best albums of 2009. Slimmed down to a three piece, the hypnotic interplay between the twin vocals of Romy Madly Croft and Oliver Sim are beguiling in the afternoon breeze. ‘Intro’ and ‘VCR’ wash across the receptive crowd and their cover of Womack & Womack’s Teardrops isn’t as hokey as their recorded version – seemingly the only foot they’ve placed the wrong way. However, as they finish to rapturous applause, it seems strange that their ‘Heart Skipped A Beat’ comes over the PA.
Back to the Moreland Street stage and Midnight Juggernaughts have been drafted in as a last minute replacement for Echo & The Bunnymen who have cancelled their appearance, supposedly due to Ian MacCulloch missing his flight from London. Choosing their moment well, their set reaches a climax with an apt cover of the Bunnymen’s The Killing Moon. The Dirty Three take to the same stage but appear restricted by the setting – a stage at the end of a street seems a far too constricted for the epic soundscapes of Warren Ellis’ band of troubadours.
Florence and the Machine come on to headline the stage and the crowd are treated to an epic performance of her amazing set of lungs, with people climbing on every vantage point – including rooves of neary buildings. A somewhat apologetic Florence informs those who have climbed buildings to get a better vantage point that they have to get down with the police threatening to pull the plug if they don’t.
Over by the River Stage The Middle East have the crowd hyptonized by their haunting melodies, the massed harmonies of ‘The Darkest Side’ wafting over the crowd in perfect harmony with the breeze off the Maribyrnong. The Laneway Festival managed to have one of the strongest festival line ups of the summer and has certainly redeemed itself in the eyes of the gig going public – with a little more tweaking of the site layout in Footscray it will remain one of the highlights of the summer.
