It’s just before 2pm and a positively balmy 33C at the Sydney Showgrounds. I am surrounded by young people in baggy shorts, slip dresses and frosted wraparound sunglasses, and my Docs are already rubbing. Laneway festival turned into the Big Day Out slowly – and then all at once.
For the entire 2010s the Sydney leg of the Melbourne-born event was held at the sprawling outdoor Rozelle compound that is the Sydney College of the Arts. Now in Homebush for the second year, the vibes remain, largely, off. Most of the festival takes place in three near-identical cavernous tin sheds, one of which is split in half by two side-by-side “main” stages that ape the BDO’s setup without being as effective, all of which ends up dwarfing the performances. For a festival that started on small stages packing out literal laneways, the strange, sterile, anonymising effect of these big metal boxes feels all the more dissatisfying.
The sheds also make it near-impossible to build any atmosphere – a bar that only once-in-a-generation talent Stormzy managed to clear on Sunday. Sweat poured off the grime superstar like an overfull dam, during swooning slow jams as much as through high-octane hits such as Know Me From, which tore the roof off. It’s just a shame so many people had to leave two songs in to avoid missing connecting suburban trains that stopped running before his set was due to finish.
For those heading to the festival next weekend (lineups slightly vary in Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth) the best tip is to show up early for rising local stars. In Sydney, Yorta Yorta/Kalkadoon/Yirendali rapper Miss Kaninna (who’s playing at each stop) and Novocastrian pop ratbags Raave Tapes (who are not) had an in-your-face charisma that will play equally well in sunset slots a few years from now. Another early local highlight was Friday*, one of the vanguard acts of western Sydney’s unbelievably rich, thriving and underrated pop scene. The younger-leaning crowd might have taken until the chorus to clock his crunchy, rocky cover of Amerie’s 2005 cult hit 1 Thing, but there were screams of delight when he brought out fellow Westie pop phenom Dylan Atlantis.
Plenty of the main-stage acts were received just as rapturously, from the dreamlike (if a touch textureless in the space) spell of Atlanta singer-songwriter Faye Webster to returning R&B star Steve Lacy and the deadpan future-sex ravers Confidence Man. Unknown Mortal Orchestra, the quirked-up Kiwi American indie rock collective who closed out the second-biggest room, successfully roused a heat-exhausted crowd at the end of the night with a watertight set. But perhaps it’s time to retire the overused gig move where an act gets the whole crowd to hunker down on their haunches as a song builds up and then leap to their feet for the release; by the breakdown of Confidence Man’s cult hit Boyfriend, even the twentysomethings were struggling a bit. (“This is my fourth one of these today,” I muttered to my neighbour on the ground; “Try doing it in a minidress,” she replied.)
One thing that hasn’t changed is that the Laneway crowds – especially in cities that feel as undersold as Sydney this year – are among the nicest and least chatty you’ll find at any festival, and are mostly there for the actual music rather than for the party. This is why you can have acts like jazz pianist-drummer duo Domi and JD Beck, whose precise, goofy, gorgeously unpredictable compositions left astonishingly little empty space in the echoing metal dome housing the Everything Ecstatic stage. Not only was the crowd respectful and attentive during the welcome to country ceremony, but they rapturously applauded the short, stirring songs that featured in it (including one called Mosquito Biting Me.)
If you have no specific destination, the dance- and beats-oriented Everything Ecstatic stage is the place to go (despite the aggressive reverberation that Beck noted during their set). The controlled chaos of rap-rock trio Paris Texas threatened to be the highlight of the entire day, a moshing, pogoing alchemy of performer and crowd, with shirts optional and shit-eating grins mandatory. Berlin-based DJ HorsegiirL, who performs in a horse-head mask, opened with Bomfunk MCs’ 1999 breakbeat hit Freestyler jacked up to about 200bpm – and only went harder from there. UK jungle producer and vocalist Nia Archives kept the crowd more hyped than a sugar-crazed toddler with a party-ready mix of her own live tracks and the odd indie-sleaze classic. Anyone who was there to get properly cooked, meanwhile, could take themselves off to the DJ stage in the old woodchopping arena – last year’s Everything Ecstatic location, where the sun beat down as relentlessly as the sets.
That said, having two dance-based areas made the absence of smaller discovery-oriented stages more stark. From the festival’s inception, even rising international acts found themselves playing tiny 3 x 3 metre tents to rapt crowds of 20 to 60 people max, and it was so often an unexpected yet reliable highlight of the day. With the punters zipping efficiently from corner to corner of the Showgrounds site via a long concrete thoroughfare, there are no more “laneways” to stumble down in search of a shortcut where you might end up finding a new favourite act.
The event as a whole is palpably still recovering after three pandemic years off, and nobody’s unaware of the growing difficulties involved in running a world-class touring festival at the arse-end of the planet. But finding cool, inviting corners in which it can honour its poky DIY origins could be one way Laneway can go from these bare bones back to body and soul.
Laneway festival tours to Auckland on Tuesday, Adelaide on Friday, Melbourne on Saturday and Perth on Sunday. Tickets are still available and lineups vary; find out more here
