Laneway Festival 2008- Brisbane

All hail Laneway! What a wonderful way to welcome autumn to Brisbane! In only its second year in Queensland, St Jerome’s Laneway Festival is still a fledgling but its continued success is certainly guaranteed after an eclectic line-up impressed the pants off a jubilant crowd numbering roughly 2,000. Heck, and at the expense of sounding like a nonagenarian with dementia, what lovely weather we had! Everything was in the right place for a primo day.
Laneway is cool. What makes it so cool is that it doesn’t suffer from that really shit condition called “commonality”. You see, South-East Queensland has been pretty well over-run by festivals this summer. We consider ourselves to be somewhat cultural and outdoors-ee up here but, simply, there isn’t as many of us as there are in Sydney and Melbourne and good times can get a little thinly spread. Hence, if one was to attend every 12-hour event on the summer music calendar they’d probably feel they were living in their own “Groundhog Day” a.k.a. same people, same music, same artists, and same venue (almost, because everything has been happening at Riverstage lately).
I’ve been around the summer festival circuit for a few years now and very few events offer anything other than dirty house slash electro DJs (unless we start talking the mass-movers like Big Day Out, V-Fest and Good Vibrations) and going to a festival to see a whole bunch of local DJs do what they usually do every Friday and Saturday night really doesn’t present anything other than a money-grabbing opportunity. For instance, Hear and Now, Oceans 30 and Sunkissed provided nothing more than a chance to get wasted in the sun with 5,000 other people who were bound to be wearing the same fluro/geometric print singlet that you rushed out and bought from General Pants Co. the day before. I don’t want to be too much of a persnickety bastard (secretly I do though) but if variety is the spice of life, then we’re having Maggi 2-minute chicken-flavoured noodles five nights a week. Am I bitter about it? Sure I am but that’s my prerogative as an asshole critic. I’ll shut-up now.
The thing which is setting St Jerome’s apart from the rest is, obviously, the invited artists. Headlining the event this year were Feist, The Presets, Gotye, Broken Social Scene (technically Feist fits in there but she’s doing so well on her own now) and The Panics. Judging by the crowd numbers at certain set times most people were there for Feist and The Presets, but what really impressed me were the performances of Dan Deacon and Cool Kids.
Dan Deacon is a powerhouse of crowd control and sonic abuse that completely obliterated the senses of those who joined in his games. His set started with nearly 200 people pointing to the sky while on bended knee, moved onto chanting hand-waving and peaked with a human tunnel for all to run through. You probably could have guessed the intense times this Baltimore local had planned from his Gumby shirt and fluro-green skull-on-a-stick prop, but little could prepare for the furious nature of his experiMENTAL electronica (150bpm plus is spastic). No sad faces, only good shit here and by far the most interactive and exciting set I’ve ever seen. This brings up another good point about Laneway Festival. The intimacy between artist and crowd that is augmented by having a “boutique” festival in essentially confined spaces creates the perfect atmosphere for enjoying good, original music with friends/strangers.
The second performance on my list of favourites was Cool Kids who channel so much old school appeal it hurts. These kids are legends. They’re all about smooth lyrics, great beats and being real. If you haven’t heard of them, check ‘em. If you already know of them, keep watching. ‘Gold and a Pager’ was the highlight track for me but the whole 45 minutes oozed shit-hotness. Their set really represented their music so well that listening to the CD afterwards just didn’t compare; there’s so much more power in their live show, but I’m not complaining, for once.
OOH, one side point. I totally forget what the last song Feist performed was, but Broken Social Scene came back on and offered their trumpet and tuba-brass-wind-instrument-thing sounds, creating a pretty powerful finale. That was moving stuff.
Anyway, an awesome day was had. If you weren’t there then get along next year but don’t bring too many friends because as I said, it’s an event for the devoted few, not the reckless masses. Also, if you weren’t there, find out about the bands that were and feel bad about it, ‘coz ya’ missed out.

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