Live Review

Splendour in the Grass: Day 2

8.05am - Just beat the toilet line.

9.35pm - Longest line gong goes to every coffee truck today. Contemplating a PSA to remind everyone coffee dehydrates you but decide to let my fellow alcohol pruned humans sip in peace. Another beautiful cloudless day.

10.06 - Girl to friends: “I got so drunk last night I passed out at 7.30 and slept through the night.” Crowd laughs. Repeat this anecdote about six times from conversations I overheard walking in this morning. 

11.03 - Women of Letters hosted a Splendour themed session in the Splendour Forum tent with a pretty excellent lineup. The speakers had to write letters to song they wished they had written. Actress and Larrakiah woman Miranda Tapsell celebrated the unapologetic blackness of Beyonce’s Formation, replete with the full dance performance afterwards. Comedian Becky Lucas wrote to a Grease mega mix and made running over puppies funny somehow (I’m not a sociopath, promise). Brisbane RnB singer and producer Wafia moved all over the world after her Iraqi and Syrian parents were persecuted by Sudaam Hussein’s regime, and she spoke about how the Black Eyed Pea’s track Where is the Love hit home for her post 9/11. 

1.00 - Out of body experience at Ngaiire. Internal goosebumps. Get this woman to the amphitheatre.

2.20 - Massive change of pace in the GW McLennan tent for a tribute show to NSW musician Szymon who passed away in 2012. His family, who are all talented musicians in their own right, got up to perform tracks from Szymon’s only album released posthumously with the help of EMI last year. Gang of Youths frontman Dave Le’aupepe, Sam Cromack of Ball Park Music, Little May and Emma Louise all joined Szymon’s tribute band throughout the set. 

3.45 - Seasoned tour wizards King Gizzard round up their homecoming Splendour set at the Amphitheatre. You can’t go wrong when your live set includes two drum kits and a flute.

4.20 - After many bounced texts and zero service I bail on my friend to go see electronic experimenter Dreller at the Tiny Dancer stage.

4.30 - Drelller is not here. Or: I am not at the Tiny Dancer stage. Either is possible, but there’s no time to check because Gang of Youths have just started their Amphi set. 

4.55 - Gang of Youths storm the Amphi stage for the sunset slot. Dave Le’aupepe is one helluva sensual frontman. Hips like Elvis. And I think he knows it. 

5.03 - Le’aupepe had an existential revelation walking across the Brooklyn Bridge which he told us in a pretty rousing YOLO speech to a packed amphitheatre dying to indulge their hedonistic side.

5.24 - I think my new favourite thing is watching people kook the lyrics when they get projected on the big screens. Im looking at you, brown curls n bucket hat. 

6.03 - Walking between Tiny Dancer and Mix Up on the way to my dinner of BBQ Shapes and tin spaghetti back at the camp, I spy Gold Coast producer Paces set as he brings out rapper Tkay Maidza. To my right another electronic duo, Snakehips are blasting a Flume track. Crowd vibe: nuts. Flume’s actual set is going to be interesting. Or terrifying. 

7.00 - “Aaaallll my friends are wasted,” the Snakehips hit rings out over the campgrounds, my tinned spaghetti and trashed campsite gives a less glamorous meaning to this song. 

7.58 - Ball Park Music plans are foiled by bar and toilet lines, but I do make it for their last song at the GW McLennan tent which is spewing out the sides with guys and girls on shoulders. 

9.41 - The Cure love a good intro, and the first 40 minutes of their contracted three hour set has been a gigantic build up. The Amphi seems less crowded than this time last night at The Avalanches but we’ve still got two hours. By the time we leave to catch a bit of Santigold’s set they have already played Pictures of You, Friday I’m in Love and Just Like Heaven. To his credit, Robert Smith still sounds 25. 

10.47 - Made it to the Mix Up tent (via chips, pizza) to see Santigold. Backdrop of a grocery shelf and flip phones and other vaguely anti-capitalist imagery. This is all I can see because the tent is so damned packed. I think a few people had the cure>santigold>the cure idea.

11.06 - Head back to the amphi (via desert pastries) to catch the last hour of the cure. We enter as they’re playing Lullaby which I take as a thumbs up to leave early and go to bed. The crowd is still looking fairly anemic except for the diehards down the front. They finish 20 minutes early on Boys Don’t Cry. The Cure are in the middle of some kind of victory lap worldwide tour and I doubt they know what city they’re in, which goes some way to explaining their lack of interaction and insistence on this long arse set. I’m still pretty satisfied, I got to see every hit from a band I thought I would have to love from afar. 

And I get to go to bed early.

Outfit of the day: Ngaiire for her excellent costume. I don't know what it was but she looked like a glorious baby Simba. Best act: The grace of Szymon’s family at his tribute show. Lesson Learned: if you look hard enough, you will find $3 garlic bread. 

- Grace Pashley: The Amplifier

 

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