Splendour 2015 – three days of mud, inebriation and a serious examination of one’s life choices. Oh, and some music.
At a festival characterised by the threat of further rain and the glory of the prevailing sun, the forecasting of Splendour organisers for those elements within their control was, for the most part, laudable. Of course, it was hard to know that a well-hyped Mark Ronson would be joined by cats and dogs but perhaps less surprising that, short of an emotional ‘Valerie’ and a difficult-to-botch ‘Uptown Funk’, his first night headlining set was a bit more variety show than engaging spectacle.
Projections around new Aussie acts proved to be sounder; a breathless Tkay Maidza’s enthusiasm was infectious. Meanwhile, Jenny Lewis and her airtight band delivered beautiful harmonies and a few classic Rilo Kiley tunes to an audience much smaller than she deserved.
A good showing of Smiths devotees turned up to Johnny Marr’s set, and he returned their affection by playing spirited versions of ‘How Soon Is Now?’, ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’ and a few others amongst his own recent material, which held its own.
Spiritualized were something of an anomaly on the lineup, and their set was no different. Nothing new was aired, and the set focused on the more sombre, gospel areas of their catalogue. This made for a blissed-out hour that would have worked best as a comedown at the end of the festival, and not at 8pm on the first night.
Fresh (well, relatively) from the damage of the night before, punters on Saturday were determined not to let bad weather ruin good vibes. Playing proudly in front of a banner that read “Real Australians Say Welcome”, The Smith Street Band’s tales of underdogs and fighting back matched the mentality of the dampened souls that had gathered and did a great job in energising them.
Meg Mac was a veritable high pressure system in herself, and overnight superstar Jarryd James, while shy, seriously delivered on his R&B promise. The Wombats were a reliable pick and brought thunderous crowd-pleasers but less rousing new tracks from across the sea.
For an Australian festival, it’s a shame the only band representing the country’s musical past were The Church. Their set was representative of the band itself – wide-ranging, shaky in parts and containing hidden depths that never fail to delight. Special mention must be made of ‘You Took’ – the song live is an odyssey.
Florence + The Machine were an odd choice for headliner, not being the hit factory Ronsonis nor a beloved, almost legacy act like Blur. Surprising, then, that Florence’s set was one of the festival highlights, her natural exuberance permeating all the way to the back of the amphitheatre. Some of the more subtle elements of her set-up got lost in the mix (spare a thought for the harp player), but it was all in servitude of her voice, a powerful instrument that gets all the attention for a reason; it’s a thing to behold.
The lineup for the amphitheatre on Sunday featured a run of guitar bands of differing quality. The devastation from the weather was so vast the night before that Bad//Dreems’ midday set started before the amphitheatre was open, so they played their first few songs to no-one. They still delivered them with gusto.
The Delta Riggs are the new Jet. Make of that what you will. Last Dinosaurs delivered of-the-moment indie-dance that went over well with the crowd, working in an inspired mashup of ABC’s ‘Poison Arrow’, ‘Da Funk’ and ‘Music Sounds Better With You’.
Setting the tone for what was an explosive close to the main stage, Royal Blood managed to produce a sound that belied their constitution, playing a thunderously loud but perfectly paced show to a crowd probably more sizeable and raucous than most the Brighton duo have met before.
The volume level only got ratcheted up when national heroes and more recent world conquerors Tame Impala took to the stage. Blanketing the amphitheatre in the affected vocals and psychedelic visuals that have made Kevin Parker a household name, even newer cuts exploded, despite rumblings from the critic set about KP’s falsetto and over-reliance on synths. A homemade ‘Fuck Trevor!’ sign got a shout-out during a quick new crowd favourite ‘The Less I Know The Better’, but it was closer ‘Apocalypse Dreams’, replete with a monster set of nested crescendos, that affirmed Tame’s reputation as one of the best live Australian bands today.
Blur, seemingly the headliner easiest to write off as a band of yesteryear, soon proved that prediction misguided with a blistering set fuelled, apparently, by Damon Albarn’s astute pre-show donut consumption. Albarn, still churning out fantastic albums with Gorillaz (and with Blur, it must be said), was positively bouncing off the walls, sugar high or not, running the length of the stage during ‘Coffee & TV’ to definitively prove age has not wearied him.
The rest of the band, delivering bucket-list checks all over the place with a searing ‘Song 2’ and a stomping ‘Parklife’, seemed to have missed the has-been memo, too. As the final strings of ‘The Universal’ rang out, those who stayed – stuck in the mud or otherwise – for Britpop’s bastions were vindicated and then some.
Review by David Seidler and Leonardo Silvestrini, photo by Katrina Clarke. View our full gallery of Splendour images here.
