Golden Plains 2011 in Review

Featuring the likes of The Hold Steady, Os Mutantes and Belle & Sebastian, Victoria’s Golden Plains festival promised to be a varied weekend of music set in the rural bounds of the Meredith Supernatural Ampitheatre. Soulshine’s Max Easton was on the ground to capture the words behind the good times.

It’s Sunday morning and I’m shaking off what feels like a minor touch of the plague. I roll out of my tent with the caution of a burns victim; stepping on muddied, cut up feet and reaching into the nearby esky for breakfast. Across from me is a guy who hasn’t gone to bed yet. He plans to have a brief nap in the afternoon. I crack that can and shudder as it slides down my throat, the first moves to chase this feeling into tomorrow.

The source of this pain? Aside from the suggested culprit it was The Hold Steady; The Hold Steady almost killed me. Twitching across the stage like a boozed up Rick Moranis, The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn spits his words into the unusually low vocal mix, screaming out front of adjacent dueling guitars. Meanwhile, the mosh pit pulverizes my lack of footwear and reaches into its depths of intoxication to enamor the Hold Steady with one of the more frivolous receptions of the weekend. The Hold Steady play with no shortage of enthusiasm; reaching artfully into their discography for a wise and well-rounded set list, at its best when touching on their anthems. It’s Chips Ahoy which garners their biggest reaction, while the set finishing Your Little Hoodrat Friend has the mosh heaving in sympathy.

In stark contrast to the classic rock of the Hold Steady were the preceding Os Mutantes. Headliners and strangers to most, their six-piece Brazilian quirkiness toed the fine line between the fun and the lame. There are moments where they sound like the backing track to an elevator…there are others where their bizarre melody lines are the most fun you’ve ever had. By the time they leave the stage though, the alternatively perplexed and overjoyed ampitheatre seems to be seeing the aged Brazilians in a positive light. Afterall, it’s kind of hard not to like a band with James Franco on guitar.

Of course, there were the lowlights. Airbourne’s AC/DC meeting AC/DC with Bon Scott vocal inspiration did it’s best to ruin the night, zapping the Hold Steady high with un-inspired dumb-fuckery. Earlier, Joanna Newsom struggled to engage a crowd enthused by the excellent, yet aurally inconsistent Dunedin lads, The Clean. Singing at a bare whisper, there was no doubt that she’s a purveyor of some delightfully pretty melodies, but this was not a time slot she could comfortably call home. It took someone like Justin Townes Earle to own the early Saturday, inducing smiles on the latter side of alt-country. He was the first recipient of the infamous Golden Plains boot and did so with an upbeat slice of his discography. At the back end of the evening, it was Wavves who sat as one of the first major indie acts attempting to qualify their hype. With songs opening to choral harmonies and reverbed vocals before driving into three-piece grunge, they toed a line between an interesting mix of influences and a blatant attempt at grinding Nirvana with Beach House. It’s a big Saturday that ends early, the Silence Wedge kicking in at a modest 4 AM, doing little to stop the continuing dips into the esky from hill couches to camp.

It’s Monday morning and there are feathers in my tent. It looks like I just spent the night fucking a dove. Incidentally, the dove left a bean bag behind and stole my wallet. My torch is left on, shining a sunned-out beam across strewn clothes and a half-deflated air mattress. My tent poles have popped their holes and lent the $30 one piece shelter the shape of a flaccid rectangle. I’m paying for two nights now, and considering I can’t muster the courage to roll off this mattress (let alone the sweat-filled bounds of my sleeping bag,) they’ve been fucking expensive nights indeed. I have a tent to pack up, a sleeping bag to stuff, an air mattress to fold, a bag to pack and a festival to leave. Thinking positive isn’t exactly an option, but at least I’ve got until 1PM to lay painfully still and piece the night together.

The early Sunday mosied through the chilled bluegrass and folk sounds of Graveyard Train and Boy & Bear, the day hitting its stride at the introduction of The Middle East. The tracks that made them in Blood and The Darkest Side continue to be an attractive aspect of the band, but it’s their new material which is starting to see a maturity transcend their reliance on a hook. Radio song Jesus Came to my Birthday Party (incidentally, Jesus also sings backing vocals) is a stunning path into the afternoon that precedes much-hyped indie act Best Coast, an act who many seem to be viewing with the glasses of judgement.

Best Coast are very much a part of fashionable 2010 indie habits; reverb, harmonise and record low-fi on a shitty 9 Volt analogue dictaphone stolen from the attic of a Berlin coffee house. Live though, the tacky recording fashions are left for dead and they play out as a pseudo-rockabilly indie outfit. Tracks like Crazy For You are absolutely in their element on stage at Golden Plains. A strange impromptu twirling hand crowd reception delights front-woman Bethany Consentino as she plays off her fans with charm and too-cute grace and manages to very nearly affirm their blogosphere hype.

Then shit starts to kick in. From the camp of a few strangers, I overhear Imelda May channelling Wanda Jackson…she’s incredible from afar…but the night belongs to Belle & Sebastian, the band who seem to most comprehensively (and deservedly) win the Golden Plains boot.

Filling the stage with over a dozen, Belle & Sebastian’s moniker is a little misleading. Regardless, every member of the band seems made for their place despite their lack of naming rights. Acoustics play against keys with stunning precision, their acapella vocal moments are stunningly pretty, and their hooks and melodies are surprising and powerful. Older tracks like the sprawling Stars of Track and Field are treated with equal welcome as the treats off landmark record 'The Life Pursuit' as they make their way through one the definitive festival highlights.

Following Belle & Sebastian, Jamie Liddell’s nu-soul grooves are infectious enough to move me from the comfort and stability of the esky and couch. Though at times Liddell seems to be going through the half-enthused motions, there’s no denying his ability. He creates wall-of-sound electronic soul that marks him as 2011’s Prince equivalent, making his slot definitively his own. Architecture in Helsinki impress with the energy and power of a sugared up eight year old before Hawkwind force a few thousand wide-pupils to roll. Opening with the suggestion that we buy their merch, they attempt with all desperation to fuck people up for forty-five minutes. It’s boring, it’s dull and it’s a dampener that acts as a reminder that the novelty 60’s band isn’t necessarily going to blow the number of minds they did in their time. The Bamboo Musik DJ’s fail where Hawkwind fail, playing up the fact that the half of Golden Plains still awake are tripping like newborn giraffe’s. Sheeps bleat through the stereo system, the EQ fucks in and out, video screens show clips of people rolling down hills…and I leave to sit at camp until the sun comes up. At some stage during that period I end up with a bean bag and a tent full of feathers. At all other moments I am having the absolute time of my life, eventually adhering to Newtownian physics with a fucker of a shitty experience by the time I wake.

It’s Monday night and I’m on an aeroplane smelling like re-digested cow shit, suffering the post-festival trifecta of mud, sweat and uncertainty. The guy next to me is visibly disturbed by me. I get all of our arm rest as a result. I shrug a few times in apology, but I’m not sure that’ll help his nasal comfort for the next hour. I feel so bad that I turn down the complimentary beer in favour of an orange juice. It’s fair to say that by now I’ve had my share of cans. What I haven’t had my share of though, is Golden Plains. I spend the rest of the flight mentally recalling eskies and couches, tinnies and clear skies. I have little doubt that the other eight thousand odd attendees are probably doing the same right now and I have very little doubt that I’ll  ignore my current Golden Pains to make it to Golden Plains number six in 2012.