Fireworks and a dash of Pulp

JARVIS Cocker and Pulp stole the show on the closing night of Splendour in the Grass.

Coldplay

OF all the spectacles to grace the main amphitheatre over the three days of Splendour, the lavish "hip hopera" featuring superstar Kanye West on the opening night would be the one worthiest of a repeat performance. All I would ask is that the star turn be replaced by Pulp's Jarvis Cocker.

To see what the wry, acerbic and prancing British frontman could wring from rising out of the floor into the audience, being covered in a giant white sheet, flashing his bling and wading his way through a coach-load of writhing, near-naked female dancers every five minutes would be theatre of the best kind.

West, with only two musicians on keyboards and a DJ, needs the kind of support that scantily attired dancers and pyrotechnics bring to a large stage, which is not to say he can't perform. West is on from the second he rises up, god-like, amid his people, on this occasion igniting the performance with Dark Fantasy, the opening track from lauded album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

From there it was a barrage of "make some noise" moments. West worked the crowd, the largest of the weekend, with dramatic runs from the back of the stage, pumping the air, urging everyone to do the wave as songs passed in quick succession, with little time for chat. It's all about the man, yet when the dancers slink off slinkily the crowd enthusiasm seems to leave also.

Diamonds of Sierra Leone, Runaway and Good Life all inspired a sea of hands, but even with the admirable choreography going on around him and his faultless work rate, the show needed more dramatic shift. The only one of those was when he trawled the more melodic songs from his catalogue. Whether because of their less bombastic nature or the tiresome auto-tune vocal effects, this was where the set sagged. More fireworks, more naked flesh and a couple of costume changes and West recovered to leave the monster crowd ecstatic. Most of us anyway.

We did get Jarvis and his Pulp mates a couple of days later, as the warm-up to Coldplay late on Sunday.

It has been 10 years since Pulp's previous album, but its return to the stage this year only just puts it into the retro category and this performance teased and pleased enough to make you wonder whether there might be one more Pulp album to come.

Cocker nipped that idea in the bud several times by suggesting this might be the last opportunity to see the band in Australia. If he's right, it was a magnificent way to go out.

Pulp's pop melodrama reeks of adolescent discontent, seedy bars and dodgy drug deals. At its heart is Cocker's often witty but sometimes dark observations on being alive.

The bulk of the set came from the band's two most successful albums, Different Class and This is Hardcore. From the latter the title track is Pulp at its gloomy Velvet Underground-like best, but it's the songs from Different Class that really hit the spot. Disco 2000, Underwear and Sorted for E's and Wizz cast Cocker as a modern-day Hamlet crossed with Russell Brand, spouting and gesticulating madly to his wonderfully crafted observations.

The clincher, of course, was Common People, a pop song par excellence that could raise the dead and turned the pre-Coldplay throng into a frenzied mob. A great festival moment.

Coldplay used this one-off visit to trial some of the songs from their yet-to-be-named new album, due for release in October. In a good way Every Teardrop is a Waterfall has the hallmarks of recent Coldplay, with Jonny Buckland's harmonic guitar motifs the foil to Chris Martin's voice.

This was another powerful display from a band whose musical empathy and abundance of good tunes makes it irresistible. Martin's brief reading of Amy Winehouse's Rehab before going into the band's bombastic ballad Fix You was a particularly touching moment.

Overseas acts had top billing at Splendour but there was an embarrassment of Australian riches on the undercard this year, stronger than in recent years.

This year is a particularly healthy one for Australian talent with a lot of strong albums from established acts such as the Vines and Architecture in Helsinki, both of whom performed well at Splendour, but there were other performances on the smaller stages that bode just as well for the immediate future of Australian music at home and overseas.

The best of them came on Saturday from Sparkadia on the G. W. McClennan stage. Once a band, Sparkadia is in effect London-based Sydney songwriter and singer Alex Burnett, although he has a regular touring band made up of British musos. Sparkadia's first album hinted at Burnett's gift for anthemic pop on songs such as Too Much to Do and Morning Light, but this year's The Great Impression is a huge step up. Songs from it such as China, Mary and Talking Like I'm Falling Downstairs perfectly suited the festival stage as does Burnett's commanding vocal presence. A few more songs like those and we could have an Australian act capable of grabbing Coldplay's headline spot.

Look out also for debut album from Boy & Bear, who killed it on the G. W. McClennan stage with a set that appears to have built on their Fleet Foxes influence on the same stage last year. Honourable mentions to Gotye, the Grates, the Living End, the Jezabels and Jebediah.

Sadly, don't anticipate anything more from Townsville's band full of promise, the Middle East. After its Splendour performance on Sunday the band broke up.