Review: Jack White, Crowded House star at Adelaide’s maiden Harvest Rock festival
About 15,000 music fans each paid between $299 and $2999 to attend the debut Harvest Rock festival – was it worth it? | REVIEW
Launching a new music festival into the Australian market is risky at the best of times, and the past two years have not been that kind for anyone who works in live music: pandemic interruptions have wrought havoc on the steeliest operators, sharpest minds and strongest brands in the business.
Yet in Adelaide, a new two-day event – Harvest Rock – defied odds to sprout, fully formed, in two adjacent parks bisected by a major road closure.
Licence plates on the capital’s cars proclaim South Australia “the Festival State” and, with the backing of SA Tourism, both reputation and cash have been staked on reconfirming that old slogan.
Overseen by Secret Sounds, the team running two of the most popular multi-day camping events in Falls Festival and Splendour in the Grass, Harvest presented a few points of difference.
Its location near the city centre meant guests were camping in hotel rooms, not tents. The target demographic and artist line-up skewed older, while food and winemaker names featured prominently in the marketing package. And with just two stages in operation, it was hardly a mad rush between sets. Another deviation from the norm was the ticket price points, which started at $299 (plus fees) for a two-day adult pass, followed by several upgrade options: $499 for VIP, $799 for access to the Harvest Lounge and $2999 for a platinum VIP ticket.
Each of these offered various perks, chiefly vantage points overlooking the main stage, as well as food and drink packages. Four suites for corporate clients were situated in the main arena, too, for privately entertaining up to 50 people in each space.
These offerings were inspired by BottleRock, a major festival held in Napa Valley, California since 2013. Earlier this year, its headliners included headbanging icons Metallica and pop artist Pink – strange, but true.
All this was novel, though, for major Australian festivals, whose class divide has typically extended to VIPs and the rest. With about 15,000 people on site each day, Harvest Rock wasn’t so much a case of the haves and the have-nots, for even the regular punter was spoiled for choice – but not as much as those few dozen people in the platinum lounge, where the cocktails and champagne flowed.
A separate ticketed event held on site was Wildwood, a $295-per-head lunch and paired wine sitting with food by Jake Kellie, Michelin-starred chef at open flame-focused Adelaide restaurant Arkhe.
Having attended festivals for nearly 20 years, I can say there was a deep sense of cognitive dissonance to be felt when served such high-end, delectable food from a specialised kitchen on site. In the near distance, bass notes could be heard from the smaller Vines stage, while familiar festival fare of pizza, hot chips and hot dogs were being cooked en masse outside – not that anyone under the Wildwood tent was complaining.
Saturday night’s headliner, Jack White, set a high bar for showmanship and pure rock star energy, as the singer-guitarist tore through an explosive set that culminated with a monumental version of his biggest song, the White Stripes’ 2003 single, Seven Nation Army.
Booked as an Australian exclusive, he threw everything he had into a 90-minute setlist he called on the fly while backed by a molten-hot three-piece band.
Sunday night, meanwhile, was capped by Crowded House, who sent 20 or so shimmering pop gems out into the cold Adelaide night and received thousands of voices in return. Frontman Neil Finn was clearly having a ball, particularly during When You Come, when he plucked Nick Seymour’s bass and crashed his son Elroy’s cymbal during an extended outro, while eldest son Liam gave White a run for his money in the guitar heroics stakes.
Elsewhere, the bill was dotted with rock veterans (You Am I, The Living End), rising young stars (Genesis Owusu), evergreen crowd-pleasers (Angus and Julia Stone, The Avalanches) and two wonderfully distinct female voices in Meg Mac and Toni Watson, aka Tones and I.
Among the internationals, the Black Crowes, Sam Fender and Kurt Vile all impressed, though none more so than Texan trio Khruangbin, whose penultimate main stage set on Sunday saw this wonderfully talented party band execute slinky grooves with pinpoint precision.
It would have been a perfect weekend of live music but for the weather, which alternated showers, baking sunshine and brief, torrential downpours. I think Crowded House may have a weather-related song about that. But what the organisers could control was uniformly brilliant, no matter the price point.
The writer travelled to Adelaide as a guest of Secret Sounds.
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