Splendour in the Grass 2022 review: musical delights amid the drama
The slogan ‘rather be at Splendour’ had held true for many years, but was it still the case at the music festival’s muddy 20th anniversary event near Byron Bay last weekend?
A bumper crowd of 50,000 had gathered to celebrate the 20th anniversary of one of Australia’s great music festivals, but on the afternoon of the first day it exuded the distinctly sombre atmosphere of a wake.
Splendour in the Grass organisers had attempted to hold this event at its dedicated home, the North Byron Parklands in northern NSW, three times since 2020, with the pandemic intervening each time. They held a virtual festival last year: prerecorded sets from acts large and small, all hosted inside a digital game world. That edition, titled Splendour XR, had its charm, but festivals are meant to be real life.
By about 2pm last Friday afternoon, when organisers announced via social media that all musical acts planned for the four main stages that night would be cancelled because of hazardous weather and safety concerns, the mood was one of disbelief amid the disarray. Given that tens of thousands of ticketholders had spent the previous day or two suffering through long entry queues only to be met with flooded campsites, it’s possible that they had experienced a little too much of real life already.
Part of the fun of any given music event is the thrill of being there and soaking it up – but if there’s no music playing, was this really the sort of place thousands of people would choose to be at 3pm on a Friday?
With the four main stages closed, the only music playing was from DJs rocking the Tipi Forest and Smirnoff tents to muted enthusiasm from those dancers able to make it inside either, with long queues forming at the latter.
Plenty of people were in high spirits and keen to have a great time – but without the main entertainment, it rang a little hollow.
Some of the acts cancelled that night included the key attractions Gorillaz, the Avalanches, Kacey Musgraves and DMA’S. Fans regrouped and hoped Saturday brought better news.
It did. And nobody heralded the long-awaited return of live music to the Amphitheatre main stage more than Brisbane-born quartet the Jungle Giants. Cresting the hill, looking out into the natural bowl and seeing tens of thousands of people singing and dancing to its chart-topping indie pop songs was one of the greatest moments in Australian live music this year. The feeling of relief, release and mass cheer the group conjured at its 3.30pm set was sensational.
Navigating the festival site, however, was a mission that required absolute concentration to stay upright. Mud squelched underfoot in just about every square metre of what was once grass. Thicker traffic areas near the entrance and between the three smaller stages – Mix Up, GW McLennan and Park(lands) – were riddled with pools and puddles.
Fremantle singer-songwriter Stella Donnelly led her band through an accomplished set of charming indie pop, and a highlight was when she invited her brother on stage to sing a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time. They blended beautifully in the choruses, while thousands more voices joined in. Mid-strum during the second verse, she threw in an offhand comment that received a roar of approval: “How’s this, Jack? We’re singing at f..king Splendour!”
Few Australian rock bands in the past decade have attained the same reach and audience as Brisbane quartet Violent Soho, whose Amphitheatre performance after sunset produced a fierce and vocal mosh pit. “This is one of the least stressful gigs we’ve ever done because we don’t have anything to prove to you lot,” said guitarist James Tidswell near the end; earlier he had introduced its new single, Kamikaze: “This song’s about putting your band into hiatus at the peak of its career.” The band has two hometown concerts on the horizon before an indefinite pause, and this show was a fine note on which to end its festival career, at least for now.
Between performances I was idly staring up at the hill under clear skies when a woman, with a look of amazement, said: “Look at all these humans! What a privilege.” She was right. At its best, Splendour is one of the great live music experiences to be had anywhere in Australia. That it grew from a one-day event of about 7500 in 2001 to become this heaving cauldron of humanity? Incredible.
At the top of a 9pm set by British indie pop act Glass Animals, singer-songwriter Dave Bayley issued a command: “We’ve got to fit two nights’ worth of partying into one.” Challenge accepted: the group’s hour-long set was brilliant – the highlight of the weekend.
With his thin frame and thick black glasses, Bayley looked more like a tech support worker than a world-leading frontman. His stagecraft is from the Iggy Pop school of rock: never stop moving. How this eclectic group – which mixes playful synth-pop with hard-hitting hip-hop beats atop pretty melodies – became a chart-topper is bizarre but well-deserved, and the quartet saved its biggest hit, Heat Waves, for last.
There are few more partisan crowds than one seeing a Triple J Hottest 100 winner perform that song at this festival for the first time, 18 months after the event. It was a mutual love-in, and Bayley and co seem genuinely humbled by its success. “Australia is where this song belongs,” Bayley said, noting that it first caught on here. Heat Waves is a cultural juggernaut; released a full two years ago, it’s still in the ARIA top 10, having seldom left it. But it’s also the rare earworm, left-field pop hit whose appeal simply will not wear off.
The Strokes come from the same school of rock that awards full marks to students who simply stand and deliver their songs without fuss or much apparent enthusiasm. There’s no doubting the band’s songwriting ability – the likes of New York City Cops, Juicebox and Hard to Explain all appear early, and sound immaculate – but when an act is booked as a headliner, a great show demands more than just playing all the notes in the correct order. Despite the ageless, warbling charm of Julian Casablancas’s voice, it was merely a good set, and one left in the shade by the boyish exuberance of the performers who preceded it.
During the rapid-fire burst of 2004 single Reptilia, bassist Nikolai Fraiture casually leaned back with his foot against the scaffolding, directly beneath a large white clock at the side of stage – actually a pretty cool move I’d never seen before – but the aural-visual symmetry at play was only too perfect. That song contains some of the finest indie rock guitar interplay ever captured but, still, it all felt a bit like the quintet was punching in and checking their watches until the shift was over.
It was at this point that one of the weekend’s lowest moments was underway: essentially, anyone not camping on site was stuck waiting for bus services that were woefully inadequate for the thousands of people who needed to go elsewhere.
To complicate matters, on-site parking was lost to the flooding, and many campers were told to set up their tents at the Bluesfest site, Byron Events Farm, located 13km south of Splendour.
It was a debacle: there were reports that some waited seven hours on their feet in the cold mud, not finding their pillow until dawn. Much goodwill evaporated. And it cast a pall over the final day. “Prepare for queuing” read a sign on the highway heading to the festival on Sunday, and few three-word phrases could better sum up a difficult weekend.
The site remained a quagmire beneath sunny skies, and while Sydney artist Alex the Astronaut drew a good crowd for her set at the GW McLennan tent, only the most enthusiastic were gathered in front of stage; most hung at the fringes, where the mud wasn’t ankle deep.
Having released her second album two days earlier, the artist born Alexandra Lynn is a strong, chatty performer backed by a cohort of great musicians, with new songs Ride My Bike and South London among the best.
At the Mix Up stage, Genesis Owusu served up the most accomplished production from a local act and one that was up there with the headliners. An extraordinary amount of thought, preparation and rehearsal had gone into this show, and it showed. The songs from the Canberra hip-hop artist’s debut album Smiling With No Teeth are fascinating enough already, but the man, his incredibly tight Black Dog Band and backup dancers combined to send this one over the top.
Owusu has spent the past 18 months or so ascending in all aspects of his artistry; he has won awards galore, including four ARIAs last year. This festival set – which merged his band and dancers for the first time – felt like another major leap, and what’s compelling is you sense he’s nowhere near the peak.
Several mosh pits swirled in front of stage during Grinspoon’s main stage set, seemingly composed of young men who weren’t alive when the Lismore-born band released its first album in 1997. Having now performed at Splendour a record-breaking nine times since 2001, it was great to see elder statesmen of Australian rock honoured and respected by young fans, and the quartet turned in a tight set that showed precisely how and why it became a big deal in the booming 1990s alternative scene.
British DJ and producer Duke Dumont offered a fantastic example of how one man can bring in a whole hill of people through electronic wizardry and ingenuity alone. Dumont’s set was well-designed as a series of peaks and troughs that kept that dancefloor moving throughout, and he was also among the best at using the huge 12m x 10m video screens at either side of the Amphitheatre stage to project absorbing visuals.
“Do we have any Oasis fans in the house?” Liam Gallagher asked repeatedly during his 9pm set; a cheeky question, as we know he knows the answer. Featuring three guitarists, the band is strong, his voice cuts through and the newer songs are well-written, but there’s a sense that most are simply here to hear the big singles from his earlier life fronting one of the world’s biggest rock bands.
“Are you bored yet? Gotta be a few of you in a coma. This one’s called Wonderwall, it’ll f..kin’ wake you up,” he said near the end, introducing one of the great singalong moments of the weekend, as the crowd followed its enviably stacked and memorable melodies.
“Thank you very much, you sound beautiful,” he said at its conclusion, and while the man seems to retain all the ego for which he became known in the 1990s, he is humble enough to cede this one to the masses.
The final performances of this year’s festival took place during a gorgeous, clear night with stars overhead; the kind of night that’s easy to take for granted. During Gallagher’s set, the large digital banner above the Amphitheatre stage was changed to a more fitting name: Splendour in the Mud.
Amyl and the Sniffers were booked to close the GW McLennan tent, a big honour for the Melbourne punk-rock band led by Amy Taylor, who seems also to have studied at Iggy Pop. She worked the full tent into a frenzy while her three bandmates kept their heads down and pumped through a powerful set that included its apt 2019 song Monsoon Rock.
The final headliner was charming from the moment he took to the stage. American performer Tyler, the Creator – aka Tyler Okonma – began his public life as part of the headline-grabbing rap group Odd Future in the late 2000s, but has since released six solo albums exploring aspects of R&B and neo-soul.
Okonma was an ideal headliner, and he owns the stage like few solo acts can; not since Kendrick Lamar’s set here in 2018 has one man controlled and engaged a crowd like it. With a big sound, a deep catalogue and a penchant for theatrics, the rapper had the crowd bouncing from the first beat drop.
The only downer associated with this closing set is how few people were there to see it, compared with the Strokes the night before. While there was a huge crowd of energetic dancers on the floor, the surrounding hills were much more barer.
I suspect this is not because the New York indie rockers are a bigger draw than the Californian rapper; instead, plenty of people seemed to have left the venue earlier to avoid another transport debacle or had been burned so badly that they chose to stay away from the final day.
Up until this year, Splendour in the Grass had enjoyed a healthy reputation that was hard-earned and well-deserved.
For years – Covid delays notwithstanding – it had been a destination event, as the Big Day Out was in its heyday. Regardless of the line-up, its tickets tended to sell out quickly because it had long since become the place to be each winter if you considered yourself a serious live-music fan.
This notion of desirability was immortalised in an official T-shirt bearing a memorable slogan, worn on stage by Grinspoon bassist Joe Hansen on the final night: rather be at Splendour.
This year, there was less of that sentiment, especially from outsiders looking in, who saw only the worst moments amplified on social media and elsewhere.
That’s a shame because although the musical quality was as high as it has ever been, the art was overshadowed by the bigger drama around the event and its organisational failings stemming from hazardous weather conditions.
The past week has damaged the festival’s shiny brand through a series of missteps, some man-made, others beyond organisers’ control. What has been lost in the furore is the fact, from the top down, the event is run by music lovers who want nothing more than to deliver life-affirming experiences to fellow fans.
A serious post-mortem on what went wrong and what can be amended is the path forward for this event so trust can be regained through a demonstration of goodwill and a genuine interest in learning from this year’s mistakes.
This will take time. If not next year, then in the near future, that familiar slogan – rather be at Splendour – may become reality again.