Laneway Festival Hits Singapore!

St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival, or just Laneway for short, is a music festival featuring indie rock music. It began in Melbourne in 2004, taking its name from the now-gone St. Jerome’s bar where it began as a series of gigs, becoming a festival proper when it expanded to the laneway outside, which they closed to traffic for the event. Over the years a number of notable acts have played the festival, including Broken Social Scene, Feist, Stars, No Age, Florence + The Machine, The XX, Yo La Tengo, Pretty Girls Make Graves, The Walkmen, and Peter Bjorn & John. Laneway also takes the opportunity to highlight Australian bands like Cut Copy, The Avalanches, Youth Group, and The Presets. Though it began in Melbourne the festival now plays dates in Adelaide, Auckland, Brisbane, Perth, and Sydney. This year, however, marked the first time that the Laneway Festival set a date for outside Australia, and luckily it was in Southeast Asia; specifically, Singapore!

This was an exciting prospect. Not many indie bands make it to our little corner of the globe, so it was a good opportunity for not just one but several bands to come and play for fans (and hopefully make new ones, as well). The lineup was thus: Warpaint, Ladyhawke, Beach House, Deerhunter, Holy F*ck! (yes, that’s their name), !!! (chk chk chk), Yeasayer, Foals, and The Temper Trap. Luckily I was familiar with all but Warpaint, so I decided that the trip would be worth it. I have friends who go to neighboring countries to attend concerts of bands they love but I usually can’t justify the expense for just one band (unless it was someone I really, really wanted to see), so to me this was a bargain: nine bands for one trip, eight of which I actually know, four of which I really like. It helped that I was able to find cheap airfare through a friend’s notifying me of an airline’s ongoing sale.

It was my first-ever rock festival, and I was excited. Though I wasn’t traveling with anyone, I knew some friends who would be attending and expected to see them there, plus another friend from college got in touch through Facebook when I announced I was going, so we made plans to meet up at the venue: Fort Canning Park, which was on a hill. I considered myself prepared: I brought snacks, bottled water, and my camera. I went early because I expected a line, and I was right.

Ladyhawke’s silky vocals waged a battle with an overeager bass speaker.

What I didn’t expect was rain. It started drizzling while people were still waiting to get in but fortunately the festival organizers had foreseen this; they started giving out ponchos free of charge (which had me thinking, sadly, that this is a courtesy that probably wouldn’t be extended back home). Just in time, too, as it started pouring. With no real shelter to hide under, our shoes and socks gradually became soaked. As if my luck couldn’t be bad enough, nearing the entrance I saw a sign that said No Professional Cameras (I had brought a DSLR) and No Outside Food & Drink.

But surprise, surprise, no one searched me, and I got in, camera and food and all. Plus, the rain had stopped, and I started seeing people I knew. Maybe my luck was changing. We familiarized ourselves with where the portalets were, as well as food and beverage stalls. We started hipster-spotting to pass the time. Look! A random Indian dude with balloons! Look! Caucasian Joey Pepe Smith is here! Over there! An accountant got lost!

Finally Warpaint kicked things off. I’d listened to their recently-released debut album “The Fool” in

preparation, and had found that though they were capable of some good, catchy riffs, they didn’t always cohere into good songs because they’d either drag it out too long or switch tempos and melodies mid-song like some ADHD experimental band. They played well, though, and hearing the three singers harmonize was a treat.

Following them was Ladyhawke, nee Phillipa Brown. As she was one of the people I was there to see we went up front, but found ourselves directly in front of the speaker that was responsible for much of the bass. Though she played a great set I almost couldn’t hear the vocals because of the overpowering bass rumble, which was causing my heart to palpitate and made me feel like I was being massaged by invisible hands. After a few songs I was starting to worry so I told my friend that we should back away before we were liquefied.

There’s the makings of a really good band in Warpaint. They’re not there yet, though.

Next were Beach House, and though they too played a great set, with actual props (spinning disco-diamonds!) and lead singer Victoria Legrand dressed like The Riddler from the Batman cartoon, it started raining again.

There was a brief lull in the rain during Deerhunter, another band I was super-excited to see. Bradford Cox may be the skinniest man I’ve seen in person, and when they played Helicopter, one of my favorite songs from the 2010 album “Halcyon Digest,” I almost cried (but if anyone asked I said it was the rain!). They were one of the best performers of the festival, as expected.

It had begun raining again, and this time there would be no stopping. Night had fallen as well and Holy F*ck!, an instrumental group from Canada, were on. Being an instrumental band it seemed like a lot of the crowd used their set as their opportunity to get dinner, myself included. Because of the strong rain I couldn’t use my camera anymore and stashed it in my backpack under my poncho.

!!! were next and in my opinion blew the lid off the place, except there was no lid to blow. True to their reputation, the dance-funk ensemble had the crowd dancing and moving to their jams, which included a Prince cover they’d never done in public before. Vocalist Nic Offer came out sporting an “I © Singapore” shirt that drew enthusiasm from the crowd, which he entered at one point. I’ve been listening to !!! since I was in college and the thought occurred to me that happiness is seeing 5,000 people losing their marbles to !!!’s The Hammer in the rain. It was a veritable— wait for it — riot of joy.

Yeasayer were okay. The people I was with were there for them, but their stuff just doesn’t do much for me. I considered them a bridge to…

Foals, whose “Total Life Forever” was one of my favorite albums of 2010. They played a great, high-energy, emotionally intense set, and as if in response, the rain got even stronger somehow, and the muddy hill was really starting to get slick. Yannis Philippakis sang his heart out, even kicking over some instruments in the heat of the moment, and after Foals ended we left the concert area and started walking downhill, even though The Temper Trap were next, to close the festival. The Temper Trap were Laneway’s pride and joy: an Australian band who’d made it semi-big thanks to a hit single made famous by the film (500) Days of Summer, whose members all worked at the Laneway Festival at one point or another. Still, after realizing I’d been standing in wet shoes and socks for 11 hours straight and had been in a pool of mud for the last two, I decided it was time to head home, after the climactic high of the Foals set.

So long, Laneway. You kicked my ass but I had a blast. And if your lineup’s even half as interesting next year, then I’ll be back, rain or shine.