Of beards and bands: A Laneway Singapore 2013 recap

Ilike your camera. What is that?” asks Gotye. I wasn’t exactly the Belgian-Australian singer’s biggest fan but I was stunned nonetheless and muttered “Thanks” before adding, “It’s just a point and shoot. Smile for me?” After the shot I stepped away from the press con and asked myself why I said that. Smile for me? Who says that? It sounded like lyrics from Leaving on a Jet Plane, but not the original version; the one by Chantal Kreviazuk.

You could say Laneway Festival Singapore 2013 was full of surprises like this. If you weren’t fond of Gotye for instance, a chat with him in person could potentially convert you on the spot. I thought, dude, this is a nice guy right here. Charisma bro-verload, no homo. Gotye haters and mainstream avoiders better reconsider.

And if you really couldn’t dig Alt-J despite last year’s hype, their live performance turned you into a fan as well. If you were a huge fan to begin with, you would’ve cried to their set. Laneway really is the great enhancer. Every act got it together like it was your birthday. The trip was worth taking, the skin was worth burning, the aloe gel to soothe said sunburn was worth spreading — everything.

From noon to midnight, Laneway felt like an amusement park of music with 14 rides to offer. I would conclude on that note but I thought it would be fun to elaborate by way of some personal highlights:

10:15 a.m., Jan. 26, 2013 — The festival has yet to start at 12:40 p.m., but Singapore already smells like rave spirit. Guys in Dim Mak shirts, tiger print tops, floral caps, neon pink tank tops, and neon green short shorts just give it away easily. You just know you’re all hitting up the same event.

12:20 p.m. — My photographer and I troop to The Meadow at Gardens by the Bay. Laneway organizers care of Chugg Entertainment are nice enough to usher media to the festival grounds, bypassing a long queue of people in the sun. As soon as we get backstage, we see Erlend Øye stretching in his maroon pants. Cool guy.

12:40 p.m. — Kings of Convenience start on time as most things in Singapore do and they are smooth as a nap in the sky. People thought it was odd for the Norwegian duo to open, but like kicking things off with Cults in last year’s Laneway, I understood the need to start with a hit act. Kings began their set with My Ship Isn’t Pretty, then Cayman Islands and a few more of the quiet side before bringing in a full band set-up. Everybody lost it and danced to upbeat rehashes of Boat Behind and I’d Rather Dance With You, solos of every instrument included. Erlend Øye couldn’t stop prancing around and doing his signature spirit fingers, even teasing Eirik Glambek Bøe as “boring” at one point. The audience was also lucky to hear Zebra Crossings, a song Eirik just wrote. “It’s a great idea,” he sings, “There’s so much to see. Like a ship on top of a building. Like Noah’s ark.” I’ll go out on a limb and say that he was talking about the architecture of Marina Bay Sands.

3:20 p.m. — Fast-forward to the ultra-masculine bros of Divine Fits, also known as indie’s newest super-group. The American trio recently added a keyboardist, who in vocalist Britt Daniel’s (Spoon) words, “likes to surround himself with keyboards onstage.” “I know,” teases guitarist Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade/Handsome Furs). “He’s like the Paul Schaffer of this band.” The band played a solid ‘80s rock set with hits like Would That Not Be Nice, Flaggin’ a Ride, Shivers, The Salton Sea, and of course the hit My Love is Real. All in all, Veronica Mars fans probably swooned upon sight of Britt Daniel (see the episode “Rashard and Wallace go to White Castle” in which he sang a karaoke version of Elvis Costello’s Veronica).

6:40 p.m. — Kimbra and her flat-top drummer steal the show. It was like an action movie of soul out there. High-octane from middle to end. She would later come back to assist Gotye for that song that you used to know.

7:30 p.m. — For dinner, we had Real Estate. The indie pop band from New Jersey opened with It’s Real and from then on, it was extra smooth sailing with slow burners like Out of Tune, Municipality, Easy, and an unnamed new track. They looked like normal folks from the suburbs and it’s amazing how their gentle echoes can fill up the whole venue. It was the perfect interlude. I was lucky enough to get a photo of vocalist Martin Courtney backstage by his trailer. That was definitely real — and creepy of me.

Let’s hope guitarist Matt Mondanile’s other band Ducktails gets an appearance next year, especially with his new album out.

8:20 p.m. — At last, the apex of acts: Alt-J. Technical difficulties were a bit of an early hump for this UK band and they had to restart the set to reconfigure their mix. But they quickly picked up where they left off with Tessellate. “Sorry ‘bout that, guys,” Gus Unger-Hamilton meekly addressed the crowd, “We’re just gonna have to play the best show of our lives.” And best show they played. It was a masterful, eerie goodie bag of sound and light you wouldn’t really associate with another act. It made people dance like they were extras in a True Blood episode, possessed with black in their eyes. People were seen hitting imaginary gongs and improvising some sort of glow-in-the-dark Capoeira. At some point, it felt like a strip club for aliens. They had their awkward, non-rockstar sides though. In their press con, Gus asked if he could smoke a cigarette but was denied by security. Still, everything was right that night and Breezeblocks and Something Good sounded even more stellar live. Props to their drummer’s red hair and uncommon percussion kit set-up as well.

9:10 p.m. — Brooklyn’s Yeasayer came after and they picked up the tempo by a dozen-fold. It was finally good to see these guys, I thought. Ambling Alp and O.N.E. were crowd-stirrers so were vocalist Chris Keating’s dance moves. You couldn’t un-see those burning dance moves. Keating also looked like he could be the older brother of actor Aaron Paul. But that’s beside the point. It was brisk world-beat electronica from this American four-piece, especially from Anand Wilder who handled the synths. Yes, Wilder was wild.

9:40 p.m. — Gotye makes his presscon short and sweet so he could do a longer set, and for us to go watch the other acts. “Why are you all here?” he asks the press with a smile, “You guys should be out there watching Bat for Lashes.” In my head, I remember thinking, more nice guy points for you, son.

11 p.m. — Up next was Tame Impala, another climax in a festival already replete with high notes. A surprise inclusion to the Singapore lineup, the psychedelic band from Perth was second to the last and they made nothing short of a lasting impression. They had just drafted a new, afro-haired French drummer by the name of Julien Barbagallo (formerly of Tahiti 80) into their lineup, which shifted their previous drummer to the keyboards. As soon as Real Estate’s Alex Bleeker introduced the band like a boxing match, the jams started rolling out one by one, from Elephant to Endors Toi to Feels Like We Only Go Backwards even all the way back to Half-Full Glass of Wine. The new drummer was phenomenal, not just because he looked like Ned Brower of Rooney. He had the chops and adlibs and pretty much captured the hazy ‘70s groove rock feel of the band. As to playing in Singapore, singer-songwriter Kevin Parker (who, according to my photographer, looks like Alex Greenwald of Phantom Planet) admits that “there’s just so much technological craziness in this city that the rest of the world has never seen.” Adds Parker: “We wanna play everywhere, even in Egypt.” Now just imagine a Tame Impala gig surrounded by camels near an oasis with rainbows in the dark. Pyramid jams?

12 midnight — The bearded Belgian’s turn, finally. People were enamored of Gotye’s rapport on and off the stage (okay, maybe just me), an appeal he built along with Kimbra, who joined him for a few songs like the ever-popular Somebody That I Used to Know. It was a crowd-raging end to what seemed like the Laneway to heaven.

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