Boy & Bear
On record, Australia’s Boy & Bear dish out indie folk of the highly harmonised variety with a sense of pop structuring. You could say a more chart friendly Fleet Foxes, a sure fire formula for success then. Catching them live though you catch a different creature, it’s still very much Boy & Bear with their layers of melody and folk-isms, but it’s gutsier, and altogether more rock’n’roll. The guitars are more driven, and delivered with a sense of swagger whilst maintaining the sweet, classic-pop qualities that their melodies boast.
Clearly, Boy & Bear are a band that are enjoyable on different levels, in different ways; listening to their albums highlights the songs themselves, and the already mentioned melodies; listening to them live highlights the band’s musicianship, but more so their drive. A band of fire and ice.
Angel Olsen
Not to be melodramatic, but it took me some time to start writing this sentence. Primarily because I was sat staring into a fire locked in a spiral of negative thought. I call that ‘everyday’. Now that was melodramatic, and a lie – I don’t have the fire on every day. Anyhoo, the point I am making is that Angel Olsen is a damn fine soundtrack for situations just like that.
Formerly having played with Bonnie Prince Billy and the Cairo Gang, Angel Olsen has since branched out solo into the realms of singer-songwriter. However, she does a lot more than that bringing magpied shiny things from lo-fi, alt-country, indie rock, slacker rock (if it was depressed as opposed to lazy), and folk. Take that and fire it up with catharsis, cynicism, melancholy, and just enough touchingly-tender fragility.
Highasakite
Just like getting high as a kite is sometimes, stumbling upon Highasakite opening the mainstage, whilst I waited for ice cream with a friend, was a happy accident. A really, happy accident actually, the sound they delivered live had immediate gravitas and sounded fucking huge, bringing together a thick, layered, atmosphere and an anthemic and bombastic feeling to the table. Whether it was the pounding, multi-faceted rhythm section, or the swirling levels of synth from light and ethereal to heavy and fuzzy, or the little details of experimental instrumentation, it sounded great.
There was more to offer than an instrumental soundtrack here there, specifically in the shape of lead singer Ingrid Helene Håvik who delivered, in what seemed to be the theme of the weekend, considerable vocal prowess with considerable power and range. However, there was more to her vocals than that, as at one point she did… something with her voice that made me look for instrument that was doing it. That was until the second it happened and I saw it was Håvik delivering the sound with her throat. Impressive stuff.
Fat White Family
And now for something completely different. Specifically something sleazy, something slimy, and something just plain grubby. At least that’s how you feel listening to Fat White Family, and I say that in the best possible way. This group of reprobates have been making quite a ruckus of late, and steadily more and more people have been making a similar ruckus about them. Just right, or entirely wrong, for a head full of psychedelics and booze.
Anyway, the Fat Whites offered a nice diversion to the festival and impressed live even more so than they do on record, offering up a much more visceral display of the fire and junk in their bellies. They’ve aleady got quite a bit of buzz around them, some famous fans (Nicky Wire of the Manics for one), and a steadily building fan base. Incredibly likely to very far, if they don’t implode that is…
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