GALLERY + REVIEW: Groovin’ The Moo 2017

7 May 2017

If you want to know what commitment looks like, let me paint a picture. It’s five teenage girls at 10am, caked in a kaleidoscope of glitter, sharing warm goon from a Mount Franklin water bottle, displaying a reductive sense of public fashion, all while visibly happy to be riding the train between Newie to Maito.

Good bloody luck to them. Box wine is a harsh mistress after dark, let alone for brunch, and the ramifications of drinking the juice of its bottomless silver organ at this hour can be painful and long-lasting. We’re talking hangovers that make you join a convent. But, as The Korgis (and later Beck) once observed, “Everybody’s gotta learn sometime.” Why not learn it on the way to a music festival?

If you’ve ever braved the train from Newcastle to the Maitland leg of Groovin the Moo, then you’re well aware of the heightened sense of excitement amongst the passengers. The day ahead is swollen and bloated with possibility. The pre-loading is urgent, precise and regimented, like a platoon disassembling, cleaning and arming their rifles before battle.

While queuing at the entry gate, it’s quickly evident that the en vogue fashion item of Groovin the Moo, Maitland 2017, is the G-string. For too long the thong has been relegated to an under garment, but the young women of the Hunter have finally liberated the item, wearing transparent clothing to show off the scant thread of material. Where is the end point for this particular trend? It’s hard to say. Perhaps next year popping a labia majora from the edge of the gusset will be on fleek? If so, all power to you.

You can only admire the enthusiasm that Groovin generates for regional music lovers, how it brings an impressive array of national and international bands to the doorstep of these rural tots. Musical acts that so often pass through over-18 venues. I’ve been there. It’s not hard to recall how it felt to be too young to get into Newcastle Workers Club to see Midnight Oil. Those innocent teenage years are but a daydream away, back to a simpler time when a sip of beer held all the otherworldly taboo of an S&M dungeon.

There is a lot to offer at this year’s Groovin the Moo and the artists travelling with this regional touring circus really bring their A-game. The synthy, infectious and deliciously odd pop of Methyl Ethyl fills Maitland Showground at midday. They are worth the glitter and goon alone, ending their cool, assured performance with new radio hit ‘Ubu’.

Floridian punk rockers Against Me! deliver their rousing, fist-in-the-air anthems with raucous enthusiasm. Laura Jane Grace is a formidable frontwoman, and is in full voice through barnstorming numbers like ‘True Trans Soul Rebel’ and ‘Unconditional Love’, plus songs from last year’s record Shape Shift With Me, like the full-blooded ‘333’ and ‘Haunting, Haunted, Haunts’.

Illinois’ Kristine Flaherty, aka K.Flay, proves a surprise packet, demanding attention with her dangerous hip-hop, rock and pop hybrid. Backed by just a drummer and an electric guitarist, Flaherty is a versatile and sultry vocalist, spitting rhymes and melodies with equal venom.

The Smith Street Band prove they can command a sea of people as easily as the tiny 100-cap rooms where they amassed a die-hard legion of followers. Frontman Will Wagner just might be the bloody Jim Jones of Aussie music, filling the the bellies of his disciples with self-deprecating wordplay and rapid-fire, lo-fi punk melodies instead of cyanide-infused Kool-Aid. His band rocks harder than a Kombi on Spring Break.

Amy Shark gets the call-up to fill Tash Sultana’s spot on the main stage and holds her own, drawing a large attentive crowd that is not just waiting patiently for radio smash hit ‘Adore’. The Jungle Giants are a band this reviewer has always struggled with. Their music is like a really soft toilet tissue, unquestionably pleasant whilst in use but quickly forgotten after the final wipe. But you can’t question their sway over the Groovin the Moo crowd and energy on stage. A massive crowd is dancing, climbing on each other’s shoulders and screaming their approval.

Germany’s Milky Chance are an infectious group, and sound like a summery pop band jamming with a stoner folk outfit. Strange but undeniable hooks. They receive a huge response, stepping on stage just after dark, and playing all their monster singles. ‘Stolen Dance’ is almost a ‘90s Californian pop-rock chart throwback (and has over 325 million plays on Spotify). More recent single ‘Cocoon’ with its falsetto stabs and feel-good chorus is one of the biggest songs of the day.

Pnau have made a welcome return to the stage and have been reminding the kiddies why they’re one of the country’s really stellar live dance acts. They turn back the clock from the outset, dropping ‘Wild Strawberries’ and giving all the Gen-Xers in the audience an instant and deliciously euphoric acid flashback.

The Darkness come with high expectations, but they’re not about to miss an opportunity to blow the minds of 12,000 Millennials. The current line-up of vocal acrobat Justin Hawkins, brother and guitarist Dan Hawkins, bassist Frankie Pouillan, and Rufus Tiger Taylor (son of Queen’s Roger Taylor), step on stage and open with ‘Black Shuck’, that tune about the big nasty dog that opens their breakthrough debut Permission to the Land. In fact, the whole set draws heavily on this record, with ‘Growing on Me’, ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’, ‘Get Your Hands Off My Woman’ and ‘Love is Only a Feeling’ all making appearances. The set closes, like so many Darkness shows, with the mammoth ‘Love on the Rocks with No Ice’, in which Hawkins jumps on the shoulders of a security guard and is carried through the audience while playing an extended face-melting guitar solo. Hawkins is a wizard and The Darkness deliver pure rock spectacle.

The Wombats are loved in Australia. They chose their name well. This isn’t their first Groovin rodeo, having played previously in 2011. The Liverpudlian pop trio write some insanely catchy ditties and for this set they dutifully pluck the choice cuts from their three studio records: ‘Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves)’, ‘Greek Tragedy’ and the supreme ‘Moving to New York’ amongst them. The song that made them massive in Australia is left until the finale: ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’.

Violent Soho are a long way from the garage and have been handed the weighty responsibility of closing proceedings on the main stage. Sure, they haven’t exactly re-written the grunge handbook but, well, it probably doesn’t need to be tampered with. Violent Soho deliver each tune with sledgehammer subtlety and nuance – primal energy and tortured melodies are the name of the game. They sometimes sound like Kurt Vile fronting the earliest incarnation of The Smashing Pumpkins.

The quartet opens with ‘Viceroy’ and you can hear kids singing the words for miles around. Amongst their own material, like the fan favourites ‘Covered in Chrome’ and ‘Saramona Said’, is a special treat. Singer Luke Boerdam introduces Grinspoon’s Phil Jamieson, who appears from the wings and joins Soho for a particularly vicious rendition of the Grinners classic ‘More Than You Are’.

Violent Soho’s grand finale can’t be denied. They stepped up and blew the glitter from our faces.

Now it’s time to stock up on box wine and G-bangers for next year.