After a gruelling two-year festival drought, Newcastle was treated to its first full-capacity festival with This That being held at Wickham Park on Saturday.
The multi-stage festival featured artists from all over Australia, with styles stemming from THIS to THAT, to everything in between. Amongst the packed lineup were three Newcastle acts (Craterface, Dust, and Mason Dane) kicking off the event with their festival debut, demonstrating Newcastle’s extremely talented yet sonically diverse music scene.
Local Post-Punk outfit Dust welcomed punters into the festival on the OTHER stage with a stellar set of mostly unreleased tracks.
The group beckoned crowds into the event, opening their performance with 2021 singles Stare and No Use, before launching into a set of unreleased tracks, of which exuded the dreary yet ear-splitting post-punk energy that the group have become known for. Their set was notably tight, radiating the professionalism of a band that are readily prepared to take on the nation.
Meanwhile on the THIS stage, after having recently returned from a trip to the US to collaborate with T-Pain, Triple J unearthed Winner Mason Dane opened the main stage performances with a few soulful renditions of tracks from his debut EP Chasing Home.
Although having to perform on the largest stage, with only a DJ to accompany him and less than 40 punters watching on, Mason owned the mammoth stage. Bouncing around from one side to another, he invited the eager early arrivers to join in. Closing with this reviewer’s personal favourites Stay Down and Dash.
Craterface opened with their debut single Lexapro before treating us with a handful of recent tracks from their recent Divine Chatroom mixes and Burn After Listening full-length tape, and even a couple of brand new, yet to be released tracks. A small yet easily excitable crowd was more than willing to engage with the alternative rap duo, as Baby Bruh stomped around on stage slinging rhymes about Cars (Big Wheelin’) and Friendship (Family).
What really sets this duo apart from the rest of the rap-adjacent artists of the day, is DJ/ Vocalist Taki Local whomst between chopping up beats, harmonizing with Mr Bruh, and providing vocoder heavy croons (especially during ONME), created a hauntological atmosphere of exciting new sounds unlike anything else on the festival lineup.
Mid-afternoon, Newcastle were treated to their first experience of Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers, the femme punk-rockers who hail from the nation’s capital of Canberra. Their performance was bold, with heavy grunge-pop undertones and lyrics accompanied with loud group harmonies.
Halfway though they treated the crowd to a nostalgic cover of Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend, which in this reviewer’s opinion, remained one of the many highlights of the day. The band closed their set with their punchy track AHHHH!, a track that was just shy of being featured in 2021’s Triple J Hottest 100. Teen Jesus really proved to be an unapologetic force that is an inspiration to all those aspiring young female artists out there.
Self-described “Shed Rock” band The Chats speedran through their set AGDQ style, during which they covered what seemed like a majority of their discography.
Nearing the end of their set, bassist/ vocalist Eamon Sandwith having jovially mentioned his favourite aspects of Newcastle “the steel refinery, The Johns Brothers, but most importantly Newcastle is home to the greatest band of all-time, The Screaming Jets” before launching into a blistering fast cover of their hit Better. The lads from Noosa finally provided what the crowd came for though, closing with performances of two of their most popular tracks Pub Feed and Smoko, which had the crowd attempting to shout along with Eamon’s breakneck tempo.
This That really proved to be a mighty return of festivals for Newcastle, after such a halt in large live music. All the acts brought an undeniable amount of energy and creative integrity to their performances that got crowds celebrating and really getting amongst it. The Newcastle acts remained an impressive fixture on the lineup, demonstrating just how exciting the future of the local scene is.
