FREE RANGE FESTIVITIES St Jerome’s Laneway Festival Perth Cultural Centre Saturday, February 6, 2010 on a mild summer’s day. The always smiling outfit, lead by three energetic front-women, moon-walked, high fived and synchronisedSaint Jerome’s Laneway Festival is the free danced their way around the PICA stage r a n g e c h i c k e n o f t h e s u m m e r fe s t i va l to a sizeable early crowd. Pulling from the circuit. Its discerning audience members heady days of the eighties, they referenced are released from the usual beer-cages and the era with Billy Idol Is My Lover, and no encouraged to roam freely and peacefully, crowd member was safe when it came time all the while being fed, high-quality, hand- to do the ‘prawn’. No matter how much fun selected musical fodder. On the whole it’s you may have watching Boys Boys Boys!, a rather utopian affair with very few of the rest assured they had just as much fun (and probably more) performing for you. usual drunken nasties or angry additives. Eerie English band Wild Beasts W i t h i n n e r - c i t y u r b a n i te s n ow lapping up all that is ‘slow ’, organic and provided a reverb-y, dreamy and off-beat hand-crafted, it makes per fect sense for soundtrack for audience members still this boutique festival to return to Perth for steadily streaming into the festival’s unique its second year – and thankfully Laneway rabbit warren-like layout. Perfect for the Laneway lineup in their relative obscurity continues to deliver in spades. Triple J Unearthed High winners but alluring quality, Wild Beasts would have Tim & Jean attracted a surprisingly big won many new fans on the day who might crowd for their early set on the TAFE stage, not have stumbled across the band on the luring in listeners with soaring synths and traditional touring circuit. Fa r m o r e r e c o g n i s a b l e t o t h e cheeky smiles, that proved why they’ve been touted by many as ‘ones to watch’. With new m a s s e s w e r e M u m f o r d & S o n s w h o demonstrated there’s nothing quite like bandmates in tow, the Perth lads played radio favourite Come Around early in the set, getting the #1 song on triple j’s Hottest 100 to boost a band’s popularity. When doubling the size of the dancefloor almost instantaneously. If the hype surrounding this the foursome finally ventured onto the Museum Stage they were greeted with a act is anything to go by, dancefloor growth massive roar of approval from Perth patrons may be exponential from here on in. who had packed into the leafy lane and Local vamps Boys Boys Boys! were grassy banks leading up to the stage. The also perfectly suited to a mid afternoon slot modest English gentlemen were obviously quite taken aback by their popularity with 6T]TaP[b 5 BC40< T]cah $ fXcW P]X\P[b their way through tracks, with Little Lion '_\ UTQadPah !cW Man and Sigh No More eliciting a predictably cWT a^bT\^d]c W^cT[ ] _TacW frenzied response. Festival favourite Sarah Blasko had no problem following the unlikely Mumford folk-behemoth, retaining much of the band’s crowd. Dressed in a typically elegant polkadot dress, Blasko was returning to Perth for the umpteenth time this summer but still delivered one of her characteristically cW UaXSPh ]XVWc ! ^U UTQ intense and sincere per formances. Deep Mumford & Sons the crowd from eating out of his trembling hands. Many in the crowd looked to have become acquainted with Johnston through Florence And The Machine t h e fo l k l o re o f h i m b e i n g o n e o f Ku r t Cobain’s favourite artists, but in reality the b a s s l i n e s a n d t h r o b b i n g p e r c u s s i o n fragile performer has much in common with reverberated through Bird On A Wire with lo-fi luminaries Jad Fair and Stephen Pastel. Blasko punctuating the song with theatrical John Lennon has always been Johnston’s finger-clicks and her breathy vocals. With so idol and a cover of Hide Your Love Away many classy, restrained yet dynamic songs, confirmed it. Songs from the latest album it ’s hard to get sick of watching Blasko in the form of Mind Movies and Fake Records Of Rock n Roll were played authoritatively, weave her magic. But only on an eclectic line-up like but it was the older material of Hey Joe, Laneway’s could you have Blasko soiree- Speeding Motorcycle and a tender True Love ing around on one stage, and cult-figure Will Find You In The End that stole the show. Daniel Johnston, whose battles with mental It may have been uncomfortable to watch at illness were famously portrayed in the film times, but Daniel Johnston was a must see The Devil And Daniel Johnston, playing to experience. Drawing a massive crowd at the admirers on another. With ramshackle grey hair and a wide girth tucked into his track PICA stage, ‘hot-right-now’ Londoners The suit pants, Johnston placed his book of lyrics XX emerged looking like members of the on his music stand and played Freedom Hitler Youth – swathed in black with shaved Song. 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