Last weekend, thousands music fans once again congregated at The Meadow at Gardens By The Bay for St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival – Singapore edition, which become annual year festival. And for their fifth year’s edition they brought sets from Chet Faker, Pond, Mac Demarco, Jon Hopkins, Angus & Julia Stone, Courtney Barnett, Jungle, FKA Twigs, Little Dragon, Banks, Future Islands and many more.

But it seems like it’s not only for the sake of music only this festival was meant to be, but also for commercial entertainment to show Australia’s summer music festival vibe feels like. Combining the old and new Laneway’s alumnus, we can expect new generation of so called music lovers and festival goers gather together experiencing whats new and what have they missed from previous festivals. With three stages which divided based on either different genres or target market, crowd are force to choose between the acts they knew more and new acts they have never heard before. Another unfortunate but understandable thing also happens when the rain started to poured down just not long after the festival get started, the humidity is just unbearable to see especially for all hipster’s outfits who came not only for the music but for the scene.

Started the festival by English post-punk band Eagulls, rocking the main stages of Laneway with fun yet angry sounds made the punk lovers bopping along to their tunes. Continued by Perth psychedelic band Pond, crowd can enjoy the modern age of rock and roll with an Australian twist. With the distortion of the guitar, heavy drums, swaying vocals and groovy Australian attitude. And that marks the start of the festival.

Another fun sets came from the witty solo singer – songwriter Mac DeMarco and his band. The Canadian-native Mac DeMarco attracted the largest afternoon crowd at Laneway, with his jizz jazz laid-back music. Whilst he fixed up some technical issues, his band mate covered Yellow with some karaoke style goofiness. And as usual, Mac ended his performance by crowd surfing over the soaking wet crowd.

Talking about women’s day not long after the festival, we can see that there are long list of female performance for this year’s festival. Starting with Melbourne, singer-songwriter and guitarist Courtney Barnett, her performance is just as sweet and sly as her music style. Playing songs from her EPs, we can pretty much enjoy what she had brought to festivals such as Glastonbury, Lollapalooza and Coachella.

We also experienced another awesome rock band from duo Royal Blood that afternoon. With the guitar-like bass and drums rippled among the crowds, we definitely thank the promoter for not being too mainstream.

Angus & Julia Stone, the formidable brother-sister duo, hailing from Sydney, which also another top act who have performed at a large-scale event bring their heartbreakingly beautiful lyrics and honey-like harmonies is just nice to company couples that afternoon. Follow by local Singapore acts .gif and Hanging Up The Moon, with their folk acoustic tune which suits the timing for the crowd to have a break for food or just chilling before the sun goes down.

After the sun goes down, the party started up. As expected with big crowd, London’s tropical mambo jambo percussion rhythms band Jungle, serving up without doubt the funkiest set of the day, just nice to start the weekend night. Continued with some other girl power such FKA Twigs, and Swedish band Little Dragon, and followed by Banks, whose electronic efforts were almost wasted on a crowd that was running for cover. As expected with bigger crowds, they are as impressive as what electronic with lots of sound effect could offer. Name that we couldn’t missed was Chet Faker, man who was once a faceless musician with a powerful voice, and became the best of what electronic soul has to offer. After collaborations with the likes of Flume and his hit remixes of songs like Trembling Hands by Australian band and previous Laneway Festival Headliner’s, his live performance is one of the too bad to be missed that time.

Probably things they need to take notes of next time when they want to do such festival in Singapore, are consideration of what exactly the target audiences wanted to enjoy, and again when it comes to after party. We think if they still wanted to held such festival in one of the cleanest place on earth, maybe they can hire some volunteer to do it or just simply not having too much waste cause commercial booth – you know, it’s supposed to be simple raw music festival for music lovers not farmer’s market with lots of unnecessary pop up booths. So lets see what they can bring next year, will the festival be more commercial or they can introduce us to more of music options like what they will do in SXSW. (Photos : Michael Reily)

If you are a fan of post-punk music and raw guitar playing (or melodic rants), there’s no way you should miss this Leeds lads that we’re featuring for this week’s The Next Big Thing. They are Eagulls. People tend to know and recognize them because of “the open letter” that they put on their blog, and then they recently took it down. Because some people really took their post out of the context (even worse, some consider it as a publicity stunt, which seriously confuses us), we are not going to bring what the letter is all about, and we’ll be focusing more on their music.

Eagulls are a five-piece band consist of Mark ‘Goldy’ Goldsworthy (guitar), Henry Ruddel (drums), Liam Matthews (guitar), Tom Kelly (bass), and George Mitchell (vocals). The story of how they met is created by a circular friendship. Henry and George are a long-time buddy, and Liam met Henry at Leeds University. At that time Liam split up from a band which used to jam together with Goldy’s band, and their band stopped jamming. Long story short, after a couple of times of hiatus, the band decided to play together, and then George suggested the band to pick Henry as their vocalist since he used to play in a punk band.

Eagulls emerge as the ones to watch with their post-punk music and the genuine vocals that we really hail because we find them as a more rock version of the Cure. In March 2014, they launched their self-titled debut album. The album is opened by a raw intro, with a fierce bassline that will constantly remind you to the other post-punk bands. Some of their songs like ‘Possessed’ or ‘Tough Luck’ will give you a little vibe of the early Clash (and once again we have to mention the Cure). If you listen to their previous work, the album sounds darker and gloomier, and it’s agreed by Mitchell on his interview with Interview Magazine “When we first started, it was experimenting and stuff like that. As we’ve gotten older, we’ve gotten more bitter, and more agitated with what we’re doing. When you’re doing the same thing over and over again you do get pissed off. Working shitty retail jobs, moving house every year because we’re on student contracts, shit like that. That’s why the music has gotten a bit darker.”

They may sound darker, but Eagulls deliver a music that totally will satisfy post-punk music fans. Their amazing adrenalin rush sounds give a tight melody and a great combination of a loose noise. Eventhough The Guardian’s Paul Lester wrote “Arguably the least interesting thing about Eagulls is their music. It is, to our ears anyway, standard trebly/tinny ramshackle punky thrash that sounds like a rocky Cure attempting to approximate the primeval clatter…”, we still in an awe with this Leeds-based post-punk’s tremendous potential and everyone is going to agree they will be one of the best England’s exports, especially after their performance on David Letterman.