Twisted Weather and Clash of the Bands at Laneway Festival Singapore 2015

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)