Dreamy Tunes and Undue Force: Small World Festival in Review
Image: The Church playing Small World Festival. Photo by Barbara Karpinski.
BY BARBARELLA KARPINSKI
I arrived as the sun fell into the trees and the harmonically folksy All Our Exes Live In Texas came in with that just-had-a-joint-pace.
Next was Jack Ladder and The Dreamlanders with his brooding tall man vibe, along with some other stage diva presences with Donny Benétand on electric bass and Kirin J Callinan doing guitar-sex-tats-sans-shirt.
Jack Ladder and the Dreamlanders explored dreams lost and found, the frontman was almost too redolent of Nick Cave as Jack beckons the boy/girl muse in his many imaginings almost always of unrequited love.
“Why won’t you let me love you?” he asks in a jangly percussive beat, harking back to Roxy Music.
Though the voice is deep like Cave, some of the audience see him as too derivative. But Dreamlander lyrics are unique and despite much Bad Seed influence, musically there is the ghost of Bryan Ferry haunting the sounds as well.
The electric guitar had an epileptic fit frequency at times. An audience favourite seemed to be ‘Cold Feet’ with more musings on loneliness and lost love. The blend of the shirtless guitarist twitching and mellifluous synth is pleasant. Whether Dreamlanders is just a cut copy of Cave or is an original blessing, was a hung jury, according to the mutterings I eavesdropped in the crowd.
The audience at Small World were mixed in age but mainly alternative twenty-somethings, mainly eighties birthdates and hairdos. It seems like sartorially flowing fabrics and locks that have never seen a bottle of anti-frizz or a GHD was ubiquitous, and is this generation’s interpretation on New Romantic. The voluminous hair was very St. Kilda Prince of Wales, where I had hung out in my twenties in the eighties.
Next was PVT, a synthy-electronic-dirgy-electro-dream. They said that “some arseholes in America” tried to sue them about their name. “You can call us Echo and the Bunny Man if you like. I don’t care.” PVT had a gunshot electronica smoothed with a variant-vibed synth harmony.
Next, DZ Deathrays pumped up with metallic rock, stage crashing into the night. Around nine, mid-set of DZ Deathrays, I wandered towards the portaloos and fast food high above the bands on the Sydney Park grasslands.
The positive band experience was overshadowed by watching two security guards drag a young man in his twenties over a hundred metres to the exit, albeit by his arms, while his knees dragged non-consensually along the grass (I’m glad it wasn’t concrete). I did not witness this brown curly-haired boy to be violent, just rolling round being silly on the grass, and believe this response to someone who appeared to be non-violent, profoundly disturbing.
As a response to the police issues with the LGBTIQ community at their events, the Rover team was formed by ACON. Rovers are teams of specially trained volunteers who provide health promotion services at LGBTIQ events. Perhaps the organisers of these events may like to investigate this issue, locate the young man out there with bruised knees and sore shoulders, and ask him if he is OK. Although watching this all caused my own nightmares, I was calmed by The Church, who finished off the festival with their dreamy ambience.
The Church sang old songs and new, about the valley of death, rock world love and life on this planet. Running out of time, with lead singer Steve Kilbey joking about being closed down by the Australian Border force, meant their song list was cut short. We heard their beautiful 1987 hit ‘Under the Milky Way’ under the cool spring starry night with a few clouds but no rain, just something quite peculiar, “shimmering and white”. To my disappointment there was no unguarded moment, but they did take a piece of my heart.
Small World Festival 19th September, Sydney Park.
