The 17th Golden Plains will be remembered for being hot (again), a reliable gem of clever programming, and absolutely swarming with the Irish.
There’s no doubt Irish indie titans Fontaines D.C. and rogue hip-hop countrymen Kneecap brought fresh blood to the regional festival grounds on Labour Day weekend – Irish flags, shamrocks, bum bags and soccer kits were everywhere. The country’s famous Gaelic energy was also on show, with Kneecap’s laddish set of coarse hip-hop and DIY bangers being particularly off chops on Saturday night. Hell, when interstitial DJ Joey Lightbulb dropped The Spark (last year’s viral club anthem from a bunch of Irish schoolkids), the place basically detonated. At this rate, Bono will be narrating the eventual documentary.
Saturday
After a smoking ceremony and customary blessing by the Nolan family, who own the land, Saturday morning was a slow build of sunscreen, merch purchases and sitting around talking rubbish. Which is a huge part of the point. In a festival landscape hit by the pandemic, cost of living, and changed listening habits, Golden Plains and its long-running sister event Meredith stand as the surest gathering on the calendar. After all these years, it still has one stage and no sponsors. The line-ups are weird, but they always work. You can still bring your own booze. The community around it fosters individual responsibility. Even the toilets are good. These things are all connected.
An early standout was Skeleten, the relatively new outfit for Russell Fitzgibbon from Sydney group Fishing. Backed by a five-piece live band, Fitzgibbon’s deadpan vocals stick sweet melodies over louche grooves reminiscent of Stone Roses and Talking Heads. By the time closing earworm No Drones In The Afterlife came around, the vibe could have been a dank 3am party rather than a hot afternoon sway.
US Americana outfit Bonny Light Horseman kept the vibe high with sublime harmonies from Anais Mitchell and Eric D Johnson, boosted by the elastic guitar runs of Josh Kaufman. Mitchell was magnetic, smile beaming and hands flicking out as she sang “I knew our love was changing, didn’t know why” on The Rover. After a dreamy I Know You Know, the crowd’s love is reciprocal, Johnson declaring, “Who wants to marry me so I can be Australian too?”
The pull of a perfect $14 Martini from a caravan overlooking the sunset was stronger than the hectic space jazz of Sun Ra Arkestra, even if the sprawling silver-clad group were on fire. One member did somersaults across the stage. The late Sun Ra himself would’ve been proud.
Thelma Plum kicked off a slick pop run that closed out with Gen Z cult faves Magdalena Bay in full musical theatre mode; they brought fairy wings, an overblown Y2K aesthetic and a plasticky collage of 2000s-era radio tropes to the fore.
Chart pop was once just a sugary staple of interstitial DJ sets at Golden Plains, but its tendrils have been making it to the stage recently – see Carly Rae Jepsen in 2023. With the glitter-heavy crowd losing it to closing track The Ballad of Matt and Mica, you could maybe feel a new tradition gaining traction.
But that two hours of feminine energy was flipped for a midnight double of masculine antics from US group Osees and the aforementioned Kneecap. With just under 30 Osees LPs to draw from, the furious two-drummer quintet led by John Dwyer plumbed the depths of garage, psych, punk, boogie, metal and more to deliver a buzzsaw set of intense, cascading riffage. The band opened with furious face-melter I Come From the Mountain and, by the time it traversed the stomp of Tidal Wave and stirred up a genuine mosh pit in Animated Violence against a bombastic video backdrop of looping red skulls, it’s hard to imagine a rock band ever picking up a guitar here again. The riffs have all been had.
Few bands could have matched Osees level of madness. Kneecap are one of them. Enjoying a massive moment on their first Australian tour, the Belfast trio – who rap in both English and Irish Gaeilge – opened with the heavy It’s Been Ages to a huge crowd. “We only have 45 minutes so give us everything you have, you cunts,” yelled co-frontman Móglaí Bap. The gurning Your Sniffer Dogs Are Shite invited a hint of evil into the amphitheatre, while the 808 State-sampling I bhFiacha Linne set up a full rave run of Guilty Conscience, then Parful – about Protestants and Catholics overcoming grievances to get blazed together – and closing belter, H.O.O.D. The crowd response legitimately made the earth under my feet flex like bouncing floorboards. “I know on paper it looks like a bad business model to sing mostly in a language that not even our whole town understands,” says DJ Próvaí to their crazed reception. “But how wrong was I?”
With the early AM now in full swing, Colombian producer-singer Ela Minus started the rave proper, accompanying my cunning decision to find dinner now it was 2am. Peruvian DJ Sofia Kourtesis dished up dessert with a set that swung between deep techno, joyous wedding DJ cuts like I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Pump Up The Jam and We Are Your Friends, and her own live singing over a clutch of her tracks. Sounds like a mess, but Kourtesis skillfully threaded it all. Dropping Underworld’s Born Slippy felt too obvious until she transitioned from its iconic synth pad opening to a clattering percussive rework that turned the thing inside out and back again. Tons of fun. Night one done.
Sunday
I emerged from my hot box of a tent in time for an iced coffee, a life-giving Feast Plate from the Hare Krishna tent, and to see R.M.F.C rule. The project of the perfectly named Buz Clatworthy, a twenty-something from coastal NSW, the band is a vending machine of neat riffs and deeply fresh spins on the garage rock-meets-post-punk canon. Opening with the urgent Sterile Century, the band’s appeal hinges on Clatworthy’s strident vocals and flawless frenetic drumming, and two horn players blowing long notes to lend the songs’ spidery arrangements a sophisticated drama. They were awesome. And an unfortunate precursor to New Zealand duo Elliot & Vincent, whose plain rock riffs and studied attitude couldn’t distract from a lack of tunes.
The Sunday arvo brought swings and roundabouts. Hermanos Gutiérrez – aka stylish Ecuadorian Swiss brothers Alejandro and Estevan Gutiérrez – earnestly picked out a smooth set of instrumental guitar that felt more technical than touching. I was in the minority – plenty gave them the boot. Local songwriter Grace Cummings followed, belting her incredible, rich voice over a percussive backing track to make an instant scene-stealer. But as the band settled into a set of bluesy, mid-tempo folk-rock and piano tunes, I couldn’t find anything behind the voice to hang onto.
At some point, Golden Plains organisers declared Sunday afternoon prime party slot. So it was with legendary Philadelphian rapper Bahamadia turning up the heat with an effortless set of classic hip-hop, one that showed how the best sits in the pocket of the track, not shouts over it (no shade Kneecap, promise).
Then there was Adriana, a local selector known as much for her stint on PBS radio as for fusing her DJ sets with the world sounds of her Greek heritage. I was back at the campsite enjoying a hydrating face mask when the first moments of her set rang out. “We really should get down there” turned into finding one of the biggest crowds of the weekend dancing up a storm. It’s not always a local act that holds the combo of insider knowledge and skill to lead a Golden Plains crowd into collective euphoria with the perfect drop (hello, Four Tet), but it usually is. Adriana launching into French house producer Bob Sinclair’s 2006 keening classic World Hold On felt like the moment of the festival – a nod to the grief at our current global shitshow, along with the joy in gathering here to forget about it. Boots aloft. How to follow that? A traditional Greek number that saw Pontian dancers in traditional dress join Adriana on stage to lock arms and dance in celebration of her late dad, sharing the love. Beautiful.
Back at camp, news of an approaching storm turned to watching it arrive. Dark clouds squashed the sunset, leaving a low streak of orange to silhouette the distant wind turbines and columns of rainfall. Someone’s BOM radar showed a huge clump of colours heading towards us. The ominous sound of nangs rang out from the nearby camp of Irish boys all dressed as Where’s Wally. Impending doom. But it never happened. I can’t confirm, but I hear PJ Harvey told organisers to not allow the storm to proceed.
There wasn’t supposed to be an hour of eerie drone sounds before PJ Harvey on Sunday night at Golden Plains. But the legendary UK artist requested there be no interstitial DJ and the party was paused. Fat blue shadows bloomed in the dark, and a fresh wind whipped the trees and lanterns above. A stagehand announced the start of the set would be pushed back 15 minutes to accommodate the incoming low pressure cell. Lightning flashed and a light rain fell. If PJ Harvey wanted ceremony, she got it.
But, as she finally emerged under flickering skies, the storm withdrew. Bummer. For an artist whose catalogue feels more like brooding incantations than mere songs, this somehow felt like a letdown.
Harvey was not. Fronting a band of stoic men dressed in linen, she slunk to life with a theatrical 18-song set split in two – a ghostly, majestic first half pulled from her latest LP I Inside The Old Year Dying and 2011’s war-themed Let England Shake, followed by Harvey changing from cloak to dress and strutting through an excellent suite of ’90s classics in 50ft Queenie, Man-Size and Down by the Water. The epic slow burner To Bring You My Love closed it out. Her voice perfect; the carefully drawn mood never broken. No Golden Plains headliner ever cut such a singular, peculiar figure – Harvey somehow made the festival bend to her. I loved its quiet, then defiant, grandeur.
Then came the Irish with their own. “It’s pretty cool to be sharing the stage with PJ Harvey,” said Fontaines D.C.’s cloaked frontman Grian Chatten. With four albums in only six years, the Dublin band already has a greatest hits set amassed. Live, they sounded massive – thanks in part to a truck of bonus production tech that drove through the crowd to the mixing desk. Cue mass singalongs for chiming gothic strummers It’s Amazing to be Young and Favourite, and a proper mosh pit for post-punk moments Boys in the Better Land and Here’s The Thing. They’re proper rock stars now, the kind who wear sunglasses on stage and leak charisma standing still. “I love yooooouuuu,” kept shouting someone near me. An hour in, the dirge of In The Modern World stalled the momentum, but when you can close with the lurching Starburster, not much before it matters.
By midnight the guitars of Harvey and Fontaines D.C. were packed away. After a short, weird set from US singer Robin S – which consisted of a bizarre faux radio intro detailing her career, an extended version of her ’92 dance hit Show Me Love, and a demonstration of how she can stutter her vocals in real time (“Y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-yeah”) – Belgian duo 2manydjs, the DJ moniker of Soulwax, brought the house down with a muscular set of bangers. The brothers David and Stephen Dewaele have been in the game since 1995 and it showed. In between grinding four-on-the-floor propulsive builds, we got a blip of Chaka Khan, before artful swerves into mass singalongs like Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime, Blur’s Girls & Boys, Charli xcx’s Von Dutch, and Tame Impala’s Let It Happen. After the collective cardio was done, we went and got a Pink Flamingo cocktail, sat in a plastic chair and watched local DJ Zjoso warm up from under the stars at the back of the amphitheatre. At 3am. On a farm in regional Victoria.
“It was then that I realised,” Bono will say in the inevitable doco, “Golden Plains is the sweetest thing.”
