Though the 2012 event may be forever remembered as a return to the muddy Byron Bay site and a freak hail storm perhaps heralded by the loud rock of DZ Deathrays (who say their amps miraculously survived the on stage waterfall), ultimately it will be the music that we’ll be talking about until the next Splendour rolls along – which we expect to be at their new, permanent, hopefully less muddy home.
The final day of music culminated with a return of Gossip over at the Mix Up Tent, the Smashing Pumpkins in the Supertop and a “50 Years of Bob Dylan” tribute show over at GW. The latter featured Kav from Eskimo Joe, Kevin Mitchell/Bob Evans, Josh Pyke, Patience from The Grates and Holly Throsby, against a backing band, as they ran through a standard set of the great man’s tunes including “All Along The Watchtower”, “Blowing In The Wind”, “Everybody Must Get Stoned” and set closer “Like a Rolling Stone”.
Though some called it a ballsy move for the festival to close its main stage with seminal rock group The Smashing Pumpkins, the packed tent from start to finish spoke for itself as Billy and his troupe gave fans new and old plenty to enjoy, with Billy in particular seeming to truly enjoy and appreciate the audience’s kind reception, especially during the new tracks off Oceania. As Kate-Miller Heidke put on Twitter: “It’s like being 13 again. I can nearly smell the self-loathing and the Impulse.” Perhaps it was the band’s choice to play early songs like “Cherub Rock”, “1979”, “Zero”, “Muzzle”, “Today” and even a cover of “Space Oddity” that made many return to their youths.
Earlier in the day, a clash between Father John Misty, Ball Park Music and Django Django was easily the most difficult of the weekend for many, though the crowds were definitely taking out the tents of the two latter performers, Django particularly impressing the crowd with a high energy, percussion filled set. Metric‘s highly anticpated performance off the back of their new record Synthetica was marred by a power outage halfway through the set, though the band took it in their stride, returning with “Gold Guns Girls” after a short break.
On the contrary, Azealia Banks left many fans confused after her set was cut short by half an hour, though she closed with “212”. Earlier statements regarding ongoing technical problems was no doubt a factor in the shorter performance. Meanwhile, over at The Kooks, a lone tent climber forced organisers to stop the band’s set until he got down. Showing negotiation tactics that Samuel L Jackson would be proud of, they promised he wouldn’t be kicked out, they “just needed him down”.
We’ll be back tomorrow as we kick off our review and photo coverage from the festival – stay tuned for that, and check out our live tweets on Twitter (@theaureview) plus view our Instagram feed (@theaureview) to see all the shenanigans we got up to over these three days…
