Lowlands 2015: The Review

Along with about a third of the Netherlands, the site of the Lowlands Festival used to be underwater. Located near Biddinghuizen, a village just a tad bigger than T in the Park’s Kinross and about an hour’s drive from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, it’s apparently around about 5m below sea level, or so we are informed while huddled around a campfire in the early hours of the morning. It’s about 3am and the second day is coming to a close. At this point the festival is mostly over but there’s still a palpable sense of anticipation among the unanimously friendly and polite revellers about tomorrow’s line-up. Since the moment we arrived on the camping grounds we’ve heard one band pumped out of more speakers than any other, be via it the tannoy system in the food area or through the iPod docks of of fellow campers. No matter whether their second pick is Limp Bizkit or The Chemical Brothers, ask anyone who they’re most excited to see and you get one answer: “Tame Impala”.

That Tame Impala, whose Currents bagged a number 1 in the Netherlands, are the band that bridge the diverse tastes of the Lowland attendees makes a lot of sense. Featuring mostly indie rock and electronic dance acts alongside the odd hip-hop big hitter and a surprisingly hefty helping of throwback psychedelic rock, if you could feed the festival programme into some sort of sonic blender it’d probably come out sounding a lot like the Australian group’s latest. As well as spanning a broad range of genres, the bill includes a health mix mainstream and fairly obscure artists that’s comparable to Glastonbury despite being a much smaller festival, attracting an average of 55,000 visitors compared to the latter’s 175,000.

That’s about where the resemblance to any tentpole UK festival ends however. For starters, the festival grounds are impeccably clean, and while you will inevitably find yourself trampling on empty beer cups while exiting the biggest performances, you’ll also notice the staff waiting in the wings to clear away the refuge with what look like oversized poker chip sweepers. The toilets are also pristine by festival standards, and there’s no need to bring your own bog roll either.

Then there’s the weather. Apparently as a countermeasure against the Netherlands’ unpredictable climate, all of the stages are housed in tents with wooden floorboards. The precautions proved unnecessary, blessed as we were with abundant sunshine almost all weekend. Indeed, it seems a little bit excessive that even the main stage’s area is engulfed by canvas but it’s just another example of the organisers’ commitment to delivering a seamless festival experience. Besides Roots Manuva, who is delayed by 15 minutes due to a lighting fault, every act we see begins almost exactly on the dot and yet none are visibly rushed off stage, with the biggest crowd pleasers being given the leeway to squeeze in an extra track or two when the audience demands it.

There’s plenty of raving going on in a makeshift club on the night before the festival kicks off, but our real Lowland’s experience begins a little after midday with Curtis Harding, an ex-backup singer for Cee Lo Green who made his solo debut earlier this year. He and his band entertain a capacity crowd at the Charlie stage, an unlikely advantage of being the first act of the day, where they deliver authentic Stax soul buoyed by a juicy bass tone. They play two covers, ‘Aint No Sunshine and California Dreaming, which despite being obvious choices go down especially well. The later is a slower and dirtier take on 60s staple with syncopated breaks and spontaneous guitar solos.

Next it’s The Antlers, who fill only a third of their medium-sized stage but have the complete attention of all present within the a few bars of their opener. Like their jeans and black t-shirt attire, the Brooklynites’ pillowy, atmospheric tunes are tasteful and consistent but feel a little uninspired. The odd glockenspiel synth patch keeps things interesting though. They’re at their best while jamming and close on a loud and vigorous guitar workout that marks an exciting end to their set.

After a rare afternoon dry spell it’s time for Roots Manuva, who’s aforementioned lighting misfortunes are complemented with further technical difficulties which see his synth player sprinting back and forth to the side stage during a few early tracks. It all makes for a shaky start and the restless crowd begins to thin out but early hit Witness (1 Hope) turns things around. Before long the faithfuls are grooving along to what ends up being a solid performance.

The first stunner of a set comes from Shamir, who is cool as a cucumber before a zealous young crowd. He rattles through a good chunk of his debut Ratchet, dropping bombshell On the Regular nonchalantly only a few songs in before shaking out the dreads to throw down Call it Off, as if to signal “now it’s on”. He’s reserved between songs, very much at odds with exuberant music and equally flamboyant parachute pants, but by the end of the set he’s over barrier and mixing with a reeling audience.

The highlight of the day, however, comes courtesy of Caribou. His set is an audio-visual tour de force featuring the most intricate and utterly dazzling lighting setup of the whole festival, each track enhanced with it’s own colour scheme and effects. It’s a trippy performance befitting of the distinct local fragrance that hangs heavy in the air, but it’s also deliriously energetic, the Canadian producer taking to a second drum kit, face to face with his regular skin smith, to bang out a transcendent 8 minute rendition of Can’t Do Without you. Closer Sun is simply euphoric, bathing the crowd in a heavenly yellow light. We stick around the same stage for a solid 2 hour DJ set from Four Tet which brings our first night to a satisfying close.

We had no intention of being up early the next morning but those superhumans with steam to burn had the option of doing so at either an early morning yoga class or a flamenco workshop. We we were just happy to catch Eaves, the full-band moniker of Leeds-based acoustic guitar player Joseph Lyons. At times his complicated finger picking and wandering drawl evoke Kurt Vile; at other, his band chugs out loud and greasy desert rock. The audience is so attentive during the quieter moments that we can here the trees rustle behind the stage.

Afterwards, local talent Jacco Gardener treats us to our first of many psychedelic sessions and, besides one obvious exception, the best. With authentically iffy falsetto harmonies and plenty of tambourine shaking, all the genre’s hallmarks are accurately represented, but he and his band are no novelty act. Their songs are sprawling and dynamic, full of tempo changes yet anchored by a tight krautrock pulse we could happily hear for hours on end. Stylistically, they fall somewhere between Pink Floyd and The Flaming Lips, but more jovial the the former and less esoteric than the later. You can catch them at King Tuts later this month.

Keen to support some premium (at least partially) homegrown exports of our own, we squeezed our way into a daunting main stage crowd to witness the bizarre spectacle that is FFS, and boy did they do us proud. Dressed in a black poncho and an aging bureaucrat’s shirt and tie, the eccentric Sparks amplify the Glasgow boys’ usually restrained quirky side, making for a theatrical and knowingly cheesy performance that gleefully revels in its own peculiarities. Mael and Kapranos are on fire, belting choruses in unison and then wrestling back and forth the spotlight in a sort of mock Punch and Judy act. There are few Franz Ferdinand cuts of course and predictably Take Me Out turns the standing area into a trampoline but it’s the collaborative tracks that hit the hardest. Call Girl is deliciously funky while So Desu Ne is the visual highpoint, ending with Mael, Kapranos, McCarthy and Hardy side-by-side on a single keyboard tapping out a jaunty contrapuntal rhythm.

If FFS resembled something of a pantomime then Father John Misty’s set is the rock concert equivalent of dark, cynical stand up comedy. More than just a stage name, singer-songwriter and onetime Fleet Foxes drummer J. Tillman’s “Misty” persona is supposedly a satire of a contemptuous, narcissistic rockstar, but he wears the character so well you wonder whether the whole thing was just an elaborate ruse to justify a passionate Jarvis Cocker impression. Either way it’s utterly magnetic, and between his pouting, mic stand grinding and campy twirls, he slips in some pointed jokes about modern rock concert behaviour. “I always dreamed of playing in front of hordes of sweaty shirtless men,” he sneers at one point, a quip that both plays into his character’s chauvinism and serves to subdue an unruly pocket of the audience who making things a little uncomfortable. Later, he gets right up in the face of the front row only to flip them the bird when they all whip their phones out and then actually grabs one to record a one-on-one performance. He continues thumbing the screen when the song’s over and for devilishly cruel moment we hope he’s going to delete the video. Instead he announces “I don’t think we quite got that,” and begins the song anew. “I got to get one of those so I can start going to concerts,” he spits. Gimmicks aside, his songs fare outstandingly in a live setting and reconfirm I Love You, Honeybear as one of this year’s best albums.

Unfortunately Courtney Barnett doesn’t quite do her own latest record justice which is particularly disappointing given the spritely set she and her band dispatched at the Art School earlier this year. Perhaps it was the size of the crowd – Barnett must be the hot tip in the Netherlands because the tents is packed but sadly few appear familiar with her stuff – or maybe the band are just wrung out from touring, but it’s a tepid affair that only comes to life after Small Poppies’ feedback thunderstorm outro towards the end of the set. Avant Gardener and Pedestrian at Best are always going to make for a winning bipartite closer but we wished the likes of Depreston and Elevator Operator resonated as well as they deserve to.

The peculiar quantity of psych rock at Lowland’s becomes most apparent early Sunday afternoon with Pond, Allah-Las and the Eastern-leaning Dutch outfit Pauw all scheduled within the space in a few hours. We’re impressed by snippet of the later we manage to catch between other commitments but our discovery of the day goes to The Districts, whose brash energy is an ideal start to the day. Hailing from somewhere in the copy-paste suburbs of Pennsylvania, the youngsters play harmonica and slide guitar laced americana but with the momentum of pop-punk that chews on the classic themes of love, listlessness and escape. Frontman Rob Grote is a natural storyteller, and while his subjects and format are undeniably cliche, his conviction makes him easy to root for. Pinballing around the stage, by the end of the first song he’s managed to accidentally jettison his hat and pick as well as tangle his guitar up in its cable. Later he clambers on a stack of speakers and shouts, eyes rolled back, at the ceiling. Derivative or not, these guys mean it.

There will be no such commotion for Ought frontman Tim Darcy, thank you very much. “None of this,” he says during the soundcheck, pointing to the LED display cycling Windows XP quality visualisations behind him, “and no haze… NO FUN!” In the end Ought get both and despite Darcy’s mock wish they’re an absolute riot. They open with Pleasant Heart and its stomping intro has the crowd bobbing and jerking from the word go but things turn up a notch when they launch into a stream of new material from their forthcoming LP. Based on the present performance, it looks set to be dynamite: lead single Beautiful Blue Sky exhibits a dynamic trajectory that brings to mind slowcore acts like Slint and Bedhead, gradually churning simple guitar refrains into a cacophony before dissolving away again. We have to tear ourselves away around halfway through, but with good reason...

By the time Kendrick Lamar’s main stage slot rolls around, his band - a drummer, guitar, bass and synth player - are all in their positions, but the man himself is nowhere to be seen. The lights are dim, the band are standing blankly to attention and the murmur of casual conversation blankets the audience. It’s clear what needs to happen here but only a small enclave of the audience cottons on, whistling and stamping the floorboards for a measly 20 seconds or so before giving up. Sure the Dutch crowds are well behaved, but this would never happen in Glasgow - for a moment we wonder whether Lamar will ever show up given the audience’s apparent apathy regarding his imminent arrival. After a nail biting five minutes, a video begins to roll, the band strikes up Money Trees and he bounds on stage; finally, the place goes nuts. From then on in it’s pandemonium and Lamar proves himself to be one of the best showmen in the game today. Every lighter is in the air for Poetic Justic, every foot is off the ground for Swimming Pools and every voice under the tent the size of a football pitch promises they will sing about him. Winding up to King Kunta, he plays both sides of the audiences off of each other, urging each to cheer louder than the other. By the end, he only has to walk from one side to another to start an eruption.

Such a world-beating exhibition of showmanship makes Kevin Parker’s sheepish attempts all the more endearing. Currents has been widely regarded as a statement that Tame Impala aren’t the straightforward psych rock revivalist act they once appeared and as if to emphasise the point, Parker plays very little guitar at all during the set. Instead he works his way through the textbook of standard popstar moves, including air grabs, spinning on the spot and clinging the mic stand and is wonderfully awkward throughout. In truth, the act is unnecessary: the sublime pop power of Tame Impala’s new material blossoms every bit as dazzlingly as you’d hope live, and you know that when Eventually’s show stopping chorus ripples over the thousands of hands in the air, you’re hearing a future classic in the making.

Still reeling from a day of stand out performances, we stumbled over to Viet Cong only to be floored all over again. “We’ve being doing this January,” announces frontman and bass player Matt Flegel and you can tell. The band ricochet between time signatures and tempos with ease, culminating a heart attack jam that sees them hammering the same few disjointed notes for what must be 10 minutes. It’s all a raucous flurry at the start but by the end you can count the individual seconds between the hits, each of the band facing away from each other with eyes closed, communicating by what we can only assume is telepathy. Their sounds is caustic and discordant but Flegel helms it all with the congeniality of a favourite english teacher, making for a heartening coda to our Lowlands experience.