Review || Splendour In The Grass 2017 || Day One

Splendour In The Grass day one was packed full of amazing acts it was hard to chose where to be and when. I dressed up in some festival gear, the glitter, sunnies the whole lot and braced what was a slightly cold day to see some of Australia’s best live acts.

 

Ocean Grove 

Melbourne outfit Ocean Grove live up to their genre odd world music by taking the crowd at the amphitheatre stage to weird and wonderful places. From the minute they walked out onto the stage all eyes were glued to the 5 members who were leaping and head thrashing to the high energy experimental beat.

 

Playing tracks such as Intimate Alien and Mr Centipede made the crowd lose their minds as a massive mosh expanded to all corners of the pit with elbows and legs flying everywhere. Ocean Grove drive their music with such passion and energy it’s impossible to resist rocking out and that vibe stuck with everyone for the duration of their entire set.

 

Lead vocalist Luke Holmes gave a shout out to Chester from Linkin Park who sadly passed away the night before and continued on to say if anyone wasn’t feeling ok to reach out to a mate or professional because music is a community and we need to look out for each other. Ocean Grove are party starters and with their original mix of hip hop infused hardcore and their sheer passion for music showed splendour why they deserved to be on this years line up.

 

Vera Blue

Female folk alternative singer songwriter Vera Blue gets more amazing every time I see her. Her recorded music does not do her justice because her vocal skills and passion fuelled performance can not be bottled up it needs to be enjoyed in the flesh. The mix up tent was completely packed out for her performance with people scrambling to their way to the front to get closer to her red headed godliness.

 

Songs such as Fingers and Private made the crowd go insane and with arms raised to the ceiling people all over were breaking out into song. Vera also dropped her brand new album ‘Perennial‘ minutes before her set so we were treated with some of the new songs off that album including a Regular Touch. Singing along on mass the crowd joined in when Vera broke out into Kids by MGMT and “woooooohhhs” were heard left right and centre. Watching Vera live is like taking a seat on a roller coaster past pages in her book of life, expect that book can sing and it sounds incredible.

 

Tash Sultana

It feels like I have been waiting forever to see Tash live and I finally got my chance. Tash blew me away with her insane ability to create everything you heard on the stage from scratch using more loop peddles and instruments than you could ever imagine. She didn’t only play the guitar she played keys, drums, trumpet and several other instruments throughout her set and she played every single on of them perfectly.

 

Smoke billowed out from behind her when she kicked off popular single Notion and the crowd went wild when she played her latest single Murder To The Mind. Tash was an incredible musician and a passionate performer and it didn’t matter what she sung, played or even didn’t play the crowd loved every minute and I did to.

 

Peking Duk

Peking Duk no matter where they play or what they play are absolutely f***ing incredible. This was the first time I had really see no hen boys try to make their set different knowing most of the crowd hadn’t even them at least once before. Their set started with a female violinist on the stage playing instrumental previews of their hits and she was joined by a guy playing the horn shortly after. Then Peking Duk entered the stage and kicked off their single Stranger. Peking Duks explosive sound mixed with the canyons of smoke and trippy background effects lit up the whole amphitheatre and the crowd started to boogie.

 

From start to finish Peking Duk took us on a wild electronic ride through the best of their original singles as well as well known classics such as Stronger by Kayne West. The boys were joined on stage by vocalist Ben from SAFIA for single Say My Name and Alunageorge from the UK who previewed her brand new single and featured in their track Fake Magic. Peking Duk also played live for the first time with guitar and bass in hand the whole amphitheatre roared with applause as the boys slayed their instruments like they always do on the decks.

 

This was Peking Duks best ever live performance, from their energy to their feature artists, to the pyrotechnics, to their song choices. Everything was perfect and I along with the crowd partied right from the start to the minute they left the stage.