Golden Plains is a festival with few rules. It’s simple: no glass, no gas bottles, no dickheads. In the space of a brief power nap, a city of tents sprouted up in Meredith, Victoria to house the 10,000 strong sold-out crowd and Melbourne rock veterans the Meanies opened Saturday with all the subtlety of a punch to the windpipe.
Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Soderberg of First Aid Kit kicked off their sunset time-slot with the country music-tinged The Lions Roar. A cover of Jack White’s Love Interruption, first performed in Australia on Triple J’s Like a Version in 2014, has become a staple of their set. Sadly, the festival sound designers seemed to favour volume over quality, which drowned out some of the duo’s more delicate harmonies.
Across the three-day weekend elaborately dressed festivalgoers roamed pathways named after classic songs like Electric Avenue, The Long and Winding Road, and Highway to Hell. Some of the more playful costume choices included a life-size gingerbread man and giant banana suits (who travelled in a bunch), alongside other op-shop creations.
Melbourne dame Banoffee, the second act of Sunday, stepped onstage wrapped in an Americana bomber jacket and eased the crowd into the day with her floaty, electro-pop number Got It.
The festival seemed to shift gears with Australian hip-hop duo Milwaukee Banks and their psychedelic rap song Pluto Bounce, followed by the Felice Brothers from upstate New York, who brought with them a fiddle, piano accordion and old school washboard. Singing “find me there with a bottle to share” in their lilting track Meadow of a Dream, the crowd armed with BYO grog seemed to do just that.
The standout set for the mid-afternoon was delivered by the Bennies who brought to the festival a party-hard punk rock attitude. They belted out Knights Forever before cheekily asking the crowd “does anyone have any choof or acid?” – the band clearly unconcerned by the onsite police presence.
Japanese sextet Soil & Pimp Sessions smashed out their self-described “death jazz”, inspiring a respectful Boot from the crowd – that peculiar Golden Plains tradition in which listeners “salute” their top festival performance by holding one of their shoes into the air.
Sunday night headliners the Village People were a ball of pure joy. First generation cast members the Soldier (Alex Briley, 67), the Native American (Felipe Rose, 61) and lead singer and the Cop (Ray Simpson, 61) have been thrusting their way around the world since 1977 and have lost none of their gloss.
The disco legends delivered lavish choreography and tightly synced pelvis grinds with In The Navy, and immediately had the crowd dancing like a bag of bouncy balls in the back of a ute. The glitter-coated crowd bellowed Macho Man as a three metre disco ball was lowered from high by a crane before the five-piece finished the set with their enduring smash hit, YMCA.
