Laneway has levelled up.
Laneway has levelled up.
Auckland's biggest festival is more like the Big Day Out than ever. That's no bad thing.
Laneway doesn’t do fireworks.
Laneway doesn’t do pyro.
Laneway doesn’t do confetti cannons as a muscled-up UK grime god bounces around the stage in front of a gleaming light display yelling: “Energy! I need more energy!”
On Tuesday night – as Auckland’s annual Laneway event moved to Western Springs to host its first festival in four years – we got all of that.
And we got so much more.
Traditionally, Laneway’s been the place you go to see reformed shoegaze bands from the 90s.
Or a selection of Pitchfork-approved indie rock acts alongside a bunch of blog-approved heady backpack rappers.
Perhaps a couple of hyped UK singers on the cusp of something bigger, with a handful of hyper-indie local and Australian acts, are in the mix too.
At Britomart, then Aotea Square, then Silo Park, and then Albert Park, Laneway’s been the boutique festival you attend to catch up with your mates and calm down after the big summer behemoths – Bay Dreams, Rhythm & Vines, Northern Bass – have fired their biggest shots.
This Laneway was different.
This Laneway was bigger and better in every conceivable way.
This Laneway was a monster.
I had that realisation around 5pm while stuck in a crowd crush for the UK rapper AJ Tracey.
I’d just seen rap acts Home Brew and Cordae – both acts familiar to audiences of those other summer music festivals, but making their Laneway debuts – decimate heaving crowds.
Tracey’s audience was primed to rage, and that’s exactly what they did. Mosh pits erupted, crowd chants rang around the venue and every word of every song was chanted back at him.
I have never seen anything like it at Laneway before.
Perhaps that’s the new venue, which allows for a much bigger audience. Official numbers haven’t been released, but yesterday’s crowd size was surely double the 12,000 capacity Albert Park was restricted to. (Confirmed: the official crowd size was 23,000).
Or maybe that’s the 16-year-olds allowed into the venue for the first time, an addition that helped boost numbers, create chaotic queues for the Karma Cola drink tent, and split each stage in two – one side for the over-18 drinkers, the other for the kids.
As the afternoon morphed into the evening, those kids continued to crush forward for Raye, the UK singer who delivered a delicious mix of Amy Winehouse vibes and self-deprecating gags with a powerhouse vocal performance, Dominic Fike and his heart-on-his-sleeve acoustic melodies, and Steve Lacey’s funked-up celebrations.
The two main stages on Western Springs’ outerfields were so popular, and so packed, organisers may need to rethink the location of a third main stage inside the speedway, which sometimes struggled for numbers despite hosting heavy hitters Home Brew, Dope Lemon and Unknown Mortal Orchestra.
With a cloudless day pushing temperatures towards 27 degrees, crowd crushes at many stages and gates, and the smell of sweat, sunscreen, food trucks and portaloos mixing in the air, meant that if you stopped and took a breath, you could almost taste the Big Day Out, Auckland’s late, great summer festival stalwart that hosted its final show in the same venue 10 years ago, eerily almost to the day.
When Stormzy came on, you could feel the same end-of-night anticipation building just like it used to for the Big Day Out’s big-name headliners, acts like The White Stripes, the Beastie Boys, M.I.A, Rage Against the Machine or Pearl Jam.
Stormzy knew the assignment.
Stormzy delivered on all fronts.
Stormzy delivered one of the most perfect festival-closing performances I’ve seen, a perfectly-paced, high-energy, drama-filled spectacle punctuated by the kinds of things – pyro, fireworks, confetti, “Energy!” – Laneway used to frown upon.
As he stuck around and went slightly over schedule for the huge closer 'Vossi Bop,’ Stormzy was further proof that Auckland has a new music titan on its hands, a festival that’s as sweaty and muscled-up as its headliner proved to be.
Last week, I messaged C3 Presents, the American owners of the Big Day Out.
I asked them, once again, if they’d consider resurrecting it, bringing the festival back at a time when the bands of that era are suddenly becoming hot property again.
I didn’t get a reply.
After a full-noise afternoon at the biggest Laneway ever, a day that managed to answer every question I raised about it, it was 6.30pm when I finally found some shade under a tree.
I sat there, recovering, watching the heaving masses move between stages.
Teens screamed for Dominic Fike at one stage, while Nia Archives dropped pounding drum and bass anthems at another. Dope Lemon’s hazy, woozy summer melodies wafted overhead as a gathering Stormzy lay ahead.
It was there I realised I didn’t want a reply about the Big Day Out.
I didn’t need one.
Laneway well and truly owns that summer spot.
It would be a very brave promoter who attempts to take it from them now.
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