It’s that time of the year again, when the rumour mongering comes to an end and all is revealed. Yes, the Splendour in the Grass lineup has been announced.
First impressions: there’s no real, spectacular drawcard here. Certainly, Frank Ocean is exciting, but where’s, I dunno, Blur? When your top headliner is … eh … Mumford and Sons, you’re not blowing anyone socks off.
However this is a deep lineup. While Splendour 2013 might not have a truly amazing name at the top of its list, there are a lot of great live acts. Bands/artists I’d love to see, in rough order:
- TV on the Radio
- Frank Ocean
- James Blake
- Polyphonic Spree (performing Rocky Horror Picture Show!)
- Wavves
- The National
- Palma Violets
- You Am I
- Babyshambles
I won’t be able to see all of them (because, unfortunately, teachers can’t just take weekdays off), but these groups and plenty more will likely get me purchasing a ticket. One – minor – complaint is that many of the acts on the lineup have been in Australia recently in the last couple of years (many for Harvest or Laneway); some more bands Australia hasn’t seen in years would have upped the excitement factor for me.
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I’ve been thinking about it, and while at first I was all “where’s the big headliner??”, I remembered how I felt after the Kanye/Coldplay year, and was kinda sick of Splendour feeling like it had to be the biggest and best festival with massive name headliners. I first loved Splendour because it had great across the board lineups, and I really think they needed to scale back on the massive name acts and get some smaller quality instead.
So I’m psyched to see:
Polyphonic Spree take on Rocky Horror
James Blake again (hopefully with a crowd there less for big dupstep drops like last time)
if Palma Violets are as good live as I’m hoping
You Am I play their classic albums in full,
… and heaps of great middling/smaller bands I probably wouldn’t dish out for alone (ugh at gig prices these days) but still want to check out.