Monday was Auckland’s first Laneway Festival. After a rainy weekend in the Coromandel I was prepared for a dour day. And indeed it was a stormy night before and a blustery morning on the day. Which firmed my decision to wait till later in the day before turning up – missing the earlier bands but saving being blown into the harbour.

We also missed the queues – by 4 pm most of the 5000 attendees were there and we strolled in with no wait.

Locals Phoenix Foundation were playing as we got our bearings – they bore the heck out of me but seemed to be pushing the crowd’s buttons with their (in)offensive brand of pop-rock.

Working out where to wait – while a band I didn’t actively dislike came on – highlighted an issue with the lack of shade. Most of it seemed to be under umbrellas in the R18 bar area which had a 50 metre queue for access. So we perched ourselves under a tree – most of the venue being concrete.

Sarah Blasko – who, by all accounts, is an Australian ARIA winning singer-songwriter – was up next on the second stage. There was some confusion as to the timetable, with two stages it was unclear on the festival’s awful website whether the alternated or played simultaneously. They informed us via Twitter that it was alternating which was the case _most_ of the night at least.

Blasko was yet another attractive young woman, singing with a lilt, about her not-very-interesting exes. Though I’d go as far to say her exes are probably more interesting than her. I escaped half-way through the set to switch stages and hustle for a good position for The XX.

Which gave me some time to type out some review notes on the phone – remarkable because for the first festival of the summer, I actually had consistent coverage. The Gods were certainly smiling on XT that day. Though being literally in the heart of the largest city in New Zealand probably improved its chances.

It was also at this point I noticed that the hordes in the bar area weren’t coming out for the bands in any great numbers. I appreciate that those of Ponsonby-persuasion have delicate alabaster skin, that must be protected from the sun’s aging effects at all costs, lest their true ages are revealed – but really why do people attend festivals and spend most of it propping the bar up, far away from the action?

In a festival-sized crowd, if you’re not moving forward then you’re inevitably moving back. We managed to get a decent position for The XX and maintained it through a stifling wait till they came on. The band are a 3-piece after losing their keyboardist (permanently) to exhaustion last year and dressed all in black the diminutive front pairing didn’t have much physical stage presence to start with.

Then… they opened up their instruments. First a word for the sound system – whilst some bands didn’t make much of it, The XX exposed it as a dubstep DJ’s dream setup. A few times the sub-bass got to the point I could feel my internal organs come close to liquefying. And in between this bass and the vocal and guitars was… nothing. And this sparseness really worked for them live. As did the gathering clouds. They both worked to bring an almost club-like intimacy to their set.

When the crowd applauded they took it with a shy grace and mouthed thanks – stepping back from the microphones, seemingly scared to use words that weren’t in their songs. Until Romy apologises for “completely forgetting that last bit”. There were a delightful number of imperfections in their set – this is after all band who have all only just turned XX (20). Despite their minimal approach to physical expression, or perhaps because of it, the songs come across as real. And really awesome.

Moving from that to the next act we pass “The Ana{b}log”, which was a cute innovation – a blackboard of comments, reviews and notices updated all day by Amber ‘n’ co.

Daniel Johnston was up next. If you’re not aware of his story… as likely many of the audience were then go down a Wikipedia hole until you are. This given, at first his set may well have raised a few WTF?!s But glancing back occasionally, as I hugged the fence at the stage front, I could see the faces transform from wondering to wonder. Johnston has lived the kind of poetically muddled life most of us would only expect to see on a cinema screen – but expresses emotions of the sort we are all made too painfully aware as we grow.

Fumbling through sheet music with implausibly large fingers as he moved hurriedly from heart-breaking song to the next he drew the crowd in. I wonder why no one is helping him as the pages fall from his music stand. He has a proud strength not mirrored in his overweight frame. He makes a Dad joke about Bob Dylan and “blowing in the wind”.

When a guitarist joins him on stage and he just has to sing, his voice becomes more confident – but his shakes as he holds the microphone are more visible. My heart is breaking a little and then he covers John Lennon’s “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” – and suddenly the crowd are singing along and I’m happy. Set of the day.

The only sadness was that “Cut off your Hands” (now my nemesis-band, “Cut off their Heads” ) started their set on the opposing stage while Johnston still had several songs to go – drowning him out entirely at points with their contrived noise. [ Edit: The band claim they delayed their set as much as they could to avoid doing this. If so, good on them! And boo hiss to whoever forced them to go on. ]

I was hungry at this point. But what was up with the food? It was all old fashioned fast food fail, chips and hotdogs. Except for waffles and Langos’ Hungarian Bread Puffs. Other recent festivals have done a decent job of catering for more varied palettes and dietary requirements. And the lines for Langos were by far the longest of any – showing people were keen for anything other than salty potato. I had some of their deep-fried bread, slathered with spicy harissa, later in the night and “oh my yum”.

I was picking the Black Lips would be awesome live. And the Black Lips were awesome live. Like adorably enthusiastic frat boys with an ironic self-realisation. Their stage banter was suitably raunchy, at one point a band member passed a beer into the crowd and yelled, “I need y’all to share that – we’re a team”. And indeed as we jumped enthusiastically together to them we were. Their antics were subdued from the onstage-fellatio of their earlier-career shows but there was boy-on-boy pashing at one point confirming these really weren’t a frat-pack. With a “Do what you want!” they left us wanting more.

Taking photos did make me wonder, again, what was with smoke machines during the day at festivals? It has little visual appeal or impact – serving only to act as a form of anti-visual piracy mechanism, ruining photos shot through it.

The bar queues had subsided at this point – so we ventured inside. Drink Coupons. Really? I thought this particular method of ripping off punters had disappeared. Nevertheless we got a couple of beers and waited for the next act we were keen on. Lucky thing, as they promptly stopped selling coupons (an hour before the bar closed, 3 hours before the festival closed) no doubt raising the ire of those there for the… err… “atmosphere” not the music.

Chris Knox and the Nothing were up next. Chris Knox suffered a stroke last year so his performing is extremely heartening. And was extremely powerful. As Jo tweeted during the set, “Fuck yeah Chris Knox!!!”.

I was a bit slow in realising the headline act of the festival were Echo & the Bunnymen. At least that is when the crowd interest seemed to peak in the main stage. Their performance, if you can call it that, was epitomised by the call from the lead singer for, “more reverb please” – as he hid under a hoodie, behind smoke and then behind further layers of effects. It may only me but “Killing Moon” surely only sounds genuinely emotional if you’re coming off an 80’s sized coke binge. This is the music of soundtrack-level-nostalgia. Horrid.

The 3D’s were a Dunedin-sound band that I was particularly fond of in the 90s and it was great to see them strum out their tunes again over a decade later. It was almost “too the same” though and when I realised “Hey Seuss” was my “Killing Moon” I moved to the other stage to find a position for Florence and the Machine.

I noticed at this point that the Laneway organisers, who had been helpfully tweeting updates throughout the day were now drunk tweeting. Classy – respect!

Florence and the Machine. Maybe she was the headline act. She certainly acted like it. But unlike Echo she didn’t have 30 years of jade as an excuse for the lacklustre performance that was to come. But she did seem to have their reverb. Did they leave it on? She was immediately hiding behind effect. Which she attempted to parlay into hiding behind theatrics. But they came across more as amateur dramatics.

Her performance clearly wasn’t obvious in it’s lacking lustre, as the crowd were mental for her the whole time. But it pained me from one song to the next. Welch’s “over acting” made me thankful for Ladyhawke’s aspergers – as least one of her UK class of 2k9 peers has some subtlety.

Did you know having a harp player is a sign you are a real musician? Neither did I. But Florence hit me over the head with it till I at least considered the possibility of it.

Florence is no Kate Bush – but she tries. And keeps trying, with so much energy I almost had to give her credit. But then for the umpteenth time she tosses her head dramatically as if positioning herself for a new pose in a photo shoot and she loses touch with the microphone and her singing is lost into the void. If your theatrics get in the way of your singing – don’t.

And Florence, darling, shrill is not a musically acceptable timbre outside of punk or screamo. On record your songs are intimate, delicate, sometimes raw and at others delightfully saccharine. Live, you seemed to be attempting to meld camp theatrics with sex appeal in a way that only a good drag queen can do. You are a bad drag queen.

In the video for “You’ve Got the Love” Florence is singing in a faux-Studio 54 club, suspended in a paper-mache moon as the star attraction. But it is obvious, even in this, that the real star is the crowd themselves – and as the camera pans around the room she disappears into the background as the sad-soundtrack to a debauchery we know will end poorly – but wish would last forever. Such is life.

It is a pity Florence doesn’t know her place live – she is not Empire of the Sun she is so not Ziggy Stardust. And on this night she was not remotely good.

Laneway however was. And is a welcome addition to the New Zealand summer festival circuit – offering a genuinely different experience. Sign me up for 2011.

By Thomas