Overview
Australia has more festivals per capita than anywhere else in the world. That makes us spoiled for choice and overwhelmed by indecision. It also makes a list of the best festival experiences spectacularly difficult to compile.
But here is Concrete Playground's shortlist of Sydney's ten best festivals to help you get the best out of the forthcoming warmer seasons. Watch this space – we'll be updating it as line-ups are announced and dates are set in stone. In the meantime, get ready to dance kids, because summer's coming.
1. St. Jerome's Laneway Festival
The Laneway Festival was a massive revelation when it came to Sydney in 2006. After beginning life as a teeny tiny festival in Melbourne, Laneway has grown and now travels all over Australia as well as New Zealand and Singapore. And the heart of Laneway's success lies in their ability to present a line-up of consistently amazing, impeccably curated acts in some truly beautiful locations.
In 2010 the Sydney event moved to the beautiful, albeit slender, site of the Sydney College of the Arts at Rozelle, which becomes pretty magic once the skies begin to darken and the lights refract upon the sandstone. It's generally a pretty sweaty affair, what with being held in the middle of February, but the crowd is always relaxed, and while there'll generally be an ironic hipster beard bristling against you in the crowd everybody is having way too much fun to mind.
The acts over the past two years – Florence & The Machine, The xx, Echo & The Bunnymen, Beach House, Deerhunter – have been some of the best at any festival in the country, and 2012 has presented the kind of lineup that strikes you with awed stuttering: Feist, Laura Marling, Austra, Cults, M83, The Horrors, Toro Y Moi, and on it goes. It's a hundred different kinds of amazing.
Where: Sydney College of the Arts, Rozelle
When: 5th February, 2012.
Web: sydney.lanewayfestival.com.au
2. Sydney Festival
I remember having read some very scathing things said about the Sydney Festival in a Melbourne newspaper a couple of year ago. They seemed to be insinuating in a not-so-subtle manner that Sydney was making a futile attempt to encroach on their territory as Australia's arts capital. But they were right to be afraid.
The reinvigorated Sydney Festival has completely transformed our city in summer (note the flagpoles which every year proclaim just that) and it's made Sydney a truly amazing place to be in January. The whole city is turned into a summer wonderland, there's something amazing to do every single night, and people flood The Domain to see sophisticated performances while merrily sipping beer, cider, goon or all three. But mostly what the Sydney Festival does is bring us some truly spectacular performers – Sufjan Stevens, Grizzly Bear, Emmylou Harris, Camera Obscura and this year's headliner, PJ Harvey, who is perhaps my favourite musician of all time.
The Sydney Festival now has a total audience of about 1 million, making it the most attended cultural event in Australia. Every year the festival grows and improves, and with the state government recently giving the Festival a heap of cash to extend their program, it makes the prospects for this summer's partying very exciting indeed.
Where: Numerous venues around Sydney
When: January 8th - 30th, 2012
Web: sydneyfestival.org.au
3. Playground Weekender
There are many things that are exciting about Playground Weekender, but here are my two favourites: one, you can sleep in a tepee, surrounded by other tepees; and two, you get there on a ferry. An hour and a half out of Sydney, on the banks of the Hawkesbury River, this is one of those festivals where you can let loose the kid inside of you.
Spread over three days, Playground Weekender features a good mix of international and local acts – 2011 featured Kool & The Gang, Cut Copy and Caribou – but selected in such a way that you won't find yourself running frantically from one stage to the next in what's always a failed juggling act. Falling at the end of February when even the most enthusiastic festival punters are over the sweaty drunken crowds, Playground Weekender bills itself as a chilled alternative to ease you out of the festival season. Which is not to say there's no crazy, glitter-bodypaint-induced fun – Playground Weekender also features Australia's largest fancy dress party, as well as a swimming pool, cocktail bar, cabaret act and market stalls. All beside a river, with a whole lot of excellent music.
Where: Del Rio Campgrounds, Wisemans Ferry
When: 1st-4th March, 2012.
Web: playgroundweekender.com.au
4. Peats Ridge Festival
Peats Ridge is the New Year's party to attend if you, like many of us, abhor December 31st in Sydney spent desperately trying to find a spot which at once allows you to see some fireworks and not get vomited upon. Peats Ridge is an hour north of Sydney, a leisurely drive up the road if you will, surrounded by bushland and rivers. While the line up is always good – this coming festival's headliners include Gotye, Stanton Warriors and the Dum Dum Girls - it's also more than just music, with artists and performance events popping up all around you. But the best thing of all is the Fancy Dress Masquerade Ball they throw on New Year's Eve, which promises a party of Dionysian proportions.
Peat's Ridge is certainly not the biggest live-in camping festivals in the country – it's half the line up of Falls, half the terrain of Woodford and half the distance from Pyramid – but it easily competes as one of the best New Year's options in the country and, for all intents and purposes, one of the best camping festivals as well.
Where: Glenworth Valley, Peats Ridge (about an hour north of Sydney)
When: 29th December 2011 - 1st January, 2012
Web: peatsridgefestival.com.au
5. Vivid
Vivid does many things – 'lights, music and ideas' is its rather broad tagline – but if you know only one thing about it, it's that it turns the Opera House into a delightful psychedelic canvas which can entrance you for hours. Vivid is just about the only winter festival we've got, and while still young at three years old, it's made itself a permanent fixture on the Sydney calendar.
Each year's festival program follows the whims and fancies of a specially chosen curator – in 2010 it was Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, and in 2011 it was Modular Records founder, Steven Pavlovic. Each curator brings a different vision to the event, so sometimes you're greeted with unexpected surprises: I have distinct memories from 2010 of chanting monks and blind men in suits. 2011 saw a series of parties held at the Opera House, as well as performances from Architecture In Helsinki, Bat For Lashes, OFWGKTA and two nights of The Cure playing three of their most influential albums in their entirety, tickets for which sold out in five minutes or something equally absurd.
Like Sydney Festival, Vivid is the kind of festival which immerses the entire city for weeks at a time, and we're very glad to have it.
Where: Various venues in the city
When: May - June 2012. Exacts dates to be announced.
Web: vividsydney.com
https://youtube.com/watch?v=14e1507YOLs
6. Changing Lanes
Changing Lanes, the brainchild of FBi Radio, turns two this year, so in the scheme of things it's really just a baby. But babies are awesome, and this one's growing fast. Presenting local Sydney music, DJs, fashion, art and food, Changing Lanes is a festival which is uniquely focused on the city. It happens in the streets and the laneways, trading in the grass fields maliciously prickling with bindis for the sprawling concrete of inner Sydney.
In 2010 Changing Lanes flooded the backstreets of Newtown with a line-up of emerging Sydney-based creatives, but due to some problems with Marrickville Council this year's Changing Lanes has been duly relocated to the heart of Surry Hills. Changing Lanes is one of the most affordable festivals that Sydney has to offer and also probably the only one which is uniquely concerned with supporting emerging local talent, and because it's all in the name of raising money for FBi you can happily construe a giddy afternoon of dancing and getting drunk on Devonshire Street as an act of benevolent altruism.
Where: Around Devonshire St, Surry Hills
When: September 17, 2011
Web: changinglanesfestival.com
7. Harvest Festival
So, let's be honest – we don't know a lot about Harvest Festival yet, but, oh my god, it sounds freakin' amazing. This is Harvest's first year, and it's designed to be the definitive music-lovers festival. Its plan is to essentially take your typical three day festival, cut out the filler, leave the best bits and pack it into one day.
For their first line-up they've really managed to set the benchmark, by not only gathering together bands such as The National, The Flaming Lips, TV On The Radio, Bright Eyes and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but convincing Portishead to return to Australia for the first time in fourteen years. They're also limiting capacity and duly excluding children, because let's face it, kids at music festivals can be awkward.
Playing out in the greenery of Parramatta Park, they also promise ambient lighting and visual effects, art installations, cocktail bars, and neo-cabaret stars, which are my favourite kind of cabaret stars. If Harvest knows what they're doing, they look like they could pose a serious challenge to Laneway, but either way, we're very pleased to welcome them to the fold.
Where: Parramatta Park, Parramatta
When: November 13, 2011
Web: harvestfestival.com.au
8. Secret Garden
The Secret Garden is a small, boutique festival, modelled on the kind of tiny countryside festivals you find in the UK. Secret Garden are hoping to inspire the same kind of deal in Australia. By spreading the word through Chinese whispers, they're hoping to maintain a small and familial vibe, so that if you don't know the person standing next to you, the chances are that your friend will. More importantly, all profits are donated to the Sarah Hilt foundation to raise money for sufferers of Meningococcal disease.
Gathering together a good selection of local music, dance and performance, it brands itself as being magical, mysterious and enigmatic. But last year it was on a farm in Camden, which when you say it sounds less mysterious. More than anything else though, Secret Garden is a weekend-long party, with free alcohol, trippy art installations and people in fancy dress (many of whom you can see in a video from the Concrete Playground Photobooth at Secret Garden below). It's the kind of festival that gives you the chance to sleep in a tepee and cavort amongst trees decorated to give you the impression you may or may not be on acid. It's kind of like Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland rolled into one ephemeral weekend.
Where: A private property in Camden
When: March 2012. Exact dates to be announced.
Web: secretgardenfestival.com.au
9. Parklife
Parklife is pretty much Sydney's definitive indie-electro festival. You have your music, mud, the hint of illicit substances in the air, shirtless gentlemen in fluoro shorts, and Kate Moss impersonators circa Glastonbury 2005. Parklife started out in 2000, all with the aim of sharing music in outdoor greenery close to the centre of the city. While it has grown exponentially since then, it has stayed true to its purpose, and resides at the beautiful Kippax Lake as a part of the Centennial Parklands. Last year's line-up featured Missy Elliott, The Wombats, and Kele of Bloc Party fame, while this year brings us The Gossip, Santigold and Lykke Li.
Parklife has become one of Sydney's biggest festivals, and tends to be pretty heavily monitored by police and sniffer dogs, which along with all the semi-naked chaps can seem a little off-putting at times. But with generally stellar line-ups and a crowd that only wants to dance, Parklife still maintains its status as one of the city's best festivals. But be warned – it seems to rain nearly every year at Parklife: channel Paddington Bear and invest in some gumboots.
Where: Kippax Lake, Centennial Park
When: October 2, 2011
Web: parklife.com.au
10. Good Vibrations
Good Vibrations is the touring live music event owned by the mega-wealthy (but currently embroiled in controversy) Justin Hemmes. Launched in 2004, Good Vibes has been setting feet a-dancing for many years now, focusing on quality electro and hip hop acts. Past headliners have included James Brown, Kanye West, Deadmau5, Busta Rhymes and Phoenix.
It is also another festival which has a reputation for being wet – in the form of both rain and sweat, and which also has a pretty strong police presence. Last festival was a little wounded by last-minute cancellations from Janelle Monae and Cee-Lo Green, and so it's been decided to move Good Vibrations from its usual February time slot to one in December, when people are not even beginning to think about de-toxing and are just gearing up for the summer.
Where: Centennial Park, Sydney
When: December 2012. Exact dates to be announced next year.
Web: gvf.com.au
