Tarot Readings, Taylor Swift Covers, And Cats: The 10 Best Moments Of Isol-Aid Festival
You haven't lived until you've seen Alex Lahey perform with her cat.
Less than 24 hours after the dust had settled on the first-ever Isol-Aid festival, the follow-up was announced.
Unlike other festivals, where a line-up would take months to curate and even longer to plan out and set-up, all the organisers needed was artists with an Instagram account and an internet connection.
Over 70 bands and artists once again offered up their services to share the love and rally behind Support Act, and so this weekend past we did it all again with another absolutely chockers bill. People have the power — as Patti once prophetically proclaimed — and Isol-Aid’s “second helping” was a living testament to this fact.
Of course, even with so much time to kill in isolation there’s still not enough time to talk about the full 24 hours of performances across the weekend, so instead let’s hone in on just 10 of the high-points of Isol-Aid round two.
Georgia Maq Was The Queen Of Isol-Aid
The Melbourne singer-songwriter and Instagram star in her own right played two shows across the Isol-Aid weekend at nearly-identical times.
On Saturday night, she performed a solo set from her bedroom, while on Sunday she reunited with her bandmates in Camp Cope (1.5 meters apart, of course) to perform from within Poison City Records. Neither went exactly how people expected — in the best way possible.
On her lonesome, Maq lured viewers in with two stripped-back acoustic performances — only to turn on a dime and switch over to material from her debut solo album Pleaser. Using a hairbrush as a microphone and dancing around in her underwear, Maq lived out almost every teen movie you can think of — with her own songs as the soundtrack.
Meanwhile, with thousands of people digitally packed into Poison City (which would be impossible under any other circumstances), the beloved trio busted out two brand-new songs to kick off proceedings.
It was the perfect surprise and an absolute delight to hear what the band have been working on — whenever album three is ready, we’ll be too.
Alex Lahey And Sarah McLeod Covered Taylor Swift
There’s not a whole deal that unites Alex Lahey and Sarah McLeod apart from gender, nationality, and spots in the Hottest 100. One’s a millennial Melbournite, delivering pop-rock with thoughtfulness and introspect. The other is a South Australian gen-Xer who thrived during the alternative rock boom from the late ’90s to the early 2000s.
You’d have never guessed that Taylor Swift of all people existed in their Venn diagram, and yet it was the tie that bound their back-to-back performances together. Lahey, whose set also included a throwback to her old band Animeaux and a dancing cat, opted to tackle Taylor’s 2012 single ‘All Too Well’ after it was requested of her.
Meanwhile, McLeod – who pulled an absolute swerve on the audience by performing her entire set on the piano, opened her set with ‘The Archer’, from last year’s Lover. Aside from two choice Superjesus tracks, McLeod also impressed with a cross-generational mash-up of Billie Eilish’s ‘everything i wanted’ with Pat Benatar’s ‘Love is a Battlefield.’ Old school, new school, it doesn’t matter…we’re all in this together.
Cat, and Alex Lahey.
Phil Jamieson Proved Winners Are Grinners
Speaking of lovable Gen Xers, it’s hard to go past a lunchtime session with everyone’s favourite uncle Phil Jamieson. The Grinspoon frontman picked out a small selection of his band’s singles to serenade the crowd with, reworking them from their rambunctious down-tuned origins to a solo setting with relative ease.
‘More Than You Are’ shifted from a mosh-pit starter to a plaintive acoustic rumination, while the bouncy ‘Just Ace’ got the full troubadour treatment as Jamo added in some Dylan-esque harmonica blowing for good measure. Nothing that a bit of the Grinners can’t fix, really.
Courtney Barnett Brought It Home
Over 3000 people tuned in to watch our very own Courtney Barnett play on Sunday night, which is potentially the biggest “crowd” Isol-Aid gathered across both weekends.
The nerves got to Barnett two songs in, in which she had to restart a song. As soon as that happened, however, the comments section lit up with encouragement — and reminders to breathe, of course. In her solo guise, away from her rhythm section, Barnett’s songs take on more of a folksy, rambling style — and, truthfully, it suits her just as well as being up on stage shredding with a Fender Jag does.
She applied this to both her own songs (‘Sunday Roast’) as well as some choice covers (Wilco’s ‘Dawned On Me’ and You Am I’s ‘Heavy Heart’) — all the while making for a moment of striking, intimate beauty.
Photo Credit: @kate.angg/Instagram
Liz Stringer Delivered Love And Lingo
Whether on her own or as a member of Dyson Stringer Cloher, Liz Stringer is a force to be reckoned with. She has a stunning singing voice, all husk and honey, while simultaneously laying down raw confessionals in her extensive catalogue.
As great as all of that is, however, that’s not the reason she’s made the list. The primary reason has to be that she introduced the Isol-Aid audience to her own special term for the pandemic: ‘Pando’.
True to its nature, it caught on instantly — as well as her extensive banter about the footy, showing off her colours as a Hawthorn Hawks fan. Pando or no pando, Stringer is an absolute bloody legend.
Photo Credit: Liz Stringer Instagram
Marlon Williams Made A Connection…Eventually
Joining us from across the way in the land of the long white cloud, Māori crooner Marlon Williams was one of the most anticipated acts across the entire weekend.
Imagine the dismay, then, when the multi-cam stream continuously kept cutting out and buffering, leaving most unable to watch the performance at all. Not even cries for help to Jacinda Ardern in the comments section worked!
Thankfully, the entire performance was saved to Williams’ Instagram — which means you can go back and watch it right now and swoon over his gorgeous voice, singing in both English and te mao. You gotta be quick, though — it expires this very evening.
Sui Zhen Got In The Zone
A lot of Isol-Aid artists used their performance space as a set piece — their verandah, their backyard, their bedroom, even by the fireplace. When Melbourne artist Sui Zhen arrived on screen, however, it was clear from the outset that we were headed into a very different world.
Red lights shone on an otherwise dark room, with sheets hung up as a backdrop and with her own face projected onto them. It was immediately intriguing – and said intrigue was rewarded with an arresting, ambient and other-worldly performance.
After a string of original cuts, Zhen closed out her set with a synth-heavy rendition of Alanis Morrissette’s ‘All I Really Want’ — just proving that there is no shortage of surprises at a festival like Isol-Aid.
Jen Cloher Played Her Cards Right
So, how would veteran troubadour Jen Cloher kick off her set? A cover? One off the self-titled? A deep-cut? No, the singer-songwriter had something better in mind: a live tarot reading.
Settling in as the groovy auntie of Isol-Aid, Cloher donned her reading glasses to do the reading, which went down a treat with the audience if the comments section was anything to go by.
We then turned our attention to the songs themselves — and what songs they were. ‘Hold My Hand,’ in particular, remains one of her most jaw-dropping songs to date — truthfully, if she’d just played that and nothing else, she would have made the list.
Big Scary Got The Band Back Together
Isol-Aid, at its core idea, is about making the impossible a possibility. There was perhaps no better example of this across weekend two than the curators managing to score Big goddamn Scary on the bill — who haven’t played together in nearly two years, it must be stressed.
After breaking hearts with a lovely #1 Dads set the night prior, Tom Iansek reunited with old friend Jo Syme to look back at some of their early work, their biggest hit (‘The Opposite of Us’) and even throw in a sneak-preview of album number four for good measure. Good grief, it was nice to see them again. It felt like when Queen reunited for Live Aid.
Sam Cromack Reigned Supreme On Pop-Rock And Parenting
With the rest of his Ball Park Music bandmates in isolation, fearless frontman Sam Cromack was left to fly the BPM flag on his lonesome on Sunday evening.
Let the record show that the band’s effortlessly-charming leader did a formidable job with his 20 minutes on “stage” — not least of all because he opened up with ‘Glass Jar’, an obscurity from 2011’s Happiness and Surrounding Suburbs.
Cromack encouraged sing-alongs at home, and with songs like ‘Exactly How You Are’ and ‘The End Times,’ it was incredibly easy to join in.
The grand finale involved Cromack yelling out the refrain of new single ‘Spark Up!’ to his bewildered infant daughter, which made for one of the funniest and cutest moments of the entire weekend. Welcome to the world, kid — ya dad’s a rockstar!
HONOURABLE MENTIONS: EGOISM, Sly Withers, Bugs, Sweater Curse, Montaigne and Gretta Ray. All wonderful artists that played excellent sets and deserve your support.
David James Young is a writer, podcaster and proud supporter of Support Act. Even if you’re not the other two things, you should definitely be the last thing. Find out more at www.supportact.org.au.