It’s about 4pm on Saturday in Centennial Park, and the first rain drops have started to fall on Sydney City Limits.

Usually, the first sign of rain at a festival sends punters scrambling for cover, but today — with temperatures pushing the high 30s and dust clouds leaving a thick black coating on everyone’s skin — the crowd are overwhelmingly grateful.

The shower is short, but it does the trick: the dust settles for a moment, and the humidity is broken. Slightly, anyway.

We’re only halfway through the inaugural Sydney City Limits festival — the newly minted sister event of the famous Austin City Limits in Texas — and the bold experiment seems to be paying off. Sydney has been sorely lacking in a landmark, mainstream festival since the demise of Big Day Out in 2014, and Sydney City Limits is gunning hard to fill this gap in the market.

From the wildly eclectic line-up to the plush festival site, which featured luxe market stalls in the vein of events like Splendour, it’s obvious that SCL is setting itself up to be Sydney’s premier summer event. And for the most part, it succeeded.

The Good And The Grace Jones

With a tight and unforgiving schedule, navigating the first half of SCL became an exercise in brutal decision making. Could you get to Mallrat and Sigrid and still catch a little of Tkay Maidza? Could you run fast enough to see enough of The Libertines after seeing Car Seat Headrest? Why the fuck are Gang of Youths clashing directly with Oh Wonder?

Largely, it was the newcomers and homegrown acts that dominated the afternoon. Norwegian export Sigrid — who came through with one of the best pop tracks of 2017 with ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’ — was faced with the unenviable task of playing early on in the baking midday sun. She wasn’t fazed in the slightest, and backed by a white shirt-wearing band she tore through ‘Strangers’, ‘Plot Twist’, and a gut wrenching acoustic version of ‘Dynamite’.

The only hiccup wasn’t actually hers at all: about midway through the set The Head and The Heart took the stage in a nearby tent, causing a significant sound bleed that threatened to overwhelm the plucky Norwegian. Happily, all she did was turn up the volume, finishing with a thundering ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’.

SCL was always going to a special moment for Sydney’s Gang of Youths. In the last six months the hometown heroes cleaned up the ARIA awards and dominated the Hottest 100 — and in doing so cemented themselves as Australia’s premier rock band.

SCL was set to be their last local gig before they jet off on a world tour, and the moment wasn’t lost on them. The famously charismatic Dave Le’aupepe’s was in peak form as the band rocketed through old and new favourites like ‘Vital Signs’ and standout ‘What Can I Do If The Fire Goes Out’.

It was almost too perfect a moment when, during the heady and emotional ‘Magnolia’, the clouds broke apart for the hot sun to beam down on the crowd.

The evening presented a number of horrific timetable clashes: Beck was up against Grace Jones and local heroes Ocean Alley, and Tash Sultana, Justice, and Phoenix were all scheduled in the final slot of the night. You had a choice to stay put at one, or frantically run between stages to catch glimpses of all — which is what I attempted to do.

Beck was as dependable and satisfactory as always, cranking out hits like ‘Loser’ and ‘Up All Night’ early in his set. Grace Jones was as wild (and fashionably late) as always, emerging nearly naked on stage for opener ‘Nightclubbing’ before working a slew of costume changes — including throwing on a strap-on dick for ‘My Jamaican Guy’. At 69 (nice), the lady’s still miles ahead of the game.

You could have been forgiven for thinking it was 2010 when Justice and Phoenix arrived for their headlining sets. Phoenix, backed up a Mardi Gras-appropriate rainbow, whipped out the big guns like ‘J-Boy’, ‘Lisztomania’ and ‘Entertainment’ early, before moving on to bombastic singalongs like ‘Rome’ and recent hit ‘Ti Amo’. Lead singer Thomas Mars seemed genuinely overwhelmed by the raucous crowd at times, sweatily clutching his mic stand and chanting “Thank you!'” over and over again as the set wound to a close.

Perhaps in an attempt to make up for their long absence from our shores, Justice’s hour-and-a-half set was simply wall-to-bloody-wall bangers. The dislocating crunch of ‘Safe and Sound’ opened the set, followed by cuts like ‘Genesis’, ‘Phantom’, ‘Woman’ and, of course, the crowning festival moment in ‘D.A.N.C.E’.

And The Not So Good

Hosting a festival in Centennial Park presents some hefty challenges, and most of them have to do with Sydney’s stringent noise restrictions. Sound issues presented themselves frequently throughout the day, most notably during Gang of Youths’ set, which was so quiet that — even when standing 20 metres from the stage — you could barely hear Dave’s vocals.

You know there’s something wrong when you can hear every conversation within a 10 metre radius around you, but barely hear the colossal rock band on stage in front of you. Phoenix suffered a similar fate: unless you placed yourself squarely in front of the speakers, it was impossible to hear Thomas Mars’ voice.

And when you’re slinging general release tickets for nearly $200 apiece, this is a big problem.

Future’s set was also marred by tech difficulties. He left the stage halfway through opener ‘Draco’ due to issues with his microphone. When he emerged 15 minutes later, the sound was so garbled that his vocals were indistinguishable. Despite the best efforts of the endlessly energetic back up dancers, his set never really recovered — a serious disappointment given he was one of the lone hip-hop acts on the bill.

There were other teething problems too: most food stalls ran out of food by 7pm, and lines for toilets were staggeringly long — I overheard one punter saying she waited over 45 minutes to pee.

That said, long toilet lines are hardly exclusive to SCL. If that’s the only complaint punters have about the burgeoning festival, then we can probably expect it to return even bigger in 2019.

—

Jules LeFevre is Staff Writer for Music Junkee and inthemix. She is still coated with black dust. She is on Twitter. 

—

Lead photo credit: Pat Stevenson