Thankfully Melbourne delivered only an overcast and slight chilly day for V Festival. All good considering some forecasts were speculating 30km/h winds and rain. Now that would be typical of Melbourne. Anyway, first act to be seen was Elbow which has been getting a little bit of airplay on Triple J. Apart from that I can’t say I know much about them apart from that they’re from Manchester and they sounded alright. If anyone can suggest on where I shold start my Elbow discography journey, let me know.
Halfway through their set, the gang and I made our over to the Shed for the highly anticipated set by locals The Temper Trap, Robert Van Winkle aka Vanilla Ice and Children Collide and we weren’t disappointed. The Shed was packed, hot and loud. Hard to believe considering the forecast I just gave above but yeah, a rocking set from all involved. First off was The Temper Trap and wow, all the hype about them from SXSW and NME was definitey justified as they were freekin’ awesome! The crowd definitely got jumping and singing when they played the tracks “Sweet Disposition” and current single “The Science Of Fear”.
Next up was Vanilla Ice and to be honest I would’ve much rather have seen M83 instead but by this stage the Shed was absolutely packed with people cramming in to hear Vanilla. So I was stuck there and as I had expected he played his two only well-known songs, “Ice Ice Baby” and the “Ninja Rap”. Yes I know he played “Play That Funky Music”, but that’s not really his song… Mindos, first it was Daft Punk and now Vanilla. Not quite the same league though…
Last act to see on the stage was Children Collide and while it was a smaller crowd compared to Vanilla/Temper the energy and intensity was definitely up there. Lots of long interludes, jumping around, mad swinging of guitars, “Social Currency”, crazy jumps, and of course the sing-a-long to “Farewell Rocketship” were definite highlights.
The rest of the night was spent camping out on This Stage to catch the Kasier Chiefs and headlines The Killers. We did manage to catch a glimpse of The Kills and Al and Disso a bit of Wolf & Cub inbetween but of course the mission was front row for the Ks. Didn’t get front row but 4-5 metres away wasn’t too bad. Anyway you look at it it was going to be a fuckin’ sardine can for the next 2 hours. So first off were the Kaisers and Rick and Co. delivered an energetic set with tons of crowd interaction, sing-a-long, cross country sprints across the stage, rock-off on stage trucks, climbing scaffolding… The works…
Last act of the night was The Killers and compared to the last time I saw them this aset was by far the best they’ve played. The guys seemed to be having a good time and made an effort to interact with the crowd as opposed to banging through their setlist. Speaking of setlist, it was a nice collection of tracks from all of their discography and was definitely a blast to see the crowd get into their new tracks also.
So yeah, that’s the wrap up. Click the pic above for the full gallery or HERE. Enjoy!
