For those of you who look at festival lineups and the ratio of names you recognise gets smaller with each passing year, The Echo has put together a snapshot guide to just some of the artists at Falls this year to pique your interest.
FOALS – Radiant, roiling, roistering, rabble-rousing UK guitar slingers.
BLOC PARTY – deliver choruses so big they have their own gravitational pulls.
KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS (US) – A boy/man with an old soul voice in the age of digital everything. Check out his track Pretty Pimpin’.
PAUL KELLY & MERRI SOUL SESSIONS – The man who taught us how to make gravy, cooking it up on stage with CLAIRY BROWNE, DAN SULTAN, KIRA PURU, VIKA & LINDA BULL – enough said!
MAC DEMARCO – Blissed-out Canadian boy genius. His chilled grooves, space echo guitars, crooned vocals and wacky sense of humour have won him a huge Aussie following.
COURTNEY BARNETT – Her ability to convey mundane moments, magnifying and stretching them into dense micro-narratives is just one facet of her incredible talent. Think Romeo Void meets Beck. A razor-sharp original.
THE AVENER – French do deep house to perfection. A gorgeous fusion of blues, jazz and house perfect enough to propel itself to the top of the charts the world over. Think Flume by way of Mazzy Star.
BIRDS OF TOKYO – masters of timeless, hug-your-friend, stadium-sized moments.
KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD – Like Byron Bay in the 70s. Free-form, psychedelic, a little bit out there and soaked in sunshine.
HIATUS KAIYOTE – Melbourne-grown transcendent hybrid of jazz, psychedelia, soul, R&B, funk and electronica. No wonder Prince, Questlove and Gilles Petersen love them – and oh, they won a Grammy.
FLEETMAC WOOD – not a typo or a tribute act so much as a reimagining. Popular London DJ duo whose disco-centric re-edits of classic Fleetwood Mac tunes will have you scrambling in the closet for that Stevie Nicks top hat.
Falls Music & Arts Festival – General tickets go on sale Wednesday through www.fallsfestival.com.au. Or if you were lucky enough to be chosen in the ticket ballot and are wondering what to do, jump on those tickets!
