“It’s great that you all came from Newtown to meet us here. Now we can beat the shit out of you…’cos we’re from Canberra and we’re not pussies.”
That was the between-song threat by The Fighting Leagues’s Dominic Death at Moss Vale’s Wormwoodstock festival last weekend, one of many deadpanned moments of banter from the ACT’s favourite shirtless psychopath.
Spending half the set with his hands in his pants (the other half rubbing his nipples, mock-shadow boxing or slicking back his hair with his own spit). Death was the ludicrous foil to the straight-faced tropicalia-infused punk the rest of his and played behind him.
The Fighting League’s confronting brand of hackneyed pink may have been one of the festival’s clear highlights (wedged directly into the middle of Wormwoodstock’s three days), but the garage set had more to offer earlier in the morning, via the surf-inspired Kang Gang and the self-depreciating mess of Rayon Moon.
Wormwoodstock was a varied enterprise, the morning’s loose rock themes stepping aside for an evening of ambience and experimentalism.
Saturday’s early afternoon saw the melodic atmospherics of Sydney locals No Art attract a solid crowd to the stage’s tent, which shielded us from what rapidly became an unbearable sun.
Yolke’s twilight set brought in the cooling air, their drawn-out ambience a perfect lead-in to noise duo Ghost, while the precision of Brackets brought in the nightfall.
But it was Berlin’s Golden Disco Ship who quickly stunned us, with the one-woman band’s mix of cued projections, quickly backing tracks and infectious guitar lines all effortlessly falling into place…until the festival’s generator ran out of diesel. The abrupt pause was in no way a downer though, allowing the lit-up installations and rollicking light show to give way to a darkness that only a bush property 1.5 hours out of Sydney can provide.
Whether you looked at it as a spectacular turn-out for a house party or a mild turn-out for a festival (Wormwoodstock’s goal sitting somewhere between the two), the weekend was a massive success. Bringing together such a diversity in sounds from across states, continents and eras (the nigh-on legendary experimental duo Scattered Order closing out Saturday night) was no mean feat for the Wormwood collective: a festival just as worth attending for the experience as it was for the curation.
