DOM ALESSIO encounters everyone he’s ever met in his life at the St Jerome’s Laneway Festival in Sydney last Sunday. Photos by DANIEL BOUD.

After surveying the crowd, a friend of mine turns and says to me, “All my past, present and future sex partners are at Laneway today.” And that’s the thing about the St Jerome’s Laneway Festival: anyone you’ve ever met in your life is here, even if they don’t remember you (like Jane Gazzo) or actively avoid you (musicians who hold grudges for that negative review you wrote about their goth-pop band). Another friend comments, “If they dropped a nuclear bomb on Laneway, there’d be no more indie cool kids left.” I hang around too many cynical people.

But they’re very attractive people, like most of the crowd at Sydney’s Laneway Festival on Sunday. The indie cool clique contains an inordinate amount of beautiful folk, which makes me think about what it would be like to have sex with an indie hipster. (I assume that The Postal Service would be our soundtrack. Maybe something like, I dunno, ‘Recycled Air’?) You see, the crowd has a significant impact on your enjoyment of a festival. Thankfully today there’s nary a Southern Cross tattoo or Australian flag in sight. Drunken loons are probably boozing on up the road in Balmain and people (at least the ones you don’t know) are actually polite. Compared to Big Day Out, this is like being at a Gandhi sermon, and it’s awesome.

The surrounds, too, are equally pleasant. With the festival growing in popularity each year, it just wasn’t feasible for the Sydney leg to stay in the urban jungle of Circular Quay. For the first time, the Laneway Festival is being held at the College of the Arts in the inner-west suburb of Rozelle. Built in the late 19th century, the three stages of Laneway are tucked among stunning colonial architecture. Interestingly enough, it used to be a mental asylum. I can hear people bitching about the size of the new venue, but they’re just being unhappy hipsters. You know, they’re the kind who wants their favourite band to stay small so they’ll always play at The Lansdowne where the crowd is close enough to catch beads of sweat on their face. But what they don’t understand is that the sound at Reiby Place was, frankly, shit. Here, the PA is louder, clearer, plus you don’t have to cram into the Basement to see the headliners. The space is fantastic, but the lack of shade is worrying me, particularly because the temperature is hurtling towards 30 degrees and it’s only 11.30am. My moon tan will undoubtedly be put to the test today.

There’s a small crowd milling around the Clock Tower Stage – named, unsurprisingly, because it’s located next to a clock tower – for out-of-towners The White Goods, who are opening the festival. Vocalist Brendan Lawley makes some terribly cliched drummer joke before launching into a Midnight Oil cover, which encourages enough of the early revellers to venture to the Inner Sanctum Stage to check out Fergus Brown. I follow to find a pretty decent crowd lounging on the grass, enjoying Brown’s narratives about awkward nerd love and his riposte to David Bowie in the form of ‘John, She Was Never Only Dancing’. Brown is endearing on stage, but his keyboardist and right-hand woman Holly Austin does a great job of stealing the show, beatboxing and telling us that she wishes she was black. That’s after she does a hilarious faux-rap.

I wander back to the Clock Tower Stage, crunching the pebbled pathway beneath my feet. One of the reasons I’ve turned up so early to the Laneway Festival is for Seekae, because there’s nothing more soothing than being aurally attacked by a Nintendo at midday on a Sunday. Slouching over laptops and keyboards, the members of Sydney’s most intelligent dance music act showcase their intricate glitchy compositions and synchronised bobbing movements. I’m struck by just how complex Seekae’s music is, and how it must take them ages to construct a single tune. I’m particularly enamoured of a new song that apes the beat of Snoop Dogg’s ‘Drop it Like It’s Hot’, which is one of the only truly danceable tunes in their arsenal. But instead of dancing, I merely bob my head in appreciation.

Oh Mercy are playing on the largest of the three stages, ironically (or perhaps sarcastically) named the Car Park Stage. I make a detour via the Inner Sanctum Stage for Danimals, but their sound lacks cohesion. I was expecting the slice-and-dice electronic joy of ‘Hornets Nest’; I get the rough sketch of an indie band. So instead I catch the tail-end of Oh Mercy’s set and they’re sounding great. Alex Gow and Thom Savage write classic-sounding pop songs that still manage to translate well live, even on a stage as large as this. I hang around for Kid Sam, a band I’m just not growing tired of. The junkyard percussion of Kishore Ryan and the disembodied vocals of his cousin Kieran marry in a wonderfully idiosyncratic way. Someone asked me before they started what Kid Sam sound like, and all I could muster up was an unhelpful, “They’re a genre unto themselves.” In hindsight, I should have mentioned their lyrics of death and lost love, the wok that doubles as a crash cymbal and Kieran’s kick-arse guitar tone. I guess it still doesn’t describe their style.

I then make my first mistake of the day: I leave Kid Sam early to try and watch a handful of songs from Jonathan Boulet, but I end up going to the wrong stage. Thinking that he’d finished 20 minutes early, and feeling somewhat disgruntled, I decide it’s a pretty good time to grab lunch. It’s 2pm, the sun has just dipped past its apex, and this will be the last time I eat today, but dangerously not the last time I drink beer.

(A side note: So I chatted to a few people who saw Jonathan Boulet play and without mincing words they said he was pretty rubbish aside from when he played ‘A Community Service Announcement’, which rounded out the 40-minute set. They said it was like he was playing with a different backing band for the last tune. Note to Modular: Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just reporting what I heard.)

Now that I’m feeling a bit more satisfied, it’s time for Whitley. I’ve never seen Lawrence Greenwood and co. play before, so when he opens with ‘Killer’ I’m surprised at the lack of synthesised noise. Greenwood’s going for a guitar-centric sound today, and I’m not sure whether he’s deviating from the norm or if that’s his usual sound. It’s certainly not what was portrayed on Go Forth, Find Mammoth or The Submarine, but it still sounds great and Greenwood is suave and charming. He’s a total smart-arse, and I can see why girls swoon over him, even if they suspect he has trashbag tendencies. It’s all part of the appeal. Girls do love a bad boy.

Over in the Cark Park, I can hear the choral joy of The Middle East’s ‘Blood’ wafting through the air and though it’s not the last song of their set, it’s their best and the Townsville collective are yet to write a song that reaches those same anthemic and euphoric highs. I’m buoyed, however, by a new tune that they slot in second-last into their set: picture Dylan in his electric phase playing country-folk, but harder. I’ve never heard vocalist Rohin Jones sound so gruff and raw, but I like it. More of that please.

For some unfathomable reason, Philadelphia Grand Jury have been relegated to the small Clock Tower Stage. It’s a ridiculous programming decision, especially when Bridezilla are playing to half a crowd at the same time on the main stage. That’s not Bridezilla’s fault, it’s that the Philly Jays are one of the best Australian bands to see live right now. They’re just so much freaking fun. They should be a role model for any new band starting up because they’re one of only a few bands who actually think about their live show. You can tell because they pre-record their between-song banter, which is quite a Dadaist thing to do, and it’s a total stroke of genius. Why? Because it’s ridiculous yet no one else does it, it adds to the live experience, and it’s pure fun. And the Philly Jays are all about having fun, even if they claim they don’t want to party (party). But the crowd does because they refuse to stop dancing. When ‘The Good News’ is dropped, shit is lost.

But back to Bridezilla. Now I’ve said some negative things about the Sydney quintet in the past (some say I slammed them, I say tomatoes) and I still find Bridezilla to be a hit-or-miss affair on stage. Today they look a little like gorgeous marionette china dolls lacking a puppet master, but they sound fantastic. The size of the stage seems to be working against them, and the crowd doesn’t appear to be connecting. It’s a shame because I can tell they’re working hard up there.

Someone who’s managed to combine art-pop leanings with songs that speak to people is Sarah Blasko. Above all else, pop music must connect for it to be effective. Otherwise, it serves no function (like modern jazz). Blasko’s third record As Day Follows Night is the most minimal and raw in her canon, but her lyrics of heartbreak, vulnerability and acceptance are universally applicable. Everyone’s been through rough shit – whether you’re Sarah Blasko or you’re the indie coolsie tweeting about how Sarah Blasko’s singing about the same rough shit you’ve been through. The set is made up mainly of songs from her third album, which I can appreciate, but now that I’ve seen her a few times since that album dropped, I wish she’d start to mix it up a bit more. Blasko has such a rich back catalogue that it seems a travesty she’s not utilising more of those great tunes. Still, what we get is a superbly executed set where a polka dot-clad Sarah doesn’t miss a note and those intimate songs from As Day Follows Night sound so beautiful I just want to tweet about them. Except I don’t have a iPhone. Oh well.

By now it’s 7.30pm, the setting sun has turned the sky an ethereal shade of tangerine and I’m hungry as hell. However, I’m faced with a dilemma: the food queues are ridiculous. They’re long and they’re not moving. So I give up and mull around the VIP area and watch Echo & The Bunnymen play ‘The Killing Moon’ so I can tick it off my bucket list. Hopefully next year there are more food stalls so I can actually eat, rather than substituting food with overpriced beer - which, by the way, comes in small cans! Am I paying extra for the fucking novelty value of drinking out of a tiny aluminum cylinder? Sorry, I’m narky because I’m hungry.

Perhaps it was the food deficit, perhaps it was the sunburn, but I make my second mistake of the festival once the sun has finally set: I choose to see UK blow-ins Florence & The Machine. Now Florence Welch and her backing band have been showered with the kind of messianic fervour I thought was reserved for the second coming of Jeff Buckley, but I just don’t get it. I like the music and there’s a Kate Bush bombast vibe going on, but put the band on stage and all I hear is the wash of a wimpy synth and a drummer who tunes his skins like he’s playing in a Megadeth tribute act. What I should have done is gone to Eddy Current Suppression Ring, and soul-crushingly I see their last song which has more visceral energy in it than 35 minutes of Florence & The Machine. They might have the love, but Eddy Current … well, they have the glove.

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The Laneway Festival concludes this weekend with a sold-out show in Adelaide on February 5 and Perth on February 6. More information here.