Kid Sam - Meredith Music Festival

Early Saturday at Meredith has probably been the best bracket these past few years – you know you’re not going to get the heavy hitters, but nor is it the midday Sunday overkill. It’s the festival’s sweet spot, usually reserved for hidden gems or new blood. Tame Impala cruising through the opening set last year was a stroke of genius, and this year Kid Sam prove to be just as great a choice, if a little more solemn. The bleary-eyed emerge from their tents, the coffee line stretches on, but those who make it down to (or never left) the bottom of the Supernatural Ampitheatre for this first set are given a treat.

The timing is ideal – early morning, quiet and slow – and the mood is matched perfectly by the plaintive, weathered music these two cousins play. Kid Sam work through their songs – they're never hurried or aloof – and each time you see them play, they seem to be composing and crafting once more. Having spent the year working through their debut album, you can see the pair really beginning to inhabit their material. They’re starting to realise elements that may have been clouded a little earlier by the nerves and uncertainty of playing live.

There is still the odd moment, but overall the playing is intuitive and assured. It’s a credit they’ve resisted expanding beyond a duo, and you realise when seeing them that there was never any need – there is flesh here, even menace, and the relentless ‘Jodie Makes A Fire’ is clearly the highlight in this guise. It proves that stark and epic aren’t opposites: “Great things will become small things/And small things great.”

by Lawson Fletcher