Now in its third year, the Sugar Mountain festival returned to Melbourne’s Forum Theatre on Saturday 19 January, filling all three levels of the venue with the type of music, art and choreographed dance that makes VCA grads weak at the knees.
Local champs Lower Plenty and Boomgates started the festival off in The Womb (also known as the main stage). Lower Plenty have Sarah Heyward back after time taken off to have a baby, and it’s great to hear her voice again alongside Jensen Tjhung and Al Montfort. One of the most interesting bands in the Melbourne scene at the moment, Lower Plenty’s casual set provided a gentle transition from the sunny conditions outdoors to a day spent inside the bowels of a grand, dark theatre.
The crowd grew for Boomgates, as the audience huddled around magnetic singer Brendan Huntley, who claimed a space on the punters’ side of the barriers to launch into the first song. He soon jumped back onstage, and the band delivered songs off their terrific debut album Double Natural. As Steph Hughes led the melodic ‘Hanging Rock’, the matching wilderness backdrop (could it actually have been Hanging Rock?) behind the stage gave the busy theatre a more ambient atmosphere. With Huntley madly gesturing at the sound guy to turn the volume up, Boomgates finished with the energetic ‘Whispering or Singing’.
I followed gangly pairs of legs upstairs to see Brothers Hand Mirror perform at the Boiling Point stage, but couldn’t see the two guys (presumably they’re short) over the sea of baseball caps so I descended back down. Folky Brooklyn band Woods drew material from their five albums for a pretty, albeit slightly bland-sounding set. I made my way back to the Boiling Point and caught the tail end of Collarbones, with the sounds of ‘Jenny from the Block’ floating through the mezzanine, down into the auditorium below, out the doors and onto Flinders Street.
San Franciscan Hunx and His Punx brought a playful energy to the main room, with Hunx (aka Seth Bogart) frolicking in a skin-tight body suit that left little to the imagination. He soon unzipped this and was left in skimpy black briefs, much to the pleasure of giddy fans down front. Requesting a smoke machine to channel the air of a sex club, Hunx led the band in a set brimming with bubble-gum pop punk.
While I was watching Hunx’s pop punk, something more punk and far stranger was happening upstairs, with Kirin J Callinan and Kris Moyes facing a baffled audience in The Summit. Wanting to induce an epileptic seizure for a volunteer in the crowd during their set but having had this idea vetoed by festival organisers, Callinan and Moyes settled with showing pre-recorded footage of this instead. Audience members squirmed and others were far more vocal in their distaste, however the outlandish responses were said to have been acted out by people purposely planted in the crowd. And the actual music? Once Callinan got down to playing the plug was pulled prematurely.
A similar fate did not befall Melbourne band Forces, who entertained the seated crowd in The Summit with their mix of industrial sounds and masked dancing men, choreographed by Antony Hamilton. Downstairs 80s formed ESG took to the main stage and greeted a packed room. Half of the band were dressed in RRR t-shirts, having done a live-to-air performance at the community radio station earlier in the week, and if that wasn’t enough to endear themselves to the Melbourne crowd, their proclamation that the long plane trip over from America was worth it definitely did. Their lively, fun set got people on their feet and, in the case of their encore, onstage, with ESG joined by numerous young fluoro and sequinned-clad dancing fans, much to their delight.
It was a cramped and slow climb back to The Summit, where hordes of people claimed seats, floor space and room on the stairs to watch HTRK. Unfortunately the intense reverie the group produce was dampened by the constant stream of people walking back and forth past the stage; the duo were unfazed but I wasn’t. A few kicks in the head from the person squeezed in behind me and I gave up my seat to catch some of rapper Action Bronson, who appeared to have had a run in with security during his time spent down in the crowd. It seems the big police representation out front of the Forum directly after his set were there to see him and I don’t think it was for an autograph.
Indie band Dirty Projectors were thankfully (or disappointingly, depending on your inclination) controversy-free, displaying an eclectic array of sounds and polished stage presence. Their long set meant that towards the end The Womb was looking quite sparse indeed. The party seemed to have moved to the Boiling Point, and perhaps there were still people resting in The Summit. Too tired to climb anymore, for me it was time to leave Sugar Mountain and trek on home.
Sugar Mountain
Forum Theatre, Melbourne
19 January
