WE SHALL WANDER AGAIN

By Jen Seyderhelm

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote: “Not all those who wander are lost”.

As the Wanderer Festival, held in the historic Sapphire Coast village of Pambula, returns for its second year, the same could be said of its founder, producer, and programmer, Simon Daly. In fact, Simon says that this festival, and COVID, saved him from himself.

I’ll come back to that.

When I catch up with Simon, he’s half a world away, still on a high from seeing Tame Impala play in South America to a massive crowd with nary an Australian in sight.

“Sometimes”, he says, “travelling overseas to see an artist or festival reminds you again why you love it.”

I don’t think Simon needs much reminding. The answer to the very last question I had planned to ask him, “Does organising festivals still give you joy?”, was already palpably self-evident.

I’m going to be honest and say that when I first saw a picture of Simon Daly, I thought he was just starting out, and Pambula, and Wanderer, were his first rodeos before much bigger things.

As it turns out, whilst brimming with youthful exuberance, he’s good old hat.

This is Simon’s 30th year doing this, with 1993’s (Rock Above The) Falls Festival in Lorne, Victoria his first foray after thinking he could create a better New Year’s Eve party for his friends and family.

There were nine acts. Tix were $20. Double his estimated crowd of 5000 arrived.

“Everyone came and brought a friend. The following year everyone came again and brought more friends.”

Ten years later, the festival expanded to include Marion Bay, Tasmania. That venue is currently on the market. Then, in 2013, clearly liking his 3s, Simon stepped aside from Falls to focus on his young family.

With his personal priorities changed (although one of Simon’s boys is called Bowie after a single most epic concert experience at Glastonbury), he decided to create a new festival for friends and families, called Lost Lands.

“It was hard work organising a sustainable and family centric event. Just as Lost Lands was about to break even, COVID struck.”

Lost Lands was cancelled three times, once due to the 2019 bushfires, and then twice more due to the pandemic.

In 2020, Simon and his family left his longtime Victorian home and moved to Pambula. Even standing outside in the glorious Mexican sunshine while we chat, Simon says:

“Pambula’s better. It’s always the best weather and conditions. COVID saved me from myself.”

He could see that musicians and other artists were devastated, both emotionally and financially. So he started to approach local government, old contacts and new, about the potential of a music festival where he’d laid that same old hat.

This second, upcoming Wanderer festival saw Simon put in a lot of preparatory work, campaigning to the NSW government as to why and how the Sapphire Coast community benefited financially and emotionally from the inaugural event.

His eyes light up as he mentions the first of the more than 70 artists announced in this year’s line-up – The Jungle Giants, American Kevin Morby, cult rockers Spiderbait, Lisa Mitchell, and the Melbourne Ska Orchestra.

“Everything worked in 2022, despite the tyranny of distance around booking hire providers,” Simon explains. “All the artists had such a great time. Everyone had space and places for them whether they were lost landers or wanderers. It won’t ever be bigger, in terms of numbers, but we can still do this better.”

This is now Simon’s 46th festival. He honestly doesn’t look like he’s had that many birthdays! This is where I ask him if all this still brings him joy.

The 2022 Wanderer Festival combined the family element of Lost Lands with international artists like The Dandy Warhols and Curtis Harding, Australian acts including Wolfmother, The Teskey Brothers, and Ziggy Alberts, and local acts, workshops, artists, and volunteers (340 of them in all).

Ticket sales were capped at around 10k attendees and sold out quickly.

“It was all ages. Everything sustainable; we didn’t even have red bins!” Simon enthuses.

“It was intimate and special. Afterward, even now, people stop me in the street to say thanks. It’s the most community-minded festival I’ve ever produced.”

“Absolutely,” he states, quickly and confidently. “It’s the creativity. Especially as it’s a little bit different, unique in its location, and the event itself. You’re carving a new path, bringing people together of all generations, and making them happy.

“It’s one of the great things that we can do, and I feel pretty lucky to be producing something like that.”

So do we.

Pre-sale tickets were released on 20 April. You can camp, glamp, or book local accommodation. Bicycles, keep cups, and children are encouraged. You can attend one day, two, or all three. The Wanderer Festival, on Pambula Beach, runs from 29 September to 1 October, 2023. For more info and tickets, head to wanderer.com.au/

Indie music artist AYA YVES made a considerable impression with her debut EP, What We Look Like With The Light On, which generated more than 750,000 streams.

AYA also participated in the inaugural APRA AMCOS Queer Express Yourself showcase, performed alongside Montaigne and Hands Like Houses, and landed in the Top 40 of the Vanda & Young Songwriting Competition.

After a string of singles released that explore a distinctly dark alt-pop sound, AYA has returned with white flag, a track that peruses similarly dark terrain yet eschews the reactive to become more reflective.

The new release is a taster from the forthcoming EP, serotonin & forget me nots, and utilises AYA’s effortlessly persuasive vocal skills to deliver a lush electronic-tinged backdrop for melodic inventions that veer from low-register intimaxy in the verses to subtly high-flying in the chorus.

Along the way, AYA’s inner gaze expresses itself in a series of sweet, wistful notes that mirror the general focus of the song, that being a gentle cathartic awakening. This theme is transposed with assiduity, and a finesse not limited to the performance.

Smartcasual Big Hands

Canberra band smartcasual has gifted us Big Hands, the outfit’s third single, and a healthy addition to its indielake-surf-rock oeuvre.

The band, featuring members Toby, Blake, Ewan, and Chris, have spent the past two years honing its live skills and establishing a notable reputation for producing a sound akin to The Grogans, Kingswood, The VANNS, and DICE.

Big Hands begins with a very welcoming ambient swell, signalling elements of what’s to come, and initiating the song’s embracing sonic touches and melodic lines. A clean guitar-led thematic part draws our attention to a mood, a sensibility if you will, that the song sustains throughout.

The production values generously suggest nocturnal tones and textures without giving way to a blurry rendering. AYA’s emotional energy pierces through, or surges and blossoms above, the brooding dynamics, the ethereal oscillations, and the rhythmic variances of the beats, whose positions along the track’s timeline help initiate the lyric’s maturing resolve (if I may suggest that about white flag’s thematic schema).

The song not only incorporates a particular sensibility, aesthetically speaking—the allure of intimacy instantly transforming a pop tune into a more enthralling experience—but also highlights AYA’s talent for writing well-crafted melodies.

This is succinctly demonstrated with white flag’s chorus; its opening line, “I will fall down for you again”, integrating the lyric with notes that sound almost celebratory, if decidedly less formal and more conciliating.

The guitar line itself resonates with the ensuing verse parts, which act as perhaps the song’s most melodically impressive attributes, neatly crafted and augmented by a succession of subtle harmonies.

What I anticipated was going to happen, never does.

We are taken, not to a pre-chorus with a predictable upscaling, or a chorus with a hit-to-the-head hook, but to a syncopated section.

During this unexpected exploration, space, breath, and restraint play a vital role, acting as a fitting resolve that sounds open-ended, yet in some way conclusive too.

From this point, we hear another guitar-riff–verse–chorus cycle, then enter yet another realm; a pause during which distant notes prepare us for a slight change, melodically and rhythmically.

This new segment consists of two gentle builds, preceding and following. This bridge segues into the riff again to land, and quite naturally, too, on the accented chorus.

Big Hands may draw comparisons to those aforementioned musical entities, but it also has traces of a deeper past: American West Coast soft rock and folk from the ’70s. It’s a blend of the intimate and the raw — yet a rawness that is more intricate than overt and subsequently far more rewarding and satisfying.

Vince Leigh