Ah, Meredith. Festivals can be tough going, simply because of the sheer number of factors that must converge at once in order for the ten or so thousand people who typically swear off work, good health, and sensible sleeping arrangements to attend and have some sort of fun. But Meredith is somehow different. I can only speak as a virgin – figuratively – as this was my first trip down to the farm, which lies approximately 80 kilometres west of Melbourne, and has been owned and generously proffered as the Festival’s grounds for the last two decades by one Chris Nolan, but I know there are plenty of people happy, indeed thrilled, that it didn’t rain this year—more to the point, that their belongings did not become soaked; that their tents did not become dismayingly useless boats. But perhaps what best sums up the mood of this particular festival in the broad spectrum of Public Gatherings for the Purposes of Worshipping Music is the fact that there are just as many people who couldn’t have cared less if the sky had split itself open and dumped bucket upon bucket down on us. We’re here and we will have fun, truly come rain, hail, or shine.

Meredith’s like that: relaxed to the point of contradiction (despite plentiful hipsters, gumboots are cool, and functionality beats down style—a rare occurrence in the Melbourne music scene), and though the “no dickheads” policy couldn’t possibly succeed in removing all acts of stupidity (that would be the nature of the beast), my own three day sojourn was enjoyed without so much as a single encounter, or at least none that sleep-deprived brain could later reconstruct. Meredith is also huge, so if, like me, you feel the need to shun preparations or indeed any adequate thought about the event at all, be sure that you’ve got some particularly generous friends skilled in the way of constructing tents.

My own plans had originally made time for Akron/Family, an experimental group I’d heard was worth the effort. (That’s one thing worth noting though—at Meredith and Golden Plains it seems as if you’ll find every band’s worth making time for). “Plans-schmans”, said V-Line, as they left seven increasingly agitated festival-goers at Geelong Station. Three hours later, we arrived. Still, I managed to gather that Akron/Family spent more time jamming than performing anything remotely resembling a “song”, so perhaps I missed little. Arriving just in time for the last couple of smoky-voiced Sia songs was a pleasant surprise, and although Patrick Wolf had originally struck me as an odd choice for the opening night, it soon made sense: his inherent melodrama and showmanship turned the chilled vibe of the afternoon into a party that engulfed the night. He was still a bit of a dick, though.

Tumbleweed turned in their usual (but now reformed – hooray!) rock mediocrity punctuated with fits of actually-I-could-listen-to-this riffs, but there were enough fans in possession of rose-tinted glasses to ensure that the energy didn’t drop. The Royal Crown Revue’s throwback swing brought some smiles to some faces and some people to their feet, but YACHT, on the other hand, truly polarised the audience: “Who’s the girl?”; “Are they even playing anything?”; “I can’t fucking dance to this!” I didn’t care, and I f&*%king danced. Ridiculously though, I missed Tim Sweeney, he of Beats in Space fame (or infamy, depending on your perspective), but at least the horror of this realisation, the next morning, will prevent such a thing from ever happening again. It seems that there was one artist who everybody agreed rocked at Meredith this year. His name? Tim Sweeney.

Another gentleman inspiring a broad range of emotions is the inimitable Jarvis Cocker. C&%ts Are Still Running the World is hardly the kind of song that a wilting violet will close with, and a wilting violet he is not—at least he got people singing. But let me just say this: screw Pulp; Jarvis is doing fine. Of course he didn’t play any Pulp tracks, and of course Jarvis is the same old arrogant, cranky prick we all remember from those Pulp days, but the critics of his contemporary work tend to forget two simple things: of course he’s a supremely talented musician, and of course he’s going to put on a good show. Except for those who went with Pulp’s entire catalogue swimming around in their head (and I know that one angry fan beside me must have), Jarvis was in no way disappointing.

I do, however, remain puzzled by one thing: why are there not more festivals who follow Meredith’s lead and include only one stage? Is it purely a fiscal concern? I understand that perspective; more stages means bigger crowds and more cash for the promoters. But at some point an event’s aims and credibility—what it’s actually setting out to achieve and how well it achieves that—must come into consideration. And if there’s a definitive aspect to Meredith—one that informs everything else that occurs each year, from the prices and organisation to the audience and their attitudes—I would suggest that it’s that single stage. It lends a respect to each individual act that a small shed out the back of the Music Bowl would not, and that respect is something that, I think, manifests throughout the audience itself.

A cinema, preferably one playing films starring creepy overweight vampires, is also a big help. For some of us, at least. Sure, the confluence of these things with, at that point, some pretty intense sounds from YACHT, may have made for an edgy night for a few—those who, for one reason or another, felt the urge to stare blankly into the starry sky or perhaps proclaim the useful solidity of trees—but mostly the added audiovisual experience was a pleasurable one. And hey, one video contained a curly-haired and mulleted Andrew Denton. Who could complain?

Part of Meredith’s charm is the ability for the most diverse of bands to inspire what is best described as a kind of collective nirvana. Paul Kelly is as close to an icon as Australian music has, so there was always going to be a lot of good cheer for his performance in the prime spot of the line-up. But the performance itself surged past my personal expectations. He played the hits of course, but the real success of Kelly’s set came from the overwhelmingly warm reception that some of his new, and otherwise lesser-known numbers inspired, and Kelly’s recognition of that.

Animal Collective are a band that seem to inspire passions wherever they’re heard, though these are not always positive—as the sir in the ‘I HATE ANIMAL COLLECTIVE’ shirt would probably attest. I took only a straw poll of the crowd on Saturday night, but I doubt much was done to change minds. Given Animal Collective’s tendency for exuberance, both in the volume of its releases and diversity of styles, their fan-base tends to be a broad church. Not everyone will be pleased all of the time. Plenty were not. Perhaps I was just craving a set by Panda Bear—the band’s primary melodist—and so it’s my own fault, but for me the noise-drenched can-I-hear-what-I-think-I’m-hearing psychedelia of this set (and, it should be said, of their standalone gigs post-Meredith) is best left for the studio. And long jams, in the compacted timeline of a festival, will never go down well with an audience who’ve already been standing for twelve hours and, goddammit, just want to hear some hits. But Animal Collective were hardly an overwhelming disappointment, and when, on occasion, the band’s harmonies shone through and the crowd found themselves with words to sing, the festival may well have reached its spiritual apex; it’s a shame, though, that we endured those valleys of self-indulgence to reach such peaks.

Mornings proved to be far less difficult an encounter than I had presumed. Nearly my favourite two hours of the festival had to have been Sunday morning, sun on my face in front of the slightly mad but extremely good value Wagons, and those perfectly relaxed Queenslanders, The Middle East (one of the unassuming favourites of, it seemed, everyone in attendance, and a good early tip for Big-Day-Out-and-Laneway-bands-to-get-to. Saturday morning, too, despite the churning punch and beer in our stomachs, was hardly a chore, as the sparse beats of Kid Sam’s Down to the Cemetery floated over our campsite.

There were more highlights too – more highlights than I have space for here, in fact – but let me not finish without at least mentioning Eddy Current Suppression Ring, whose performance reversed the impression I’d gotten from a substandard show a few years back—indeed, this time they were superb; who I might even have missed had I not run into a very enthusiastic fan on The Bus That Eventually Came, and who I should never have been missing in the first place—white guys who rap well should always be embraced; the Ballarat Municipal Brass Brand proved to be more than just a novelty act (although my hopes for a Dave Chapelle’s Block Party-esque hip-hop & brass brand combo remains but a dream); and finally, I must mention everyone’s favourite nudie run, the Meredith Gift. With Angus “I’m in Everything” Sampson on MCing duties—with ample help from his copy of _Where Do I Come From?_—the Gift is one of those profoundly Meredith things: ridiculous, notorious, and a hell of a lot of fun.

More than any other Australian festival, Meredith is an experience. There are moments that will be remembered forever, and some that will have been forgotten seconds after they occurred, but what I loved best is that they were all thoroughly fun. And these are the reasons that, lest my body be cold and dead, or otherwise incapacitated, I will never be missing another Meredith Music Festival.