Rolling into Meredith last weekend, the music festival gods sure did seem to be smiling on Golden Plains for 2011. The traffic flowed, the campsites were plentiful and the blue-skyed heavens were full of promise for a weekend free of the same torrential rains marring too many Meredith festivals in recent memory to mention. Tents pitched and Eskies stacked, the atmosphere under the dappled shade of the amphitheatre was something close to magical.

The hillside was already swarming with festival goers keen to catch the first set from Sonny & the Sunsets. Though the band’s spirited ‘60s-tinged retro pop got smiles on faces and bodies swaying, the San Franciscans were still a little too green to command the crowd’s full attention.

Counterbalancing the fresh-faced Sonny & the Sunsets were Melbourne’s own pioneers of grunge, Cosmic Psychos, with a tried and tested brand of punk which has seen the band rock out local venues and influence fellow Aussie bands for decades. Predictably and one-dimensionally punk rock, the set was a welcome wake-up call to anyone snoozing off in the sunlight to snap out of their daydream-like state.

Shifting the festival back into indie-pop mode were the Magic Kids. Precociously unfazed by the hard-edged Cosmic Psychos, the Tennesseans tra-lah-lah-ed away, with frontman Bennett Foster giving the outfit much more edge than you’d expect from their buttoned-up Beach Boys’ sound.

Next up was Justin Townes Earle – easily the stand-out performance of the day, if the number of shoes held up in true Meredith tradition were any indication. It was as though the planets of rockabilly, blues, country and old school R&B perfectly aligned during his set, bringing you that rare yet welcome reminder of the kind of spell live music can cast.

The Clean followed on and disappointingly, sound issues plaguing some of Magic Kids’ set persisted, leaving their dreamy grunge rock set little chance of maintaining the same Justin Townes Earle high. To be fair, the set may have lifted in the last half, sadly missed by your reviewer so she could stock up on food and beer supplies (then go on to describe herself in third person).

Settling back in for Joanna Newsom, it was strange to watch the crowd’s response as she sat at her harp and let her feathery vocals take flight. By facial expressions alone, you could see one half of the crowd separating itself from the other. There was the half wide-eyed with awe at the exquisitely executed set by a woman worthy of praise for her musicianship and her redefining of folk as a genre. Then there was the other half who shuffled about restlessly, not knowing what to do with themselves –one downside of Golden Plains’ single-stage set up with acts you either ‘get’ or ‘don’t get’.

Yet therein lies the beauty of the festival – lining up acts you wouldn’t necessarily check out at a larger festival but will give a chance if there’s one stage and you’ve finally scored yourself a spot on a couch. Os Mutantes were a case in point but you couldn’t stay on the couch for long – their infectious Brazilian psychedelic rock reincarnation was inescapable. Although you did start to wish for some kind of Hipstermatic application you could plug into your ears to give their much cleaner sound the same fuzzed-out grit of their recordings from their ‘60s and ‘70s, recreated live.

Brooklynites Hold Steady kept up the pace and then some, effortlessly sweeping the entire amphitheatre up with their straight-up honest rock. You would swear each track was written exactly for that moment, standing on a grassy incline with a beer in one hand, bopping lazily in the early Autumn twilight.

Lazy bops made way for head bangs as cock rockers du jour Airbourne followed on – a weird choice for day one’s indie pop/soul/grunge/classic rock flavoured line-up. Strangely, the crowd seemed pretty pleased with them and they boys seemed pretty pleased with themselves, like any cock rocker worth their weight in spandex. Festival crowd-pleasers they may be, but does anyone go out and buy an album or download a track afterwards? Who knows, but theirs is a festival circuit niche these Warrnambool boys exploit to full effect.

Not so much warmed up as overheated by Airborne, the crowd’s response to headlining act Wavves was surprisingly tepid. The Californian indie rockers played a respectable set but when listened to in one hit, you realise what makes their sound so distinctive is what makes each their set so same-same, beyond standout tracks like King of the Beach and Post Acid.

Past midnight, Brain Children got on the decks, their set melting into Mount Kimbie’s as wamped-out dubstep too late in the day to dissect, other than to recognise there were beats, they were sick and they were worth plunging back into the moshpit one more time for a dance before staggering back to the tent to man up for day two.

Woken up by the unforgiving strains of the Graveyard Train, Golden Plains had no intentions of easing us into the next instalment. Dark, howling, chain-rattling blues rock with your soy latte, anyone? Plenty of punters, unfazed by lingering hangovers, got right into what was – in essence – a cranking set by the Melbourne-based band and a not-so-gentle reminder to check these locals out at a more respectably late hour.

A little kinder to sore heads and bleary eyes were the soothing sounds of Boy & Bear. As a live act, it’s hard to fault these poster-boys of the Sydney folk scene – their gorgeous harmonies so well executed, their acoustic sound beautifully delivered. A respectful hush fell over the crowd when they played their much-celebrated cover of Fall at Your Feet. As their presence on the Australian live music and festival scene becomes more prolific there was a sense the crowd hungered for more – something to push Boy & Bear over the line from goodness to greatness.

From the staidness of Boy & Bear came the jolting shock of Sweden’s Wildbirds and Peace Drums. The experimental rockers surprised with not how much they had going on but how little – virtually a set of drums and a vocalist and that was it. Restless snorts of WTF reverberated through the amphitheatre at first, as a fair percentage of the crowd wandered off to stock up on drinks. But those open-minded enough to stick around and surrender themselves to Mariam Wallentin’s vocals would have been rewarded by a discovery of how her voice alone can create compositions unachievable by a whole band-full of musicians.

The Middle East then shook more than a few heads with a lacklustre set, the crowd crying poor for not playing Blood. Did they forget or were they plain just-not-bothered? Hard to say but the natives sure did seem restless.

Besnard Lakes found favour with a disgruntled crowd with their atmospheric, grunged out sound perfectly engulfing the amphitheatre, wafting around and embracing you like a big warm hug from a long lost friend you bumped into on your way down to the stage. The perfect soundtrack for when dark clouds gather to bring only a smattering of rain, reminding you not to take the weekend’s miraculously good weather for granted.

Then it descended on Golden Plains – not the rain but a cracker of a set by Pulled Apart by Horses. Never has a man called an entire amphitheatre of people they were C-Bombs who smell like a bunch of rapists and received such an adoring reception as frontman Tom Hudson, who jumped offstage and got crowd-surfed right up the top of the hill and then back again. A good half of the crowd, if not more, held their shoes up high, crowning Pulled Apart By Horses the crowd favourite of what was already an impressive day’s line-up so far.

By contrast, Best Coast proved to be a far cry from best in show for the day. The crowd got progressively grumblier, muttering how all tracks sounded the same. Why so many were so surprised at the band’s lack of creative range is something of a surprise – listen to the album and ‘range’ is not a word that springs to mind. It’s girlie surf rock, faithfully rendered and enjoyable for a track or two but – like Wavves – that’s pretty much the long and short of it. Sometimes the hype doesn’t always translate into a good Meredith shoe-count onstage.

Imelda May then revived the crowd with some rockabilly blues, owning the stage in ways Best Coast could borrow only fleetingly, at best. Though a track covered to death, her rendition of Tainted Love was a highlight.

The much-awaited Belle and Sebastian were up next, proving why they are such main-stayers in the fickle world of indie pop-dom. Live, their saccharine sound translates into something palpably different yet just as irresistible. Whipping the crowd into an even greater frenzy was frontman Stuart Murdoch who will go down in Meredith folklore as the frontman who crowd-surfed his way over the fellow crowd-surfers to shake their hands, only to then make his way back onstage to keep on rocking out. Needless to say, the moment earned the Scots what seemed to be the highest number of shoes for the day.

If Jamie Lidell was at all fazed to be following on from such a legendary set, he didn’t show it. Striding onstage, Jamie belted out faultless, soaring vocals for a well-rounded string of soul-inspired tracks.

Architecture in Helsinki then took position at day two’s prime time, dressed up to the nines with Kellie Sutherland in a sparkling turquoise sequinned dress and the boys similarly decked out like hipster Prince Charmings. The band has come a long way from the cutely shambolic gig they first played at the Corner so many moons ago. Though waves of nostalgia for Architecture’s less polished days returned, their slickening-up far better suits more recent tracks like That Beep, received with resounding Meredith applause.

Then came the Druids on stilts with glowing green fingertips, ushering in who else but ‘70s space rockers Hawkwind. What is ‘space rock’? We’re not sure but it must come from another planet – a planet we were happy to visit for a track or two. Luckily a track or two encompassed about the same time as every other band’s entire set, so we did make it back to earth in time for World’s End Press, who reliably kept the partying button on ‘play’ long into the night. Minus MC Kalaf of Buraka Som Sistema, J Wow soldiered on with the final set for the festival, booming through the campsites as not-so-good boys and girls downed the last of their Pink Flamingos and got to bed.

Though this wasn’t a line-up to end all festival line-ups, Golden Plains is a lot more than just about the music. In terms of organisation, this is a festival second to none – no car queues, no ban on BYO booze and a toilet paper guarantee every time you enter a stall. Plus, ‘no dickheads’, or so the unwritten policy on those attending Meredith festivals is said to go.

To be fair, there was one dickhead in attendance but he proved the point that everything somehow looks, tastes, feels and generally just is better at Meredith – even dickheads. A special shout-out goes to a particular dickhead who will be named only as ‘Esky Man’. An entire row of couches was mesmerised by his antics for much of day two, watching him skull beer after beer, only to spew, refuse offers of water from his mates and then try to tongue-kiss them immediately afterwards. Pushed away, he then went to great lengths sneaking up behind members of his crew to try and lick their unsuspecting bottoms.

When he got bored with that, he took to juggling full Eskies and barking at strangers as they passed him by. Esky Man, you made dickhead-ery an art form and we hope to see you on next year’s line-up.