Splendour In The Grass Recap  August 2, 2010

After four days, too may beers, countless acts and surprisingly little rainfall, Splendour In The Grass has finally concluded for another year, leaving throngs of punters tired, bruised and happy and confirming its place as the number one music festival in Australia. Here's our recap of the weekend...

FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHT

With such an eclectic lineup it's hard to anoint just one band as the festival's best but in a set fueled by nostalgia, hysteria, showmanship and hit after glorious hit, the set of the festival goes to five chaps from New York City called The Strokes. Julian, Nick, Albert, Fab and Nikolai wowed an adoring crowd at Woodford's cavernous outdoor Amphitheater and delivered a no fuss set comprised largely of tunes from their first two albums Is This It? and Room On Fire. It was like taking a time machine to the year 2001 with tens of thousands of strangers which is to say tears were shed! Song of the set? We could go for the frenetic punch of set closer "Take It Or Leave It" but we'll opt instead for the understated balladry of "Under Control". With an opening verse performed sans band, it was Julian at his most vulnerable and the festival's most opportune moment to hug a stranger. Julian also gets extra points for coining the worst band moniker in the history of music - Flo-Mo for fellow Splendour heavyweights Florence And The Machine and describing the Amphitheater as a "cauldron of humanity" which is the most apt three word description I've ever heard of anything.

FESTIVAL LOW

We could mention Richard Ashcroft's on stage brain explosion Sunday night but in the wee hours of Saturday morning we happened to spy someone defecating at the Tipi Forest. For reals. Yes, even if Richard Ashcroft's brain literally exploded and killed several on-lookers in the process, the lowlight of the festival would still go to you anonymous girl crouching in the corner of the forest and turning one entire tipi into a portaloo. I'm sure it was worse for you than it was for us but still, you can't unsee that kind of thing and we already knew not to go in there in the first place.

BIGGEST SURPRISE

As tends to happen at modern music festivals of this magnitude, the weekend boasted a slew of on-stage cameos. John Farris from INXS joined Ben Harper for a cover of "Never Tear Us Apart" while Mumford and Sons joined The Temper Trap for an incendiary version of "Down River" and returned the favour to Passion Pit, Boy and Bear and Julia Stone during their Sunday night set. The biggest surprise of the festival however, came during LCD Soundsystem's Friday night performance. After tearing through a hit list of frenzied disco and left-field pop gems the New York outfit opted not (or ran out of time) to play their recent crowd pleasing set closer - a live mash up of "New York I Love You" and Jay Z's "Empire State Of Mind". That would have been all time right?

Did you go to Splendour in The Grass? Tell us about your festival highs, lows and surprises in the comments below...