Illustrator and writer Toby Morris spends a day in Albert Park for Laneway 2019.

Who is that big sweaty bearded guy with his notebook out watching a band? Wait, is he… drawing? Why? (All fair questions.)

 

First impression is always the styles. This year at least 1999 men dressed in prints.

 

Second impression, at least for this documented shade lover, was how good the shade is at the Albert Park venue. I missed Laneway last year, so I still had old concrete-ass Silo Park in my head. What an improvement! So much shade, grass, smart call on the downhill stages, and so many places to sit and hang out. Actually a nice place to spend a day.

 

The big issue: Singletwatch 2019. Solid effort on the diversity of players represented with only two double ups. Lakers were predictably popular, but in general a good range including some surprising deep cuts like De’Aaron Fox, Lauri Markkanen and Eric Gordon. Points off to the dingbat with a Derrick Rose/Wolves jersey (c’mon fella, bit of googling eh?)

 

Anyway, back to the music. Camp Cope were great. Courtney Barnett joined them for the last song, a belter about gender inequality in the music industry.

 

Take it where you can I say.

 

Bene and her band had on t-shirts with a place and year and at first I thought it’d be when/where they finished school but then I realised it was much more likely when/where they were born and I felt very old. I really like Bene – she’s so confident and collected and her songs are great. Later in day a very wasted person said “She makes you like her ‘cos she you can see she likes doing it,” and they were right.

 

Lot of matching prints going on. Matching hats and shirt prints, matching shirts and short prints, cross-couple dual-threat matching prints.

 

Good luck, I think they’re next to the guy with the water bottle.

 

Mitski was also great and had amazing dance moves that I haven’t really managed to capture here.

 

First rule of choosing a party costume is you’ve got to think through the whole event, not just getting a laugh when you show up. Will it stay on? Can you hold a drink? Can you sit down? Will the cheap polyester mean you sweat so much that you get so red and shiny that you look like the cooked boars they eat at the feasts in Asterix? (That caption should say ‘Sweaty banana boys’. Whose thumb is that blocking it?)

 

Maybe he just needed to go to the toilet.

 

The Spinoff’s Leonie Hayden did say to me ‘whitest dub ever’ and she was totally right, but I still really liked Parquet Courts. I tried to leave to hide away and start drawing under a tree but ‘Wide Awake’ reeled me back in.

 

And by around then it started getting too dark to draw and the rest of my night is secret. Overall ranking, on a scale of good to bad: Good. Thanks Laneway!