Live Review: WOMADelaide 2018 - Day Three

WOMAD - it's the soothing yin to Adelaide 500's raging yang. Some locals will tell you these Mad March festivities split the town in two. But it makes no difference to shit-kickin' upstarts Hana & Jessie-Lee's Bad Habits, who played both events. 

The home favourites opened day three of WOMAD with cuts from their debut, Southlands, quickly drawing probably their biggest crowd to date - at least in the estimation of guitarist/vocalist Hana Brenecki. The band nailed dusty solos at every turn while Brenecki sang like an authentically heartbroken southern belle and, with songs as good as These Shambles and I'll Find A Way, these cowgirls are destined for wider prairies very soon.

Meanwhile, across the beautiful expanse of Adelaide Botanic Gardens, Yirrmal and the Miliyawutji played distinctively Australian rock, with lyrics in a wonderful mix of Yolngu and English. There were songs from Yirrmal's debut EP Youngblood, and a nod to his father and grandfather in the form of verses from the Yothu Yindi classic Treaty.

Ghana's Pat Thomas & Kwashibu Area Band were Sunday's first standout act. A simple drum/bass/guitar combo pinned down highlife grooves while organs, horns and all kinds of percussion ran syncopative riot over the top. Their sound was perfectly at home under the 3pm sun in a sweltering, grassy field and a few thousand punters gyrated in approval.

Back at the Moreton Bay stage, Mama Kin Spender had a similar experience to that of Hana and Jessie-Lee: it was their biggest audience yet and Mama Kin gave the WOMAD crowd a heartfelt thanks.

Although the lure of heady spices wafting in from the Global Village was difficult to resist about now, Mullumbimby's Dustyesky drew a huge crowd at Stage Two. They are an odd proposition - 28 blokes (many in chesty Bonds) from the NSW north coast, none of whom are Russian, performing Russian folk songs. But they were amazing. As the choir launched into another rousing Red Army anthem, it sounded as though a hundred or more troops had marched in. From big and burly to old and slight, most members were afforded a shining solo moment, each of these met with rapturous applause. One gent had the deepest, darkest baritone this scribe has ever heard and it more than made up for the slight risk of this group being deemed a mere novelty.

Thousands more had poured into the gardens by the time Dan Sultan took the stage. His band's contemporary rock-soul sound gave WOMAD a tangible energy surge. If Sultan's new material is anything to go by, his next record is going to be a very big deal, with thick, meaty hooks, soulful vocals and sleazy, sexy rock'n'roll.

Over at Taste The World, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble talked us through the ideal cooking playlist ("it depends if you're on a rap vibe or a hypnotic vibe") and on Stage Three, REMI x SAMPA were turning up their own heat. But those who sought something truly different found Tinariwen, an ensemble from the Sahara desert that play an entrancing version of what westerners might hear as 'the blues'. Their slightly skewiff rhythms skittered beneath droning guitars (a sound that's somehow soothing and aggravating all at once) and mesmerising Tuareg vocals weaved in and out. Coupled with traditional desert dress and striking dance, the music of Tinariwen provided an altogether otherworldly experience for inner-city Adelaide.

Kamasi Washington kept up with this precedent, bursting on stage with frantic, dissonant, duelling-drum, free-jazz insanity. Clearly drawing on the legendary experimental work of Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra and Miles Davis, Washington led his virtuoso group through modern-jazz workouts that stretched like taffy but snapped back into position just when it seemed they would collapse in a saxophonic heap. Highlights included his father's astounding clarinet solo and a Moog-powered epic penned by keyboardist Brandon Coleman.

And then came Gratte Ciel's highwire ballet performance Place des Anges, best described as some sort of bizarre heavenly pillow fight. Angels painted in white floated high above the crowd, dumping feathers, and teasing each other with umbrellas and briefcases. Soon, a huge inflatable angel-mermaid-sperm thing emerged from beyond the parklands, immediately calling to mind the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. This entire spectacle was soundtracked by exotic children's choirs, and culminated with even more feathers bursting skyward from launchers that gave everyone and everything in the entire parklands a thick (and apparently ethically sourced) coating of duck down.

After the quintessential WOMAD-ness of the previous three acts, The Avalanches might've been almost pedestrian by comparison. But instead, they drew a large, vocal crowd that was very ready to dance. The unbridled glee of Because I'm Me and Since I Left You, and the quirky fun of Frontier Psychiatrist and The Noisy Eater, were of course present. Even so, The Avalanches' set - although magnitudes better than their Thebarton Theatre effort of January 2017 - seemed somewhat slight in terms of duration and musical spontaneity.

Most punters were unconcerned, because The Avalanches and their childlike euphoria remain the perfect way to close out any music festival. Regrettable, then, that they were actually followed by Havana Meets Kingston, an act that came across as a tepid vanity project for producer Mista Savona. Not even the participation of legends like Sly & Robbie could lift this performance out of the ordinary. Apparently Savona's afternoon spot in the speaker's tent wasn't enough: he talked about himself throughout the entire show. Peanut Butter Wolf provided no escape since his set had sadly been cancelled a few hours earlier. No offence intended, of course, to the many brilliant musicians assembled for Havana Meets Kingston, but after the desert blues, the jazz explosions, the feathers, the sampledelica and the balloon angel thing, they just seemed a bit normal.