It’s been well over a decade since Laneway festival resembled the Melbourne street party it began as back in 2005. Now a six-stop tour across Australia and New Zealand, its Sydney iteration has most recently (and consistently) been held at the beautiful but bottleneck-inducing sandstone buildings at Rozelle’s Callan Park. But this year’s move to Sydney Showgrounds in Homebush was its most jarring yet: about as far as you could get conceptually from an inner-city laneway.
Recent festivals have dealt with bigger problems, of course: from the industry decimation wrought by the pandemic, to a spate of cancellations thanks to extreme weather – a fate that befell this year’s Auckland edition of Laneway. But a question loomed above the crowd: could the barren, grey Olympics wasteland, now home of the Royal Easter Show, retain a vibe?
