REVIEW: Groovin' The Moo remains a rite of passage

But the weather gods bucked the forecasts at Maitland Showground on Saturday ensuring the sold-out crowd at Groovin’ The Moo basked in warm festival sunshine.

For more than a decade Groovin’ The Moo has been a rite of passage for Hunter youth. A celebration of music, fun, and most importantly, youthful exuberance.

However, this year Groovin’ The Moo organisers sought to extend the festival’s demographic by adding legendary songwriter Paul Kelly, 63, and late ’90s alternative-rock heroes Grinspoon into the mix.

Both The Grinners and Kelly delivered hit-laden sets in the evening slots, but it was obvious many of the younger punters were dancing up a storm in the Moolin Rouge tent with US rapper Aminé and British producer Duke Dumont.

That didn’t stop the crowd enthusiastically joining in a mass singalong for a looser version of Kelly’s Dumb Things and the increasingly-popular How To Make Gravy.

The real highlight of the main stage was English rock two-piece Royal Blood. After two UK No.1 albums bassist-vocalist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher arrived with esteemed reputations. 

While Thatcher’s description of Maitland being “in the middle of nowhere” probably didn’t endear the band to Hunter folk, their music certainly did.

Kerr’s dexterity on the fret board and bombastic riffs left every other guitarist on the bill for dead. Figure It Out even created a circle pit in the usually sedate Moo audience and Out Of The Black’s machine gun drumming provided the festival’s most theatrical rock moment, complete with a gong.

Earlier in the day kooky prog-rockers Portgual. The Man played one of the most interesting sets of the festival. The Alaskans are famous for their pop hit Feel It Still, but they served Maitland a curve ball by opening with a medley of Metallica’s Master Of The Puppets and Pink Floyd’s Another Brick In The Wall.

Most importantly, they proved there’s more to their songwriting arsenal than Feel It Still, with Modern Jesus and Live In The Moment also earning mass crowd reactions.

But they couldn’t surpass Feel It Still, which was welcomed by a sea of girls sitting on their partner’s shoulders.

Out in the tightly-packed Moolin Rouge tent Sampa The Great showed why she’s an acclaimed emerging talent. Her quick-fire vocal delivery combined perfectly with her slick band of world music, reggae and hip-hop.

In case you couldn’t decipher her influences, Sampa The Great’s cover of Lauryn Hill’s Doo Wop (That Thing) left the audience in little doubt.

The energy inside the tent kicked into overdrive for break-out electronic dance foursome Confidence Man. Their early ’90s house influences are obvious, but highly infectious.

Frontwoman Janet Planet kicked off the set wearing a glow-in-the-dark Madonna-style cone bra and kept up a feverish dance pace alongside co-frontman Sugar Bones.

Bubblegum, Try Your Luck and Don’t You Know I’m In A Band had the audience heaving before they finished the fleeting set with Girlfriend (Repeat).

The separation of under-18s and adult patrons in their respective zones made moving between stages problematic at times and left you feeling like you were mooing like cattle in a yard. 

But overall, Groovin’ The Moo continues to be a raging success and shows no sign of losing it’s rite of passage status.