PUBLISHED December 16th, 2014 03:45 am | UPDATED January 19th, 2016 03:16 pm
We’re back from the chilly environs of Genting Highlands and we’ve to say that Urbanscapes 2014 was a roaring success! In terms of the music, that is – we can’t say the same for the organization of the festival, which might be due to the fact that this is the first year the festival is held at the destination resort. However, we were ready to overlook the organised mess with a decent line-up on the music front that included the Local Natives, Jagwar Ma, and Kimbra.
Kickstarting the festival were old school punk rockers The Lemonheads, where lead singer Evan Dando promptly announced his arrival on stage with “I’m Drunk”, drawing an uproar of laughter from the crowd. Shortly after their performance started, the skies darkened and a storm began to brew.
The already-cool air became colder by the second and the downpour that followed was torrential, so it was awesome then to see that people were not giving a second thought to rocking out in the cold despite the thoroughly lousy weather.
Next, indie rockers Local Natives blew us right out of the window. The powerhouse vocals of band members Taylor Rice and Ryan Hahn gave a majestic sound to their music and it definitely got the crowd going. Rice then drove everyone into an even bigger frenzy when he jumped right on top of the sea of people – our sympathies to the noticeably ticked off bouncer who tried in vain to get the bodysurfing singer back on stage. The crowd wasn’t having any of it – it eventually took a horde of muscular men, who grabbed his mic, to force Rice to return to his band mates on stage. The (clever) in-the-heat-of-the-moment act endeared Local Natives to the people and they were brilliant throughout.
After that immensely impressive set, we scuttled over to another stage for psychedelic band Jagwar Ma, thinking it would be virtually impossible to replicate such greatness, but we were swiftly proven wrong. Gabriel Winterfield’s vocal loops made us feel like we were on a musical journey to space, and besides being extremely trippy, it dovetailed nicely with the more traditional sounds of guitar and bass. Furthermore, Jona Ma’s synths on the turntable produced diverse and beautiful reverberations that left us in dreamland. Pumping the crowd up was no sweat for the formidable Jagwar Ma; everyone just couldn’t help dancing their socks off (including us).
Finally, New Zealander songbird Kimbra took the stage and boy, did she steal the limelight. Draped in a dazzling silver dress and a furry overcoat, the brunette bombshell wowed everybody with her superb vocals and sexy outfit. By then a drizzle had begun after a long period of clear weather, not that anyone seemed to mind. Kimbra expressed her delight at the amount of people who carried on having fun, “even in the rain”, although we choose to believe that was really down to her exceptional performance!
Overall, kudos to Urbanscapes 2014 for managing to score a wonderfully talented line up – the local Malaysian artists did a great job as well. But for a more seamless festival experience, the organisers need to beef up their organization skills. That being said, Urbanscapes was a festival worth going for and if next year’s line-up is as good, you’ll definitely see us going back.