24 February 2024 – The Broadwater Parklands, Gold Coast – words & pictures by Bec Harbour
It was a hot steamy day on the Gold Coast for the second instalment of LookOut Festival headlined by Queens of the Stone Age. As I pulled into Southport the air was so thick and still, I thought it was inevitable that there would be a thunderstorm later that day. Rain it did, thunder it didn’t, it did nothing to cool punters down but no-one seemed to care.
The Broadwater is a great place to have a festival, right on the water, easy enough to get to and the setting is magnificent! After getting my media passes and setting up my cameras, I wandered around to see what was on offer. Unlike some festivals, there were ample food trucks and the bar was easily accessible. The merch truck was easy to access and there were roaming people selling flower crowns which many punters grabbed (had no idea they were still a thing at festivals). The only step up to the festival game that I would have liked to have seen is water refill stations but in saying that they did allow punters to bring in as much sealed water as they wanted.
First up was indie-pop artist Lola Scott from Sydney. Even before they told us, you could see that the whole band were so excited to be playing with the whole line-up, especially Queens of the Stone Age. Considering that it was humid and raining, there were a huge number of punters there to see them.
Next up was Melbourne’s Gut Health. Gut Health have been sitting in the periphery of my consciousness for a while now and I knew that they had two percussionists, which sets them aside from most bands but I still didn’t know what to expect. Even knowing that they had two drummers, I was not expecting the 6-piece ensemble that came out on stage. They played to the growing crowd who danced along in the drizzly rain to their fusion of art-punk/funk.
By this stage I was hungry and needed a water top up – the woodfired pizza van had very tasty pizzas and much needed cold water. A look around the festival had people lounging on the grass in the intermittent rain (which still had done nothing to cool things down). The atmosphere was relaxed and friendly with plenty of punters rocking up for a chat about my cameras and what I was doing.
I love Pond. Now that I have got that out of the way, let’s talk about their set. Pond opened with ‘Daisy’ then followed up with one of my all-time favourites, ‘Americas Cup’. Pond were exactly the vibe that the crowd needed at the halfway period of the festival, laidback grooves with danceability. Singer Nick Allbrook (who possibly has the best moves since Jagger) decided to cool himself off with a bottle of water and spray the front row. ‘Sweep Me Off My Feet’ had the whole crowd singing and they finished off their set with ‘Giant Tortoise’.
I chatted with some punters between sets and they were stoked that LookOut had come to the Gold Coast rather than Brisbane. Many of these people are older gig goers who had been schlepping themselves up the M1 to Brisbane for most of their gig going lives. I told them that I was down from Brisbane to cover, and got some gentle ribbing about how it was Brisbane’s time to come to them. A special mention to the DJ’s who decided to play Dragon’s ‘Rain’ at the time when it was raining a bit heavier than the intermittent gentle drizzle that had been happening (smartarses).
Alt-rock legends Spiderbait were up next. They all rocked out in their pluggers (thongs, flip flops whatever you want to call them) and kicked them off as well as their usual killer set. Kicking off with ‘Straight Through the Sun’ and morphing into ‘Shazam!’ the crowd sent nuts. Third song in ‘Outta My Head’ Kram tossed his drumsticks into the crowd, collecting a hapless security guard on the way through. Then came the obligatory crowd sing-along with ‘Fucken Awesome’. Spiderbait are such a great band to have on any festival line-up in Australia as the crowd know their songs and get right into it. They rounded up their set with their Leadbelly cover ‘Black Betty’.
With the number of mullets in the crowd, The Chats were always going to be a favourite. The cheers for them were loud and hearty. Eamon spoke about being from “the other coast” and how it was funny for them to be playing at the Goldie. The band from Nambour launched into ‘Nambored’ complete with jumps and kicks from Eamon and some great power chords from Josh. Eamon introduced ‘Stinker’ as being about a hot day, “a bit like today” which is an understatement. Of course, the set included ‘Smoko’ and ‘Pub Feed’ and the whole festival site, no matter whether they were up front or having a rest on some lawn sang along to both of those.
The sun was going down and the breeze had picked up a little, providing some relief from the humidity. More people were filing the festival site in anticipation for the headliners Queens of the Stone Age. People refuelled with food and drink and picked up merch during the break, with an increase in Queens of the Stone Age t-shirts on punters (or possibly people just wanting a fresh shirt after the heat and sweat of the day).
The lights dimmed and the crowd roared (I almost did too – I love QOTSA and have caught them nearly every time they have toured here from Songs for the Deaf), Josh Homme, Mikey Shuman, Troy Van Leeuwen, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore took their places on stage. Those opening chords from ‘No One Knows’ had the crowd screaming and dancing away. Queens of the Stone Age are such a solid live band, and you feel like you are listening straight from the album recording on every song. The crowd roared again when the familiar notes from ‘Feel Good Hit of the Summer’ was next and then ‘In My Head’.
Playing through ‘My God is the Sun’ (thank god it stayed behind clouds all day) and then from the new album In Times New Roman, ‘Paper Machete’ which sounded every bit as good as it should live. ‘Smooth Sailing’ was up next where Josh spoke about the beautiful location and the sail boats moored on the Broadwater and the nice hotels and how he’d be staying in one later that night.
It was a big set, with ‘Burn the Witch’, ‘Emotion Sickness’, ‘I Sat by the Ocean’, ‘Carnevoyer’, ‘The Way You Used to Do’ and ‘Made to Parade’ leading up to a crowd request, ‘You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, but I Fell Like a Millionaire’.
On the backend of the set, ‘Sick Sick Sick’ led the charge with ‘Make It Wit Chu’ slowing the pace for just a second and ‘Little Sister’ ramping it up again. Josh addressed the crowd “We’re not going to do that thing where we walk off stage, then come back, just cheer and we’ll pretend okay? [Crowd cheers] Thanks for bringing us back on, we’re going to do a few more if that’s okay? This song is ‘Go with the Flow’”. The set finished up right where we started with ‘Song for the Dead’.
With rain beginning to really come down now, hot sweaty punters made their way out of the festival site, all with big smiles and having had a really great time with some amazing music.
Look out for the next LookOut festival coming your way with Incubus and Live headlining. These little mini festivals are great and you can see some great bands on a slightly shorter line-up than your regular festival experience – and no clashes while you try to get from stage to stage as there is only one!
