With yet another cycle around the sun, Meredith Music Festival continues to elicit that same cult-loyalism it has embodied for decades, despite presenting punters with a less exciting line-up than those boasted in recent years. With the recent lineup announcement of the forthcoming Golden Plains 2025, there are whispers of superiority against its older sibling. Still, a full sellout abounds for Meredith, with ‘rockdogs’ and ‘doofers’ alike pleading for tickets on social media, while aspiring volunteers scour their emails in hopes of ascending the ever-stretching waitlist. 

Seemingly, it does not matter if the 32^nd iteration of Meredith lacks the superstar quality of previous lineups. Fans are clear—the festival’s presence is numinous, promising continuity and stability, even amidst fallen commercial titans like Splendour in the Grass and Falls. And yet, how does Meredith maintain the magic and mystique, all the while staying true to some infernal yet unknowable formula?

The answer, as always, lies in a kind of stylistic pluralism, which has become ubiquitous throughout the festival’s evolution over the past decades, ensuring that the lineup is diverse enough in genre, style and sensibility so that there is something for everyone. With the 32^nd Meredith, the bookers held tight to this formula, and while éclat was less common, partygoers were reassured as to why the festival towers above the rest. 

The first stretch of Friday sported a smoking ceremony, followed by a Welcome to Country. Punk band Frenzee, the trio of Melbourne expats now residing in Greece, kickstarted the music with a set of frenetic thrashers, the lead singer donned in a red adidas leotard, as the songs unspooled upon an amphetemised edge. 

Good Morning came through with a sequence of humble yet dreamy indie pop songs, followed by 26-year-old MIKE (US), who followed faithfully along the abstract hip-hop tradition, with staggered, if not charmingly awkward, flows running over the top of soulful instrumentals. Indie troubadours Fat White Family laid a particularly raucous array of distorted guitars before internet heartthrob Mk.Gee’s washed-out pop songs occupied the haze of the early evening. 

Waxahatchee’s cosy sing-alongs were a welcome companion to the incoming dusk, and though the masks may suggest otherwise, Glass Beams christened the night with an incomprehensibly tight tour de force through Arabic jazz, funk and house, bringing new meaning to ‘staying in the pocket’. It’s no surprise, given that the band allegedly undertook three sets of twelve-hour rehearsals in the leadup to the performance. Though the genre fusion doesn’t reinvent the wheel, Glass Beams’ musicianship and attention to detail are world-class.

Genesis Owusu’s second Meredith appearance didn’t quite have the same triumph as when he first graced the stage in 2018, while the mid-2000s throwback excess of Princess Superstar was perhaps too outlandish to be truly glorious. Barcelona’s Mainline Magic Orchestra came through with a cheeky array of eurohouse bangers and frightening visuals aimed at wigging people out, which certainly embodied the memeification of dance music, though a guest appearance from cult-favourite Juicy Romance was a welcome addition. DJ PGZ closed the night out with a substantial serving of techno, finishing off by laying down the entirety of Frank Ocean’s ‘Pyramids’. 

Some very cute kids with trumpets performed in the City of Ballarat Municipal Brass Band, while Maple Glider wove together folk-rock ballads and soft-spoken tearjerkers. The stage-shy yet evocative Luritja artist from Papunya, Keanu Nelson’s all storytelling via Language, backed by minimal synth pop instrumentals. 

The Saturday afternoon picked things up, with Billiam & The Split Bills unleashing some pavement-esque guitar freakouts. Mannequin Pussy played in the vein of early 2000’s power-pop, deftly navigating melodramatic riffs while dressed in hair metal fishnets. Leo Sayer was all the joy you would expect; Precious Bloom rode a gentle groove, with a softness clearly indebted to the city pop of 1980s Japan. 

Things kicked into gear with Olaf Dreijer, who sounded a bit too excited about discovering the ‘World Club’ category on Bandcamp, throwing out every Kuduro and Dembow rhythm he could find while juggling Grime and Ballroom vocal chops. It’s a strange direction for ex-The Knife member—the prolific Swedish synth-pop duo of the 2000s—though the project’s inclinations have always leant towards the weirder side of things. 

Angie McMahon and her ensemble toured us through wistful ballads before the sax-rock dirge of Party Dozen, which, despite the praise of Nick Cave, was not as compelling as one would hope.

Saturday night ushered in the strongest movement of the festival. Synth funk legends Zapp, wigs and all, showed full well that they still got it, grooving their way through a handful of signature jams to which so many classic hip-hop samples are indebted. The Dare was all the joys of the blog house era, rendered through the digital age—James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, if he was several decades younger, and using TikTok, performing before towering stacks of Marshall amps. The Sonic Youth reference is obvious, though one could be forgiven for missing it in the flashing lights. Jamie XX gave us a clever tour through the UK hardcore continuum, imbued with his signature pop flourishes, while breakbeats and speed-garage samples intermingled. 

Local queens IN2STELLAR demonstrated the wealth of their EU endeavours with an exceptionally fluid performance, notably closing with ‘Toca’s Miracle’, which summoned countless hands to the air. Ayebatonye jacked the house into the early hours of the morning with a stellar selection of old schoolhouse tracks, closing out with ‘Nissan Altima’ by Doechii, as exhausted dancers navigated the early morning haze. 

While it is perhaps a criticism of booking more than anything else, the electronic acts at the festival seemed to suffer from certain aesthetic expectations around playing in the Sup’. The sets were solid—airtight even—though seemingly everyone iterates on some version of ‘Meredith-Core’: bright, jazzy, housey, colourful, consistently groovy, traditional, but ultimately, not adventurous. When paired against Blawan’s modular freakouts last December, Helena Hauff’s red-hot electro aggression back in 2019, or even Objekt’s mind-bending bass odyssey at Golden Plains 18'—this year lacked a certain edge. 

The final day coasted down gently, with a supple selection of local acts, namely the unabashed poetical devotion of Hot Tubs Time Machine. As is tradition, the Meredith Gift provided a comedic finale to the festival. A snuggle of sloth mascots danced in a sultry manner to an electro-house rendition of Kylie Minogue’s ‘Slow’, before an assortment of nude suspects scrambled over each other in competition.

Even with one of the lesser star-studded lineups, Meredith is still several paces ahead of its peers, who are either bankrupt, dissolving or well-faded into obscurity. While the festival bridges age and demographic more than any other music event, one can’t help but feel that sometimes we’re just going through the motions. Stylistic pluralism relies on things being truly different. Hopefully, in the future, bookers will bring back a bit more of the oddballs and underground virtuosos that are known to shake things up.