On Saturday, Vacations’ experiment finally went down at the Bellwether, a multi-room venue that opened in LA last year. MATES was set up as a proper festival, with the venue’s largest room as the “mainstage” equivalent, and a smaller upstairs room as a side stage. Throughout the night, concertgoers could also take a breather at a pizza restaurant in one of the bars, or on a patio where Alex Lahey, Banoffee, Georgia Maq, and Japanese Wallpaper — all Australian artists — DJ’ed. (One bemusing throughline with the DJs — pretty much everyone included a remix of one Brat remix or another.)
Fittingly, the night kicked off with WAAX, an Australian band with a long history in Brisbane; Burns had been a fan, and ended up temporarily playing in a rebooted iteration of the group last year. Led by their dynamic frontwoman Maz DeVita, WAAX were by far the more aggressive end of MATES’ lineup — a caustic punk uproar that almost belied the array of dreamy indie to follow.
MATES’ schedule had minimal overlap, meaning fans could see most of every artist’s set. Right after the blistering WAAX, there was the calmer, reflective Claud. Amidst songs mulling over relationships — including a great new one called “Deadbolt” — Claud had a dry sense of humor and joked about Shrek after playing “I’m A Believer,” the Neil Diamond-penned Monkees classic Smash Mouth covered for the movie. “I got you to sing along to ‘I’m A Believer,’” they deadpanned in between songs. “I bet you weren’t expecting that today.” An audience member howled “I love Shrek!” Claud: “Shrek is awesome. Shout out Shrek.”
For a while, these vibe shifts continued apace: Next was another Australian act, Jaguar Jonze, whose stage presence was already too powerful for the tinier stage upstairs. After Jonze’s finale — a throbbing, dance-tinged cover of “Heart-Shaped Box” — the downstairs venue grew packed for Yot Club’s wistful bedroom-pop. Back in 2019, Yot Club mastermind Ryan Kaiser went viral on TikTok with “YKWIM?” His set mostly focused on this year’s Rufus, but it still indicated something about MATES: Once you started observing the crowd, it became evident this was a different, ascendant generation of indie. Online, Gen Z, all that stuff — the festival was dominated by kids fervently singing along or filming songs by various acts that had wildfire success on TikTok.
