Way Out West 2008 post mortem

The time had come to submit myself to the polished machinery of Way Out West. A celebration of music, sustainability, corporate sponsorship and people who somehow manage to look fashionable while standing in a muddy field. It turned out almost exactly as expected.

There is something undeniably comfortable about a festival in your own hometown. At any moment you can abandon the crowds, go for a walk and sleep in your own bed instead of dragging yourself through ankle-deep mud toward a tent that smells like wet socks and yesterday’s pizza.

Comfort, however, comes at a price. A festival is supposed to feel slightly dangerous. A little unpredictable. A place where normal life is temporarily suspended and everyone quietly agrees that breakfast can consist of questionable kebab.

But Way Out West doesn’t quite allow that. It is so carefully curated, so heavily sponsored and so eager to demonstrate its ethical conscience that it sometimes resembles a live-action commercial. Beautiful people laughing in slow motion beneath the evening sun, everyone holding the sponsor’s choice of drink while making sensible fashion statements. It’s difficult to misbehave when even the rebellion has been approved by the marketing department.

Into darkness.

Despite the festival drawing around 24 000 visitors, far more than Arvikafestivalen ever did, I ran into remarkably few familiar faces. At Arvika I’d bump into old friends every hundred meters, usually looking progressively more sleep-deprived as the weekend unfolded. Here everyone dissolved into the crowd.

Perhaps the only permanent residents who truly suffered were the inhabitants of Slottsskogen itself. I couldn’t help wondering what the flamingos, seals and other animals made of tens of thousands of humans suddenly invading their neighborhood for three days, armed with plastic beer cups and indie playlists.

The Flaming Lips at Way Out West.

Anyway, the real reason for being here was the music. Seeing Grinderman was worth the ticket alone. Nick Cave has always possessed that rare ability to look simultaneously like a preacher, a serial killer and the coolest man in the room. It wasn’t the Bad Seeds, but Cave could probably read the phone book and still hold an audience hostage.

The biggest surprise belonged to The Flaming Lips. Charismatic singer Wayne Coyne emerged with giant inflatable balls, dancers dressed like Teletubbies and enough glorious absurdity to make the whole thing feel less like a concert than a fever dream. At one point he crowd-surfed across the audience inside a transparent sphere, grinning like a man who had discovered the secret of happiness and decided not to tell anyone.

Sigur Rós were exactly what Sigur Rós always are: impossibly beautiful, ethereal and almost suspiciously perfect. Franz Ferdinand delivered their precision-engineered dance rock with predictable efficiency. Neil Young reminded everyone why he’s been around for so long. Sonic Youth remained gloriously untidy, and Lykke Li did her best to wake the late evening crowd.

Henrik Berggren, Broder Daniel at Way Out West.

As if someone had coordinated it with a higher authority, the sky finally gave up and opened up to welcome Broder Daniel onto the stage. Rain poured over Slottsskogen while thousands of fans stood quietly watching a band saying goodbye, mourning both the end of an era and the loss of guitarist Anders Göthberg. When Henrik Berggren stood alone on stage for No Time For Us and finally left with “Farewell, my children”, all panda girls on front row were crying uncontrollably.

Those last moments became real. And that’s the version of Way Out West I’ll remember.