FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

What Your Festival Sideshow Choice Says About You

Welcome to yet another arbitrary character assessment thanks to a bunch of cowards behind their computers. Let's go!

So, here we are, on the eve of Festival Season. A disgusting nation-wide celebration of warm tinnies and overpriced food and waking up sweaty in a 44 degree tent with some asshole's body glitter stuck in your eye. If you can genuinely make it through a camping festival without completely hating yourself and slash or all the friends you went with, congrats! You must be some kind of incredible genius, or you're a liar. Let's face it – you are, most likely, a liar, because I'm pretty sure nobody actually enjoys music festivals.

Advertisement

So it's a good thing that we have sideshows! They're (usually) cost efficient, (usually) easy to access, and you (usually) don't have to talk to anyone for more than twenty minutes at a time. I mean, yeah – sideshows are generally pretty crap too, but they're still way better than going to Laneway and having a panic attack because there's too many people and not enough shade or water or phone reception.

So, what does your choice of festival sideshow say about you? Let us tell you.

Photo by Kylie Keen.

The Avalanches

Since I Left You is one of your favourite albums and you spent the years between it and Wildflower keeping track of Avalanches Rumours on reddit. You liked Wildflower a lot less than you'd care to admit, but you tell yourself that it'll grow on you, eventually, and it's probably just as good as Since I Left You. You go to their sideshow anyway, to keep up appearances, but are disappointed to find out that no, 'Frankie Sinatra' really isn't any better live.

Photo by Aubrey Trinnaman.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

I don't know who you are or what you're into, but I know that you're definitely smarter than me.

Photo by Jeremy Zimmerman.

Car Seat Headrest

You grew up in the Good (read: rich) Part Of Town, as your parents like to call it, and lived in your family's mansion, but now you live in Brunswick in an apartment that they bought as an investment property. You changed course from Fine Arts to Commerce, but it's fine, because you're only at uni to keep your parents happy – you're really A Writer and you don't need a degree to be A Writer, man. You've worked at a call centre for three years and keep a diary full of poetry that you hope someone will find and publish when you die.

Advertisement

Whitney

A review of this band that said the members used to be in Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Smith Westerns, and hey, those bands were great, so Whitney will definitely be good, right? Two weeks out from the show you finally listen to 'Golden Days' and don't actually like it as much as you initially thought it would, but you'll have to keep pretending you do anyway, because you've already bought the tickets and don't want your friends to drag you.

Photo by Erez Avissar.

Japandroids

You just finished uni, have locked down a stable desk job, and have finally moved out of your trashy sharehouse. You'd usually prefer to stay in with your partner, but sometimes it's nice to relive your teen years with some mates from high school. You decided not to do Meredith this year because the quiet life really just suits you, and you like Japandroids because their optimistic outlook on life really speaks to where you're at. This one is nice because it's hard to make fun of people who are so openly earnest. Good for you, Japandroids fans.

Photo by Alejandro Santiago.

Blood Orange

You're probably a gender studies major who likes to speak 'ironically' about your Instagram brand but are obsessive enough over it that everyone knows it's not actually ironic. You go clubbing every two weeks but always leave after twenty minutes because you secretly hate techno. You like to delete and redownload Tinder every three to five days. Attractive enough that this is all endearing as opposed to annoying.

Photo by Robin Pope.

Advertisement

Angel Olsen

If you've got a ticket to see Angel Olsen you probably cry a lot and are definitely okay with crying in public, and your star sign is probably Pisces. You just really get Angel, y'know, like, she's been through a lot, she just really knows how it feels to be lonely and you can really identify with that, y'know, as an inner-city art student with fifteen hundred Instagram followers.

Photo by Francisco Montes.

Chance the Rapper

Your favourite Kanye album is Late Registration and all your knowledge of the 2016 US election has come from Chance's Twitter feed. You made a Chance 3 hat like on the cover of Coloring Book to dress as Chano for halloween but were disappointed when you realised that even with the hat you're not cute enough to be Chance, so you decided to go as a cowboy instead. You first heard Chance on 'Ultra Light Beam' but you tell everyone that you downloaded 10 Day when it first came out and insist that you're a 'real head' despite only having a vague understanding of what that means.

Photo by Amelia Krales.

BADBADNOTGOOD

You love Bernie Sanders & weed and hate 'phonies' and capitalism. Sometimes you attend Socialist Alternative rallies and leave halfway through to meet up with mates at the pub. You probably keep your keys and a bottle opener clipped to your belt. You're known for beefing with Facebook posts about feminism.

Follow Shaad on Twitter