Words and Pix by Ali Williams
Coolangatta was built for days like this. Ocean in one direction, music in the other, and a crowd happily wedged somewhere between sunscreen, surf culture and the sort of festival optimism that only arrives before anyone has lost their mates, their sunnies or their ability to make responsible beverage choices.
Here Comes The Sun Festival rolled into Queen Elizabeth Park on Saturday, bringing with it a proudly Australian lineup and the kind of coastal energy that makes even standing around feel productive. Sitting alongside the Bonsoy Gold Coast Pro weekend, the festival had a natural home in Coolangatta. This wasn’t a random patch of grass dressed up with a stage and a merch tent. It felt properly placed. The music, the beach, the crowd and the late autumn warmth all worked together without anyone needing to over-explain the vibe, which is a mercy in a world where some festivals now require a mission statement, a content strategy and a minor in interpretive branding.
Here Comes The Sun is the kind of festival most underestimate, it comes along with subtly reserved for the elite, it doesn’t overplug itself preannouncing its arrival from every social media soap box or try to be the heaviest festival on the calendar, nor was it pretending to have underground grit hiding under its bucket hat. It leaned into brightness, melody, movement and good-time Australian music, and because the lineup was put together with care rather than panic, the whole day had a shape to it. Not a stiff, overly polished shape, but a proper arc. The kind that starts with fresh voices cutting through the afternoon and ends with a packed park singing back at the headliners under the Coolangatta sky.
Mariae Cassandra was given the early responsibility of turning scattered arrivals into an actual audience, which is one of the more thankless jobs in festival land. Early slots often have to compete with sunscreen application, bar navigation, food decisions and the deeply spiritual process of finding the least offensive patch of grass. Cassandra handled it with a calm, warm confidence that made the space feel less empty and more open. Her set brought a clean pop sensibility to the front of the day, not overcooked or over-performed, but bright enough to pull people in.
There was an ease to her delivery that worked beautifully in the afternoon light. She didn’t try to bully the crowd into caring, which is wise, because nothing kills an early festival mood faster than forced enthusiasm. Instead, she let the songs breathe, gave the vocals room, and built connection in the small ways: eye contact, relaxed movement, a tone that felt present rather than rehearsed to death. It was a strong opening without unnecessary theatrics. The crowd may still have been finding its feet, but Cassandra gave them a reason to stop pretending they were “just checking out the layout” and actually pay attention.
Eliza & The Delusionals gave the festival its first proper guitar-lined bite. Their set brought a welcome shift in texture, lifting the day out of breezy beginnings and into something with more muscle. There is a particular satisfaction in hearing sharp, emotionally charged indie rock beside the beach. It cuts through the coastal gloss and reminds everyone that beneath the linen shirts and carefully casual hair, people still enjoy a song with teeth.
Eliza Klatt carried the set with a vocal presence that had both sweetness and grit, and the band around her gave the songs enough drive to land without cluttering them. They have that useful live quality where the polish does not sand away the feeling. The songs moved with shape and purpose, guitars pushing forward without turning everything into a wall of noise, the rhythm section keeping things steady while still giving the set momentum. It was clean, confident and emotionally switched on.
Their performance worked because it didn’t chase the festival crowd too hard. There was no desperate attempt to manufacture a “moment” every thirty seconds, no overdone crowd work, no awkward scramble to prove they belonged on the bill. They simply played with conviction. By the end of their set, the afternoon had a different weight to it. The crowd had thickened, the attention had sharpened, and Here Comes The Sun had started to feel less like a pleasant beachside gathering and more like an actual festival with a pulse.
Sycco brought the colour in sideways. Her set shifted the mood without breaking the flow, pulling the crowd into a brighter, stranger, more rhythm-driven space. Where Eliza & The Delusionals gave the day its guitar charge, Sycco gave it movement, personality and that slightly unhinged pop spark that stops a festival from becoming one long polite nod.
Her sound sat neatly between pop, electronic textures and playful oddness, but live it had more punch than gloss. The beats landed with enough weight to get bodies moving, while her vocals kept the whole thing nimble and expressive. Sycco has a knack for making a stage feel fun without turning it flimsy. There is mischief in the way she performs, but also control. She knows when to lean into the looseness and when to pull everything back into focus.
By this point, the crowd had stopped behaving like observers and started behaving like participants, which is always when a festival either catches fire or collapses into expensive people-watching. Thankfully, this one chose fire. Sycco’s set drew out the dancers, the shoulder-shufflers, the committed front-row faithful and the blokes pretending they were only moving because the ground was uneven. Noble effort from the latter. Deeply unconvincing, but noble.
Young Franco took that movement and locked it into a groove. His set was one of the day’s smartest gear changes, arriving at the point where the crowd was warm, loose and ready for something built around rhythm rather than front-facing rock energy. There is a real craft in making electronic-driven music feel alive in a festival setting, and Young Franco did it without making the stage feel like a laptop had gained employment.
The set had warmth, bounce and confidence. The transitions were smooth without feeling sterile, the low end had enough body to travel through the park, and the whole thing carried the relaxed precision of someone who understands crowd pacing. It didn’t need to be aggressive to be effective. Young Franco built energy by letting the groove do its work, giving people enough space to move without flattening the personality out of the set.
That section of the day felt properly communal. Groups widened, strangers joined the edges of other people’s dance circles, and the park slipped into that ridiculous but beautiful festival condition where everyone is suddenly convinced they are much better at dancing than they were two songs earlier. It was loose without being sloppy, bright without becoming sugary, and exactly the kind of late-afternoon set that keeps a festival from sagging in the middle.
The Jungle Giants arrived with the kind of confidence that comes from knowing exactly how to work a crowd without needing to mug for it. Their set gave the day its biggest lift before the headline slot, and you could feel the response change around the park. People moved closer. Conversations thinned out. The casual listeners suddenly remembered they knew more songs than they thought. The band had the crowd almost immediately, but they didn’t coast on recognition. They played like they wanted the set to earn its place.
Their live strength sits in the sharpness of the rhythm and the snap of the guitars. Everything felt bright and tight, but not rigid. Sam Hales worked the stage with easy command, not in a forced “look at me” way, but with the confidence of someone who understands how to let the songs pull the crowd forward. The band’s indie-dance energy landed perfectly in Coolangatta, especially as the light started to dip and the festival found that golden section of the day where everyone is sun-warmed, slightly feral and very available for a chorus.
The Jungle Giants gave the crowd release without turning the set into chaos. That is not nothing. Too many festival performances mistake shouting for connection and volume for momentum. This had actual pacing. The songs hit cleanly, the hooks did their damage, and the crowd gave plenty back. It was one of those sets where you could see the festival physically change in front of you, shoulders loosening, voices getting louder, people committing fully to the moment instead of hovering at the edge of it.
Lime Cordiale closed the night with the kind of relaxed authority that has become their trademark. They are an easy band to underestimate if you mistake charm for softness, but their headline set made it clear how sharply built their live show is. It never felt heavy-handed, yet everything had shape. The pacing was controlled, the arrangements were tight, and the band knew exactly how to hold a crowd without squeezing the life out of the moment.
Their songs suit this environment almost unfairly well. Coolangatta, ocean air, a crowd in full voice, and Lime Cordiale standing at the centre of it all with that breezy, off-kilter charisma that makes their live show feel loose even when it is clearly well-drilled. Oli and Louis Leimbach have a natural push-pull on stage, playful without tipping into gimmick, polished without scrubbing away the human bits. The band around them kept the set buoyant, giving the songs lift and swing while leaving room for the crowd to sing themselves hoarse in several different keys, some of them even legal.
The headline slot could have easily drifted into pleasant coastal autopilot, but Lime Cordiale kept it engaging. They brought humour, warmth and enough bite to stop things becoming too soft around the edges. There was a strong sense of connection between band and crowd, not the manufactured kind where every city is apparently “the best crowd of the tour,” but the kind that builds when the setting is right and the songs land where they are supposed to. By the time the final stretch hit, Queen Elizabeth Park felt completely locked in. Not wild in a destructive way, not overblown, just properly lifted.
The smartest thing about Here Comes The Sun was its restraint. It didn’t try to cram fifteen moods into one day or pretend every act belonged to the same sonic family. It gave each artist enough space to bring their own colour while keeping the overall feel cohesive. Mariae Cassandra opened the day with warmth and promise. Eliza & The Delusionals gave it edge. Sycco turned the dial toward playful pop electricity. Young Franco put the park into motion. The Jungle Giants drove the energy up with precision and swagger. Lime Cordiale brought it home with charm, control and a crowd more than willing to do half the singing for them.
For a festival sitting so closely alongside surf culture, Here Comes The Sun managed to avoid feeling like background music for a lifestyle brochure. It had personality. It had movement. It had a lineup that made sense. It had that rare festival quality where the location genuinely added to the experience rather than simply providing somewhere to put fencing and overpriced chips. Queen Elizabeth Park gave the event its frame, but the artists gave it its character.
By the end of the night, Coolangatta had done what it does best: made a packed outdoor event feel loose, sunlit and just a little bit unruly in the right places. Here Comes The Sun Festival delivered a day that was easy to enjoy but not empty, polished but not plastic, relaxed but never lazy. It celebrated Australian music without turning the whole thing into a self-congratulatory group hug, and frankly, that deserves its own round of applause.
As festival days go, this one had the goods. Strong lineup, smart pacing, great setting, and a crowd willing to meet every act where they stood. Here Comes The Sun didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. It just put the wheel near the beach, handed it a decent soundtrack, and let Coolangatta do the rest.