The Feast Of Steventon

This is my first Truck review, at my second Truck (it being a rather lovely litle festival on a farm in Oxon, if you don't know). Some of this was used on the BBC Oxford site at the time, but not all of it - none of the Sunday review was published for example, so if you've been waiting 6 years to see what I think about Lesbo Pig, the long period in the wilderness is over! I shall miss Truck this year, having been to the last seven, so I may post all the reviews in the run up. Not all the acts I saw were reviewed here, unlike in later years, but this is still pretty comprehensive.

Some rubbish jokes and ultra-short paragraphs, as was the BBC Ox remit, but some interesting thoughts nonetheless.

TRUCK, 2003: SATURDAY

I'm lost. All the stage times have changed completely and I don't know who I'm watching. I turn up at the tent for Vic 20, only to find Bussy, a group of super-talented Frenchmen with a fine clarinetist and a ridiculously good guitarist.

Their songs about pestilence, dominion and battrachian medieval jesters seethe and burn smokliy around the whispered monologues, reminding me of a jazz version of Swans. Highly recommended...should you live in France.

Winnebago Deal keep us waiting for quite a while, but when they crack straight into a rifferama that doesn't let up for 45 minutes the whole Barn erupts into a happy frenzy.

If you've never seen them before, rest assured that they sound exactly as you'd expect: it's only guitar, drums and a whole heap of metal savvy, after all. It's a dense and exciting sound, and WD's victory is that one never wonders where the rest of the band is. Still, like a Belgian choclate it's a bit too rich for my taste, and I can only handle about 20 minutes at a time without feeeling aurally overstuffed.

What the? Hours later, here's Vic 20! They are a super lo-fi electropop outfit, nudging tunes around with medieval synths and covering them in big, sweet, simple vocal melodies. With a singer somewhere between Laetitia Stereolab and Bjork, they're definitely the cutest band of the weekend, but were never cloying.

Highlight was "I Kissed A Girl". Sapphic electro: how can you lose?

You can't be too critical of a Goldrush set at Truck; it's their festival, after all, and a mighty fine weekend it is too. It would be like going to the Royal Variety Performance and giving the queen a bad review.

Anyway, Goldrush are far too professional and talented to play a bad set. This is probably the most relaxed performance I've seen from them, with a bit more power in the sound: maybe they'd spent the day in the Barn and had been infused with rock noise by a sort of osmosis. Or something.

Their greatest strength is the voice, husky and keening without sounding theatrical or stretched, and sitting so neatly on its cushion of country-tinged guitar. To be honest, I've never found the actual songs themselves that interesting, so I'm not overwhelmed...but I'm relatively whelmed all the same.

Whelmed? What am I talking about? Now, where's that beer tent...