Yo, Goldrush The Show!

So, here's a sad day - the very last of the reviews I wrote for OHM. Admittedly, I don't own every issue, so I may have missed one. If you think there's a review from the OHM days I should post, get in touch. Thank you for flying Porcine Airways! Anyway, this is from the very best OHM issue, where we managed to review very nearly every act on the Truck bill in a madly choreographed dance of the notebooks. Sadly, not every act I reviewed is here, since there were some acts that were reviewed by more than one of us, and I've long since lost my original copy (so has Dan the editor) so all you'll get are the bits that saw print. The only good bit I can remember on the discard pile was a review of Red Star Cycle, but I'll keep that to myself as I might use the same gag for some other act in the future! Always recycle, kids!

TRUCK FESTIVAL, Hill Farm, Steventon, 6/04

Heavy rock is more about phrasing and tone than composition, and Days Of Grace are experts. Think the melodic end of metal. Think soaring vocal lines. Don't think emo, no matter what images I'm creating. Think QOTSA play Pantera. Think, "that singer needs to wear a belt".

Developing in oddly contradictory directions, Trademark continue to produce ever more theatrical and elaborate stageshows, and ever more honed and elegant songs. Like breaking your heart whilst appearing on 80s teatime BBC fodder The Adventure Game.

Charming, talented, summery, melodic, the men behind the festival itself - Goldrush are in some ways the best band in Oxfordshire. Yet sadly they bore me rigid. That Travis and The Chills are household names and Goldrush aren't is an injustice; that I'm even mentioning them in the same sentence illustrates the problem. Still, they couldn't play a bad set at Truck if their lives depended on it.

Lucky Benny sounds like a bizarre sexual position, but is actually a jazz-funk outfit. They're sometimes stodgy, sometimes firy. The bassist is good. Err, that's it.

Some huge voiced, super-sincere Dubliner is singing folky dirges about the poor and paeans to positivity, which must be rubbish, right? So why am I almost crying? Either I'm incredibly tired, or Damien Dempsey is a huge talent. Or both.

Tabla? Hurdy-gurdy? Politico-poetry? Some rainy mid-eighties GLC fundraiser is missing Inflatable Buddha! When they get abstract ("Fat Sex") it works wonderfully, when they play straight songs ("White Rabbit") it's flat hippy mulch.

Bert Kampfaert gabba - get in! nervous_testpilot provides the second great performance of the weekend, mangling samples and rhythms into a sproingy tech-tapestry. Slightly too irreverent for me (last year's set had subtle melodies hidden away), but his "action-packed mentalist brings you the strawberry jams" approach satisifes. Bloop.

One year on, Captive State kick even harder. The warm jazz rhythms are bolstered by the meaty horn parts, and draped in fluent rhymes and zig-zag scratch patterns, and the crowd responds rapturously. Forget the slightly crass lyrics, this band is delicious.

Even though they're a pop band, undertheigloo remind me of electronica. Their brittle cramped songs are like the raw material from which Boards Of Canada distill their tunes, or the base ingredient to Four Tet's organic shuffle. Pity they play so clunkily. Maybe next time...

Beware of geeks bearing riffs! A Scholar & A Physician have brung the noise, toybox style. Cutesier than a Puzzle Bobble marathon in a Haribo warehouse, they somehow manage to convince us that if enough people play enough crappy instruments, then even stupid music is a glorious victory. Clever.

There's an angry little New Yorker smoking furiously and telling awful jokes like it's The Improv in 1986; now he's singing a flacid relationship revenge song. Right, I'm off. Hold on, that last bit was funny...now he's singing something incredibly touching. Lach is ultimately moving, likable and acidly funny, but, man, he started badly.

Damn, Thomas Truax is too popular for this tiny acoustic tent. Damn, they're running late. Damn, MC Lars is on in a minute. Let's assume Truax is as much a damn genius as ever.