Abingdon's Starting To Happen

Most of this review was used in Nightshift's 4 page report on the festival, but some of it has never been seen before. Be still, my beating heart.

TRUCK 2008, Hill Farm, Steventon

After last year’s festival, we really thought Truck had jumped the shark. Naturally, rescheduling was out of their control, but the general feeling was that the lineup was predictable and uninspired, and that Truck had been gradually ossifying into a noisy convalescent home for tedious country musicians. This year, however, turned out to be the best Truck for a long time. The lineup was pruned of some of the incumbents, but there was still a pleasant smattering of Truck favourites on offer; the site had been rethought but still kept to the familiar blueprint; and, most importantly, the atmosphere was wonderful. It’s so gladdening to see people going rubber-limb loopy in The Beat Hive before eating doughnuts and then sitting quietly to enjoy something acoustic at the Market Stage. More than anything else this year we got the impression that Truckers were open to all manner of different performances, and this was reflected in some surprising, but refreshing thematic booking policies, such as Crossword Records’ abstract hip-hop showcase, or the Sonic Cathedral shoegazing celebration. It was the sort of weekend to make anyone wax lyrical…anyone apart from Evan Dando, anyway…

Implausibly, our festival begins with a band from Hong Kong. DP is a guitar and drums scuzz riffing concotion, who make a great noise, but essentially feel like half of a good rock band. AC without the DC.

Vacuous Pop’s well received line-up begins with Load.Click.Shoot whose bandy-legged disco pop sends hordes of kids in horrible plastic shades, who look like extras from Weird Science, into a dancing frenzy. Is this because the band are good (which they are, with their snotty take on Foals-esque puzzle pop and excellent naughty schoolboy keyboards), or because these guys have been cocked for some day-glo musical fun all morning? Load, click, shoot indeed.

Hey, the naughty schoolboy has been doing his homework. Alphabet Backwards’ keyboard player shares a cheeky Korg buzz with the previous band, but plays it spiced with nonchalantly adept arpeggios and Herbie Hancock twiddles. The two singers may look like a cut-budget children’s presenters (Magpie, not Blue Peter; Look In, not Smash Hits), but they play impossibly, gorgeously, heart-burstingly jolly acoustic-led pop that would sound as at home in the Top 40 as it would at a drunken barndance.

A spot of lunch later The European Union provides our first visit to The Market Stage, once again the most comfy part of Truck, with the most reliable sound. Sadly, although European Union were billed as sounding like Nirvana we turn up to a minimal folk pop song played by sleepy robots. Thereafter they step up into a trudge down The Band’s avenue, good ol’ boys chord progressions overlaid with hammered elementary piano and drawled self-conscious vocals. Passable.

Admittedly it’s not our dream of a collaboration between Bellowhead and Fuck Buttons, but Buttonhead’s set starts incredibly, a repeated wordless three note vocal motif over some complex pomp rock that sounds like Philip Glass’ Einsten On The Beach played by Magma. Except that it also sounds like Godspeed You! Black Emperor played by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Amazing. However, after a while the focus gets lost somewhere to the left of the kitchen sink, and the show becomes a valiant, but ultimately unsatisfying mashup; we would have stuck it out to the end anyway, of the falsetto vocals weren’t so tooth-pullingly terrible.

In diametric opposition to their look-at-me name, Holton’s Opulent Oog supply us with an untroubled, unobtrusive country lope. Pliant and friendly, perhaps, but with all the chutzpah of a shy 7 year old forced to recite in Sunday school. Of course, complaining about country pop at Truck is like shouting for “Born To be Wild” at Glyndebourne, so we’ll just edge away, quietly.

Over on the main stage, Little Fish are winning a small army of new fans. Aside from being musically spotless, Juju and Nez are rare in looking as though they were born to be onstage – even on the main stage, it’s rare to see an act that you can’t tear your eyes from. But, would it be terribly party-pooping of us to suggest that they write some more songs? There’s some padding in their repertoire, and the world doesn’t need another rock twopiece unless they’re very, very good. Worries for another day, perhaps, for now it’s another Fish victory.

There’s nothing precisely wrong with Green As A Primary’s melding of Mogwai and Prefuse 73, but this downtempo mood music is so fussily exact that it reminds us of bad cappuccino, polished foyers, overpriced theatre bars and aging bachelors trying to look urban and sophisticated in Stoke Newington. Could well sell millions, then…

“Who’s ready for some ramshackle, drunken, atonal, clueless, shambolic, dated indie, then?!” Perhaps it’s a good thing they don’t really go for MCs at Truck, as there’d be no real way of introducing “pop legends” The Television Personalities and their agonising set. Imagine a bad Go Betweens rip off encoded, bounced off the surface of Mars, and then reassembled in a brewery with half the data missing or corrupt. “Embarrasing” is the only word that serves.

Having found ourselves caught between two randomly scurrying children who appear to be demonstrating Brownian Motion for the deaf on the way back from the tea tent, we return to the main stage for Emmy The Great, who was a highlight of Truck 06. Sadly her music’s become more polite and tidy in the interim and this set turns into a nondescript wash of general pleasantness. Still, she’s retained an ear-catching literacy in her lyrics, and a delivery that seems to be intelligently hectoring and monstrously cute simultaneously, rather like losing a theological debate to a Care Bear.