Truck 07 Cont.

Buck 65 has made a career out of sneaking up on hip-hop from the rear, tip-toeing from beat poet to MC. His vocal delivery is immaculate, and so intimate it feels like he’s telling you a private joke, and his lyrics are gritty and often hilarious, so it’s another Truck victory for him. But, his beats are actually a little flaccid, and we wish we’d managed to see him doing his spoken word set earlier.

To paraphrase a review of Waiting For Godot, at a Fuck Buttons show nothing happens, perfectly. Huge distorted keyboard drones swirl around the tent, punctuated by occasional percussion loops that all sound like the opening of Iko Iko by The Dixie Cups, for some inexplicable reason. It’s something like rave without the drums and something like death metal without the songs. Ah, it’s just fucking great, go find out for yourselves.

The Will Bartlett Orchestra doesn’t have nearly enough members to be an Orchestra, or nearly enough ideas to be onstage at all. Yes, they can all play to a passable level, but jazz is a music of fire and ideas, not irritatingly facile “Scooby doobies” and crap drum fills.

Trademark’s new club-friendly stage show is banging, but it somewhat diminishes the effect of some of Oxford’s best pop songs: imagine if Witches played all their tunes like Led Zeppelin. However, the final mashed cover of the Beatles’ "Me And My Monkey" wins us over, not least because it has an actual dancing monkey.

They eventually turn out to be a subtle jazz group led by a pianist with a wonderfully light touch, but Barcode have turned us against them before they start. There’s a place for thirty minute soundchecks, and there’s a place for getting bored and going to the bar. Guess which one we favoured.

Sunday

Nostalgics that we are, it’s good to see a proper old-fashioned backing tape, none of this laptop nonsense. Unfortunately, Napoleon III’s beautiful vintage reel to reel overshadows his songs, which are fine, but all sound a bit like Pink Floyd’s "Corporal Clegg" without the chorus.

Back to the main stage for Mules, who sound like David Byrne and David Bowie trying to play their way out of a deep South queer-bashing lynch mob barndance and barbeque. With polka. What’s not to like?

Maybe some of us stayed up last night, but Thomas Truax looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. It doesn’t affect his fantastic performance any, though, which is a wobbly stroll through Tom Waits’ notebooks with mechanical machines instead of a band. If Oliver Postgate had made Twin Peaks in his shed after The Clangers, it would probably have sounded like this.

The Winchell Riots is the band formed by 50% of much missed local boys Fell City Girl. They pretty much pick up where FCG left off, but have swapped some of the epic guitar crescendoes for stabbing snare rhythms. It’s extremely promising stuff, with one drawback: it may be the hangar-like reverb of The Barn, but every song feels a tiny bit overly emotive. Stop twisting our arms, and start leading us by the hands, we’ll end up coming a lot further with you.

We feel bad that so few people investigate the Theatre tent, so we make another foray into it. Biggest cunting error of the weekend. Sunshines is two drunk men, one of whom is wearing a dress. Think about that for a second – a man in a dress!! Anything could happen!!! It’s all wild and improvised! Fuck Thatcher! And so on. After they’ve spent ten minutes making the sound of a cyborg farting from a little machine, and giggling, we back swiftly away.

Ineptitude of a different sort in the Quilting Bee tent (tweer than a glittery bunny playing glockenspiel in a bouncy castle made from coloured vinyl and flying saucer sweets) as Seb from The Evenings and The Keyboard choir sings whilst Chris from Harry Angel accompanies him inaudibly. It’s bloody awful, but at least it’s unpretentious.

Hammer And Tongue provide some reliably incisive poetry as we edge back to the Market Stage for Alberta Cross. Despite a winning high-range male voice, they play pretty predictable country rock – and if you’re going to play country rock at Truck, you’d better be good, that’s all we can advise.

About this time we enter the traditional Sunday afternoon doldrums, where tired legs and jaded ears mean that nothing holds our attention for more than a few seconds. The local Butts ale keeps us going: is the fact that hordes of Truckers are buying fizzy brown gloop at the other bar for £3 a pop, whilst high quality, cheap, local, organic ale is barely touched a metaphor for the state of the music industry, or have I had a pint too many?