Bank Statement

Here's the annual Riverside review, shorter than other years, by necessity.  Inevitably, the discussion has started again in earnest, but this time it's about what wasn't written, rather than what was.  Most years someone says, "If you can't write anything nice, don't write anything at all", whereas this year the tone sems to be "It's far worse to write nothing than it is to write a something negative".  All good fun and games in the world of illogical musicians!

Did I use the pun Bank Statement for a previous Riverside?  Probably.

 

RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, 29/7/12, Charlbury

When we were growing up, there was one of those “Everything’s a quid” type shops near us, called Kincheap.  After a while, some people complained that this cheeky name lowered the tone of Chelmsford High Street – they’d clearly never wandered down it on a Saturday night – so the local paper interviewed the owner.  “It’s a pun,” he explained, “because we’re king of the cheap shops”.  The journalist noted that this wasn’t very obvious, and asked why they didn’t make it clearer.  “Because if we did, it wouldn’t be a pun, would it?”  So, for a few weeks, Mr Kincheap became our favourite man on the planet.

We mention this, because it meant we were prepared for King Terrible.  We realised it was going to be a joke.  What we didn’t realise is that it was going to be nothing but a battery powered fluffy toy on a chair doing a little dance for 30 seconds.  Bloody funny, but we reckon they should have gone the whole hog, and had him on as headliner, with a sea of lasers and an intro tape of “Also Sprach Zarathustra”.  If you’re going to do bathos, do it big, and wait until more than five people have turned up.

Of course, starting a day with a shockingly poor practical joke is exactly why we love Riverside – it’s homely, it’ s friendly, it doesn’t care desperately for fashion or good sense.  This year, after some torrential rain, the festival was rescheduled because of ground conditions (the clue’s in the name), and we’re deeply glad the festival went ahead, even though it meant we could now only attend for one afternoon.  We feel as though we’ve fallen into some vast Duracell commercial as Blin’ Jonnie, the first real band of the day, play on the main stage: their set of harmless busker’s fluff is so drab and lifeless the battery powered toy beats them hands down.  If it weren’t for a bit of lively, fluent flute from Glenda Huish, we’d have trouble staying conscious for the duration.  In fact, we spent most of the set pondering why they pronounce it “blinn Jonnie”.  So, is it not short for “blind”, then? Weird.

  

Simon Batten reminds us a little of Riverside alumna Chantelle Pike, with his rootsy elegance and subtle melodic twists, but his voice isn’t as enticing, and it’s left to the drum accompaniment to keep things lively.  Over on the main stage something odd is happening, not only as Secret Rivals play a relaxed set with the minimum of ADD bouncing and yelping, but as it sounds unexpectedly great.  These songs shouldn’t work in a hungover Sunday afternoon incarnation, but they do.  The vocals twine together well, and the drums are crisp, not longer sounding like a dog made of snares chasing its own tail round a cymbal warehouse like in the band’s early days.  It’s highly enjoyable, we just hope they don’t go getting all grown up on us.

In some ways, the only negative thing about The Grinding Young is how bleeding Oxford their polite, ornate bookish rocking is.  Then again, the best song we hear is “The King And The Knave”, a medieval murder ballad that sounds like brilliant a cross between Radiohead and Fairport Convention, and you couldn’t get much more Oxfordshire than that unless you had Jacqueline Du Pre doing a Mr Big medley.

From across the field, The Shapes (sadly unconnected with Micachu) have a fruity organ that makes them sound like Squeeze.  Up close they’re less bouncy, but they do have a keen ear for a hook, and some neat mandolin licks, and we’rer enjoying it, when they blow it all by saying, “We’re going to do an old Bob Dylan song, don’t know why”.  Jesus, if ever a statement summed up weekend Dads’ bands.  Don’t do anything as an artist unless you can defend it.  If we thought they’d done it just to annoy us, it would have been something...

Now, Undersmile, they know exactly why they’re doing what they do, and they also know that it will annoy a lot of people.  We love them, from the unexpected grooves hidden in their deathly slow doom, to the odd vocal harmonies, that are so microtonally awkward it sounds like one person singing through a broken chorus pedal.  We’d used the word “elemental” in our notes, and that was before the cold heavy rain stopped the exact second their set did: metal bands invoking Zeus are ten a penny, but only Undersmile can attract old Cloud Gatherer himself.

Swindlestock are just another in a huge line of decent Americana acts from Oxfordshire, and we have to wonder whether Arkansas is clogged with Supergrass tributes and morris sides to balance things out.  Anyway, you’d have to be a pretty grim individual not to find something likable about Swindlestock’s bottleneck and fiddle spattered tunes.  On the Second Stage Count Drachma have at least come up with a new folk music seam to strip mine, playing traditional Zulu songs.  Last time we saw them they were a well-drilled quartet, but today they’re a duo, playing bass and guitar, using the odd loop pedal to allow space for some sax and harmonica.  It’s a slapdash, slipshod, shoved together affair, but we find a lot more to like about it than last time.  Ollie Steadman (of Stornoway fame) may not have the most commanding voice ever, but spacious duo arrangements reveal that he does have a skill in the natural, conversational phrasing that much folk song demands.  Fewer members and less rehearsal seems to be the key for this band – but don’t tell any others.  

The MC tells us that Mogmatic have been trying to get a slot at Riverside since the very beginning, and they’ve finally relented.  This’ll be good, then.  Well, be fair, they’re better than the intro makes them sound, bashing out some big boots pub rock with minor Sabbath inflections, but they can’t hold our attention when Ran Kan Kan are on the main stage, because big latin bands will nearly always trump clunky blues rock quartets.  With a vast lineup that almost demands the title of orchestra, Ran Kan Kan prove very adept at balancing their sound, and never let too much colour swamp the primacy of their Afro-Cuban rhythms.  Admittedly, Ran Kan Kan are doing nothing new with their material, but as we think it’s never a bad time to hear a good rendition of Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va”, we’re very contented.  Bonus points to the trumpet player, for quoting “Black Magic Woman“ in their solo, offering us two Santana hits for the price of one.

Right next to the main stage, a Fire Service tent is offering the experience of being in a burning building, but from the outside it looks like a giant, surreal dry ice machine.  Over near the Second Stage, in a Bushcraft tent, some experts are showing tiny kids how to start campfires.  Some sort of cosmic balance is restored, you have to feel.  Our final visit to that end of the field rewards us with Skittle Alley favourites Superloose. Their banjo-picking tunes are sloppy and not hugely challenging, but their onstage giggles are infectious.  Having a laugh; there’s a good reason to make music, if you’re still reading, The Shapes.

Our day finishes with the excellent Brickwork Lizards.  As they play a mixture of 30s music hall, Hot Club jazz and North African melodies, you could easily imagine them tearing the roof off some NAAFI dance on the African front: not only would their music sound as good as it does today, but they’d have invented hip hop, too.  A brilliant end to our day, although there were still the pop treats of Dance A La Plage and Alphabet Backwards to go (Legal note: only one of these bands constitutes a “pop treat”).  Great to see Riverside bouncing back, with better sound than ever before, especially on the Second Stage.  Also, any festival that has Undersmile and Superloose on the same stage is alright with us – Riverside’s booking policy is a damn sight more adventurous than any number of big trendy promoters around the county, wouldn’t you say? 

Another great day out in Charlbury: King excellent.

Valentine's Scorecard

So, Vertigo is now the most popular film in history?  I prefer The Lady Vanishes and Marnie, I think, but all the same, good work.  To celebrate I watched a Hitchcock film that was new to me tonight, Shadow Of A Doubt.  It wasn't that great.  Pity.  Put me off my usual punning title-creation form, evidently.

CAMENA – VALENTINE AND THE SEA (Bear On A Bicycle free download single)

Jorge Luis Borges wrote a short – and we mean, like, paragraph short – story called “On Exactitude In Science”.  It riffed on an idea of Lewis Carroll’s concerning a 1:1 sized map, a map exactly the same size as the territory it described.  Just as the values of one generation are ignored or refuted by the next, in the story this cartographic marvel of one age becomes a later burden to the nation that once loved it, and they let it disintegrate, until the only fragments remaining exist in the desert, made into rough shelters by beggars and beasts. 

This story was brought to mind by the refrain “I’ve been looking at the world through a torn-up atlas” at the end of “Valentine And The Sea”, but in a way this tiny, sententious, crystalline little song seems fittingly Borgesian: it’s shorn of all peripheral decoration but it still feels lush, the lyrics are seemingly based on threadbare mythologies but end up enticingly mysterious.  It’s a strange track, a selection of barely related statements delivered in an intimate close harmony (at one point Saint Valentine seems to be swallowing the ocean, like the famous Chinese brother), over some glistening guitar and simple piano chords, and incredibly contemporary sounding, though delightfully sloppy, clicking drumstick rhythms.  It’s a gorgeous little jewel of a piece, and pulls off the clever trick of sounding exactly like Oxford pop in 2012, whilst also being fresh and invigorating: the sound of a wan, literate, asocial little brother locked up in Foals’ attic, perhaps.  The B side - if that terminology doesn’t show our age - “Monumentality”, is cut from exactly the same cloth, a few Beach Boys backing vocals and Moonie campfire handclaps tossed in along the way.  It’s as if someone had described a Fixers track to a library music hack and given them twenty minutes to knock up their own version.  It’s not quite as successful as “Valentine And The Sea”, but it still has a rough charm. 

If we were going to make a criticism of this excellent single, it’s that it seems to fall between two camps.  On one hand Camena could develop these pieces into a soothing organic groove something along the lines of Fridge, whereas on the other they could bolster the arrangements and turn them into proper songs – the line “I’ve been picking up dreams from my bedroom floor” reminds us a lot of early Spring Offensive, for example.   Then again, who wants music that makes taxonomic sense when these oddly shaped, inexplicable tunes demand one last listen to unlock their secrets?  As one of Oxford’s great pop bands once said, mysteries are good for you.

Truck 2012 Saturday Part 2

The programme tells us that things have “been a bit quiet” on the King Charles front between the execution of the English king and the arrival of the singer of the same name, which would be some of the worst promotional writing we’d ever read even if there hadn’t actually been a second King Charles to invalidate the point.  Still, we won’t hold that against him, as his set is good dumb fun.  His music is one of instant gratification, a melange of “Eye Of The Tiger” rhythms, huge vocal lines like protest chants, pseudo-Prince gestures, and hilariously awful hair.  Can’t argue with that. 

All sadly unlike British Sea Power, who always offer a heady mix of classic indie, literate lyrics and performance art, but always actually deliver a bunch of hollow anonymous songs, drably inflected vocals and some onstage shrubs.  Still, we’re bet they could do the Guardian cryptic.

Into the home straight with Three Trapped Tigers, and even as exhaustion kicks in, you can’t argue with a trio that sounds like a cross between Aphex Twin and King Crimson.  Using some serious chops to make music along classic IDM lines could be a vacuous muso exercise, but when there’s such elegance in the melancholic Plaid keyboard lines, such invention in the live drums, and a guitar pedal rack the size of a suburb, it’s futile to argue.  What’s great about the band is that, far from being some rockers who own a couple of techno LPs, they clearly understand the melancholy beauty of a Selected Ambient Works style synth line, whilst knowing precisely when it’s time to drop a fast clattering beat all over the top.  If they’ve never played on a bill with Squarepusher, somebody should rectify the fact, pronto.

The festival officially ends with The Temper Trap, but we find their show all puff and bluster, so we prefer to imagine otherwise.  They sound a little like Echo And The Bunnymen having a crack at Chaka Khan, and we feel as though it ought to be fun, but it simply isn’t.  It’s flat, and empty, and crass, and can we go home now, please?  So we do, and later, back in Oxford, on the night bus home, we hear two blokes talking about their plan for the summer.  “I’m not going to go to some festival where I’ve never heard of the bands”, claims one.  We would write him off as an fool, if he didn’t come up with the genius line, “The Red Hot Chili Peppers just remind me of washing up”. But, the point is, that Truck isn’t aimed at people like him.  The new organisers have done an amazing job of capturing the atmosphere of the best Trucks in years past: the crowd is friendly and varied, the site is perfectly balanced between intimacy and breathing space, and even the weather is about right.  Next year, hopefully they can capitalise on this success - and a sell out crowd, need we mention? – and take a couple more risks with the lineup.  At the very least, they could find someone, somewhere to make music whilst The Temper Trap are on, surely. 

Truck-A-Doodle-Done

Hand a bit better, but still twinging.  Who heard Belshazzar's Feast at the Prom two nights ago?  Kicked arse, my friends, kicked arse.



Truck 2012, Saturday

Saturday morning rolls around, and everyone’s sipping tea, eating bacon and peering through sunglasses.  In the old days, couldn’t you get a nice healthy pasta salad at Truck?  Now, it’s all pizza, curry, doughnuts and burgers.  Oh, come on, we can’t eat a burger for yet another meal.  We absolutely refuse.  Oh, go on then.  And stick some bacon and a fried egg in it too, whilst you’re there.

The See See start our non-cholesterol day with laddish indie psychedelia strung between Cast and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.  There’s quite a lot musically to recommend them, but the effect is spoilt by a desperate, shopworn swagger onstage.  Watching them is like idly flicking through a 90s copy of Loaded in the STD clinic waiting room.  We imagine.  Opening the main stage, Yellow Fever are proving that real stage presence comes naturally to a lucky few, even if they’re barely old enough to get into venues.  With a vast gaggle of young fans crowding the stage, and some rubbery, twitchy little tunes, the band remind us a little of the early days of The Dead Jerichos.  Impressive though the set is, they’re still finding their feet musically – some of the twiddly guitars clearly shoot for Foals but come up nearer to Level 42 – but when a band improves this much between every gig we see, we know it won’t be long before they write a track we can adore.

Banbury’s Pixel Fix, mind you, make Yellow Fever look ancient.  They put in a most commendable effort, but could do with coming out from The Arctic Monkeys’ shadow and developing the electronic elements.  If they hung around at the Second Stage they might have seen Toliesel, and picked up a few tips.  Their references might not be revolutionary – there’s a lot of the Americana with table manners we used to hear from The Epstein, and a little of Aztec Camera’s well-bred pop music in the mix – but they show that quality songwriters and musicians will always be worth listening to.

Plenty of experience in Flights Of Helios too, a band that grew from The Braindead Collective, and who have been in roughly ten trillion great Oxford acts.  Each.  They make windswept, open-ended pathos-pop, that moves between the dubby warmth of ambient popsters like Another Fine Day, and a darker shoegazing paranoia (with bits of The Dark Side Of The Moon laying about in between). Oddly for a band who developed from an improv project, there are a couple of moments that feel too formal – a disco hi-hat rhythm sounds slightly gratuitous at one point – but this is neverthelessone of the sets of the weekend, bursting with ideas.  The best moments feature Chris Beard’s fragile, melismatic vocal lines floating liturgically over hissing keyboards and fizzing guitar.  A man next to us explains how one track brought a tear to his eye, and that hadn’t happened since Babe II: Pig In The City.  He tells us all about his favourite scenes, too.  Lucky us.

We’re impressed by just how unreconstructed Kill It Kid’s priapic blues and scuzzy cock rock is.  They have good, honest heavy rock structures, and not one but two excellently coarse vocalists.  One Zeppelinised howl from either sex, nice touch.  However, when the chemical toilets are emptied during their set, and a vicious stench wafts across the crowd just as they sing “dirty water tastes so sweet”, we have to make an exit, in case cosmic irony starts playing more dangerous tricks.

The Last Republic are very boring.  Their light synth rock could be from the closing credits to an old brat pack movie, and even whilst you try to listen your brain keeps drifting onto other topics, no matter how idiotic.  So, anyway, apparently in Babe II there’s a really good slow-motion fire scene with clowns, and a part where “Mafia dogs turn the pig into a kind of Jesus”.

Jesus, time for a pint.  We’re ecstatic to see that this year the bars only serve organic ale and cider on tap, instead of pissy High Street lager; if Truck can find someone next year to sell us an espresso and a bottle of good claret, we might be really on to something.  Outside the bar we find some other journalists taking refuge from The Last Republic.  Hilariously, a snapper from a publication that shall remain nameless misunderstood the request for a security photo this year, and sent in a shot of The Skatalites to prove he was a music photographer.  If you saw a white man in his 30s trying to get backstage with an ID photo of an aging black ska musician, we know who it was.

Right, enough of this chatting, we need to go and see Crash Of Rhinos.  Their post-hardcore sound is definitely enticing, although they have too many subtle, thoughtful passages when what they really need is more...well, more rhino.  Over at Jamalot nothing much is happening, except for some little kids busting some funkily awful moves and three lubricated lads pulling off the tricky Three-Way Chest Bump manouevre, who jovially tell us to “fuck off” for reading the paper whilst dance music is playing.  Fair point, we concede...but we bet they never finished the Guardian cryptic crossword. 

We’ve enjoyed Emmy The Great a lot in the past, as a solo performer.  With a backing band her songs seem to have had the edges sheared off, and the lyrics lose some of their bite, and the whole thing comes off prettily quirky, like The Juliana Hatfield 3, so we go back to the Second Stage to see Man Like Me.  This proves to be one of the better decisions we’ve made in recent times.  What we find is three cheeky London lads shouting, throwing shapes and climbing up the tent rigging whilst the backing track plays what we suppose we should call post-grime, but actually sounds like Village People pastiches knocked up on some kid’s iPhone on the way over.  It’s terrible.  It’s brilliant.  It’s a euphoric mixture of early Beastie Boys, The Streets and some half-arsed entry into a T4 roadshow talent competition.  It’s truly brilliant.  It’s truly terrible.  As pop music should be.

65 Days Of Static are a band whom we’ve admired, but never quite understood before, but perhaps on a Man Like Me high, we find their crescendo-happy set deeply invigorating.  Synths buzz and massed percussion is crashed, like a Stomp cover of “Mentasm”.  It’s a set of pure gall and energy and we’re sudden – and  incredibly late - converts.

Lucy Rose makes some quite lovely and delicate music.  So far as we can tell.  Can’t get in to the tent, you see, so good for her.  Luckily, Mackating are at Jamalot making The Heavy Dexters look like amateurs by going on a full ninety minutes late, and with half the band missing.  So, OK, not a set for the annals, but the interplay between the buoyant dancehall delivery of Fireocious and Ilodica’s sweet Horace Andy quaver is delicious.  It’s also great when Fireocious stops the band mid-song, warning “Put some pace in it, bloodclot!”, like we’re witnessing a reggae Totale’s Turns.