Truck 2012 Friday Pt 2

We pop in on Delta Alaska, who are like nothing else than a blythe AOR version of Oxford’s Scrappy-Doo pop wastrels, Secret Rivals, and end up with Josh Kumra, a young man with a surprisingly eloquent vocal delivery, who isn’t above showboating or swiping a tune form MGMT to keep the party going.  Not a chart-topping act we expected to get excited about, but Josh is a talented, professional performer who deserves to capitalise on his sudden success.

Oh, and, speaking of which.  Late on Saturday the staff at the Rapture merchandise tent tell us they’ve not sold a Fixers album all day.  Inconceivable when this outstanding, gorgeous record has only recently been released after a long delay?  If you saw their set, then no.  A hundred times, no. As if to prove our claim that past glories can never be relived, Fixers contrast last year’s joyous, epochal Truck performance with what can most generously be described as a wonky drunken stumble somewhere in the rough vicinity of their songs.  Jack Goldstein spends some while slurring into the mike about how he isn’t sure if this is a “festival” or a “festiVAL!”  The set is a hiLARious disasTER, put the random emphases where you like, Jack, old son.

Over in the Barn, Spring Offensive are snatching Fixers’ local hero crown, sharpening up the angular points, and dousing it in pop sugar.    They have a knack of writing vast music with the drastic emotional pull of a Hollywood blockbuster, and making them sound subtly intimate.  It’s a trick Clock Opera could do with learning, as their set is far from bad, building heart-wrenching songs on slightly fidgety rhythms, but it becomes two dimensional and predictable long before we wander away.

Jamalot is a small tent hosting DJs and a few live acts – it also has a couple of very comfy sofas, which we make grateful use of once or twice over the course of the festival – although it’s hard to know who’s on when.  We’re not sure if this is because a dance tent is on the periphery of the organisers’ concerns, or because the sort of people who book a stage like that don’t quite get round to arranging the acts before the programme copy deadline.  Judging by the timetable outside the tent, which is so randomly inaccurate it was probably created by John Cage with the I Ching and a box of twelve inches, we lean towards the latter interpretation.  We do, however, manage to see funky jazz outfit The Heavy Dexters, over an hour later than advertised.  Like the Disco Pimps, they could do with adding some proper filth to their sound, but their saxophonist does have lovely, conversational phrasing, and they also do a pretty cheeky arrangement of “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, so it’s a close but clear victory at the final count.

The very second their set is finished, beatboxer Pieman takes over.  It takes us a few bars to realise the chunky beats are coming from a man’s mouth, not the DJ.  Of course, as with most beatboxing, turntablism - or arguably live hip hop in general - the show is a showcase of techniques and effects rather than a cohesive artistic statement, but in the face of someone who can make a righteously flatulent dubstep bass like that with their lips, our criticisms evaporate.  Top stuff.

Nipping back to the Barn we hear what sounds like a cross between metal and techstep drum ‘n’ bass from Turbowolf.  Then the track stops and we think we must have imagined it.  Regardless, the rest of their greasy cartoon heavy rock is infectious fun.

Tim Minchin isn’t funny, and The Guillemots don’t really seem to be delivering, probably due to Fyfe Dangerfield’s throat infection, so we return to the Barn for Future Of The Left.  We think we’re scribbling lots of insightful notes about their angular hardcore, but in the morning we discover we’ve just written “Grrrrrr” for twelve pages.  Two things are sure: a) when they add a buzzing, two finger keyboard to their sound, it’s like a hideously brilliant cross between Bis and Atari Teenage Riot, b) when they finish with an unfeasibly distorted, disgusted and dystopian Mclusky track, it literally recalibrates our ears so that we can’t listen to Mystery Jets.  Seriously, don’t recall any of it.  We think they were probably harmless and vapid and bouncy and perfectly acceptable, but we have no real memory of doing anything whilst they’re on except replaying the preceding ten minutes in our minds. 

Sing it.

Y-Fronted

I was going to write a big intro to this post, but I've sprained my left wrist and typing hurts. Much of this review appears in this month's issue of Nightshift.

TRUCK, Hill Fm, Steventon, 20-1/7/12

You can never go back, ladies and gentlemen.  You can’t step into the same river twice.  Or the same rank slurry puddle, for that matter.  This year’s Truck festival, salvaged after last year’s financial shortfall by the people behind Y-Not Festival in Derbyshire, has taken a Back To Basics approach in its promotion.  There’s clearly logic to that, but can people stop talking about the triumphant return of the Barn, please?  We don’t mind the damp faecal reek so much, but the atrocious acoustics make it a poor place to perform live music; fine as a means to an end in a farmyard festival, of course, but hardly a selling point.  And this is our problem with back-harking halcyonism, it normally comes intertwined with a conservative outlook.  Of course Truck memories are about buying doughnuts from the vicar and singing along to Biffy Clyro and Supergrass, but they’re also about discovering such improbable wonder as epically plastic syngoths Motormark, recorder quintet Consortium5, maximalist hipsters Islet, homespun piano-tinkler Luke Smith and whatever the hell you want to describe Thomas Truax as.  The big question looming over the 15^th Truck festival was, could they capture the subtle magic of the event along with the broad flavours?

Steventon locals Lost Dogs make such queries feel meaningless.  Like ancient, stoic trees watching over human concerns and making them seem petty and ephemeral, their harp-blowin’ blooze-rockin’ songs about whiskey, devil women and problems with carburettor maintenance in the 1973 Plymouth Baracuda (probably) is the true sound of rural Oxfordshire, has been for decades, and shall be until the last trump, no matter how much we argue about Johnnies come lately like Truck.  It’s tempting to call Lost Dogs unoriginal, or even culturally negligible, but they’re simply good fun, and we’ll take that any day.

This year’s error-ridden programme makes a profound fluff by likening Gabriel Minnikin to Brazilian frazzle-heads Os Mutantes.  We later realise that the entire description has been accidentally pasted from that of a different act, but the damage is done, and we feel so deflated by the demure, Gram Parsons style Americana on display, that we find it difficult to engage with Minnikin, even though he’s probably not bad.

Ute might have had a clear Radiohead influence, but offspring band The Grinding Young have a less yearning sound that’s more like a British Pavement.  There are big gestures, some good ideas, and a clarinet on a display.  There are also some ill-advised bow ties, but they pale in comparison with other fashion errors we see round the festival, from mystifyingly prevalent woodland animal costumes to a very brave, and probably quite warm, PVC fetish cop outfit.  Special kudos to the cross-dressing pint-puller who is still resplendent in his glamour gown years and years after the other Truck barstaff gave up on the idea.  Keep living the dream.

And if you want to wear something unsuitable and parade round a field giving nary a fuck, you could do a lot worse than find Alphabet Backwards providing the fizzy pop soundtrack. Along with the slithery synth lines and the impossibly catchy vocal hooks, this year they also share with us the name of their favourite weatherman.  Then again, judging by the music, surely every second of their lives is glorious Bank Holiday sunshine, right?

The rough opposite of Poledo, whose club-footed grunge is dour-faced, and about fifty times less well played.  They whine and stumble their way through a few snot-nosed tracks on the Barn stage, and we suppose that they might have a petulant sort of power in a smaller setting, but we slip away to watch something more vibrant in the shape of Kill Murray, who aren’t afraid of a bit of toned rock musculature under their pop melodies.  They boast plenty of stadium endings and some vocal lines so vast and emotive you’re not sure whether they’re nicked from Pablo Honey or The Best Of A-Ha, making them an excellent band for a summer afternoon.

It’s always been a Truck trend to have epic, energy-laden bands in smaller tents, whilst grown-up, relaxed musicians while away the afternoon on the main stage, and Michele Stodart, formerly of The Magic Numbers continues this tradition.  Her songs don’t do much for us, but her voice is low and friendly, creating a warm zone like a fondly remembered teacher or Test Match Special.  She’s a bit like Tanita Tikaram without the A Levels.

Country duo The Hi & Lo have a pleasing sound of relaxed rustic simplicity at the Second Stage – it’s almost as if they’re inviting you to join in and hum your own parts – but it’s The Dead Jerichos whose sense of space is most telling.  In a way it’s sad that this is their final show, but parts of this set, all guitar delay and airy rhythms, remind us of how much they’ve changed since the whirlwinds of sweat and cheap lager at their early gigs.  We’re very interested to see where they end up next.

Vadoinmessico make a very pleasant summery pop music, but they’re the people who are actually supposed to sound like Os Mutantes, and they still don’t so we shut down in a reviewer’s sulk, only to wake up for the start of Federation Of The Disco Pimp, who threaten to supply that sought after experience, a good Truck funk act.  Despite a very sharp horn section, they still don’t have the scuzz and excitement we crave: great funk is like being given a mad drunken tour of a foreign city’s best, dingiest night spots, by a dodgy local you just met, and whom you're sure is your new best friend, even while you're wondering whether they’re going to stab you in the face down the next alleyway.

The Spring And The Book

Trying to write something interesting here, but it's hard, because I'm listening to an LP of poetry that my friend found on the street.  It's quite good.  Thom Gunn's full of crap, though, isn't he?

SPRING OFFENSIVE/ COUNT DRACHMA/ ALL WE ARE, St Barnabas Church, 14/6/12

The priest at St Barnabas gets a birthday cards made from cereal boxes.  Not the sort of thing we find out at most gigs, but the parish magazine keeps us diverted in St Barnabas’ whilst we wait for Liverpool’s All We Are to locate the venue.  Ironically for a band who aren’t on time, they’re painfully “now”, laying well brought up Beach Boys vocal lines over quietly malleted toms and light guitar noise in an introverted indie style, like Fleet Foxes having a go at being Sigur Ros, or a grown up version of Fixers at a farmers' market sipping carrot juice, instead of a heady cocktail of LSD and reverb.   All We Are’s sound fits a beautiful church; it’s not just their sepulchral elegance, but because all these smiles and handclaps make them look like trendy 80s vicars.

Count Drachma, a Stornoway spin off, present their take on traditional Zulu songs.  The fiddle licks and excellent cajon rhythms give the set a swinging zydeco air, whilst the vocal lines have the apparently effortless waft of much great folk music.  Perhaps the band could do with more bite, and the vocals more authority, but for a recently formed, extra-curricular outfit, it’s rather good.  In fact, it’s precisely rather good, and probably not destined to set anyone aflame.

Unlike Spring Offensive, whose music is as heart-wrangling and emotionally wrought as it is possible for pop music to be.  Always an excellent band, in the past our criticism has been that they push their climaxes too hard, forcing their songs to one more crescendo.  But not any more.  Tonight, even in older songs, each sonic pinnacle is entirely earned, each huge chorus blossoming naturally.  Part of this is down to the guitar parts, which now seem to owe more to Stars Of The Lid or Mogwai than Youthmovies, slowly burning then crashing in fizzing waves.  The drums, too, have a haunted clockwork eeriness where once they thumped a bold tattoo. If evidence were needed that this is a band at the height of their powers, check the arrangements, subtle alterations to the songs that use the natural reverb of the church to magnify every facet. 

A band of vision and hard graft, Spring Offensive look as though they can achieve anything after tonight’s celebration of beautifully controlled, twitchy romanticism.  There are light boxes everywhere, broadcasting couplets like some Barbara Kruger rip off, but it’s the piles of books on the floor that intrigue us.  We pick one up, and out falls a newspaper clipping from 1825, which we slip into our pocket.  That’s Spring Offensive for you: they make big gestures, but it’s the tiny surprises that you take away with you.