The Loose Salute
looks like part of a cryptic crossword clue (is “EU salt” a thing?), but is
actually a laid-back Americana outfit.
Truck ain’t short of them, of course – there are probably more dobros
than bleeding toilets onsite this year – but the band stands out with some ace
sleepy, syrupy vocals and lap steel lines arcing across the songs like distant
flares in a winter sky.
We’ve never been that excited by their Ghostbox For Dummies schtick, but we
have to say that Public Service
Broadcasting do have a knack for programming a good 1989 drum and sample
pattern and adding stadium krautrock moves.
The expansion to a quartet makes this a more satisfying set than last year’s
Audioscope headline, and we leave cautiously in favour.
Tellingly, Bo
Ningen is the only act for whom the programme compiler couldn’t find any
other bands to reference. Perhaps we shouldn’t compare them to musicians, but
to forces of nature. With arcane hand
gestures, manically garbled lyrics and streaming hair entangled in fretboards,
the quartet resemble demon witches, the bassist and vocalist particularly
looking like someone has shoved some haunted coathangers into a black
windsock. Although they start somewhat
tentatively, they soon explode, and the set concludes with waves of coruscating
noise and a bass wielded like a sacramental axe. The silly fake snow machines that have been
infuriating us all day in the Barn are left off for the entirety of the set:
fun time is over, mortals, taste the ritual.
We drop in on Temples,
but really they can’t complete with the psych punk noise still ringing in our
ears, so we grab another pint or two and head back to the Market stage for Peter Cook & The Light. Now, Joy Division are one of the truly great
British bands, New Order are not short of a classic or two, and Peter Hook’s
aggressively melodic bass playing was a big component of these, but sadly his
voice is just rubbish, in the least interesting way possible. We only keep from dropping off by imagining
that we’re watching Peter Cook &
The Light (“She’s lost control again, Dud”.
“Bloody Greta Garbo!”). This
music deserves celebrating, but a slightly moribund trot through the back catalogue
isn’t the best method of doing so.
A far more welcome hors d’ouevre to the headline set
comes from Truck favourite Piney Gir,
in a sugary whirlwind of pirouetting skeletons and lollipop percussion and a
polka dot frock and kids onstage and a bumblebee costume and synchronised
tambourines and girlpop and fieldmice and grins and the glorious “Greetings,
Salutations, Goodbye” and not enough synths.
Basement Jaxx
are billed as Truck’s “first festival headliner”, which seems like splitting
hairs and evidence of one contract clause too many, but blimey, they don’t half
bring things to a conclusion. The band
has taken the concept of a “soul revue”, and run with it to create a “house
panto”. There are guys in gorilla suits
and a couple of girls done up like the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of soul
sisterhood, and a huge woman with a huge voice getting all gospel pop on us
whilst looking uncannily like the fortune teller from Monkey Island. The single
segue of a show contains hits and equally interesting connecting material,
reliably banging beats, an interestingly stripped back “Romeo” and even a
timbales solo. The band never revisited
on the dense layered intrigue of their debut LP - in a reminder how
experimental they were, The Wire
listed Remedy in their top 20 releases
of 1999, just above Captain Beefheart and The Fall! – and we never expected
anything other than crowd-pleasing from this set, but it is still a beautifully
put together show and a barrelful of fun.
What else should we have expected from the people who had psychotic
monkeys run amok over Gary Numan riffs and now have a video featuring a
twerkbot? First festival headliner? Job most emphatically done.
And with that we head off into the night: ha, press
parking, eat dust, suckers! It has been
a very enjoyable Truck, full of classic moves and exciting new ideas. Some people will doubtless say that Basement
Jaxx were too commercial, but frankly we’ve yawned through enough worthy
country acts and third tier indie warhorses over the years to welcome a bit of
showmanship. This was the busiest Truck
to date, which is great, but frankly it also sometimes felt like it: nobody
should have to miss a whole set to have a piddle. Truck has always treated people well, and not
as cash-haemorrhaging cattle, as witnessed by the reasonable catering prices,
the fact that a lot of the trading positions are given to charities when
doubtless more revenue could be raised elsewhere, and the fact that we walked
in with a bag stuffed with beers.
There’s talk of the festival getting bigger in 2016. That sounds interesting, but the organisors
must make sure that they retain the respect for artists and customers that
Truck has always been synonymous with.
Otherwise, if they’re not careful, one day we might be pinpointing the
moment Truck died – and unlike Paul McCartney, it won’t be a paranoid
fantasy.
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