Steventones

Most of this stuff is in the latest Nutshaft.  There are a few dashed off dismissive criticisms that were cut, to make the review more positive.  It was a good festival, I enjoyed it more than last eyar, but by God, there was a lot of incredibly average music on the bill (and a lot of people going non-average mental for it, inexplicably).

Funny how awful I found Ady Suleiman this year, last time I saw him I thought he was at least acceptable.

TRUCK, Hill Farm, Steventon, 15-17/7/16

“We’re running two hours behind,” says the engineer at the Gorwelion Horizons stage, “and twenty minutes ahead”.  Oh, thanks, that’s – wait, what?  Have we entered some sort of South Oxfordshire Twilight Zone where normal rules don’t apply?  Is Didcot power station, the slow dismantling of which continues with a controlled explosion partway through the festival, some sort of mystical key that keeps the laws of logic and science in place?  Looks like it, fellow Truck travellers, looks like it.  How else do we explain the fact that there are 2500 more people here than in 2015, and yet the site feels open and uncluttered, and there are very few queues?  That the ecstasy of a crowd’s response over the weekend seems inversely related to our ability to remember the music?  That the amount we can enjoy the event doesn’t really seem to be linked to the quality of the line-up?  That a pint of Hobgoblin is about the same price as it is on George Street, and Truck still allows you to bring your own drinks, whilst other festivals claim they need to charge six quid a pop?  Is everything topsy-turvy in this field?

Even getting in confuses us, as we have to come past the main stage, but then walk the entire length of the site before doubling back, meaning that most of our experience of Puma Rosa comes drifting on the breeze.  It’s good stuff, though, like a chunked up Candy Says with a brief trip into The Sugarcubes’ witchy scarepop.  The charming chaps at Retro-bution Gaming, who are offering Truckers the chance to relive some classic console fun over the weekend, are surprised by our knowledge of the Neo Geo and that our definition of “retro” means Chuckie Egg and text adventures, so before we can feel any older, we sneak across to the BBC Introducing Virgins stage for some less contentious classic japes from Kancho!  Their two man rock laced with exhortative vocals brings up a marriage between departed locals 50ft Panda and Days Of Grace, but such retro-referencing is unimportant.  What’s important is the fat riffs stomping over the field like corned beef golems with murderous intent.

Monarks don’t manage to kick things into gear nearly as well, resembling an emoier Six. By Seven.  There’s nothing wrong with their set, but it’s unconvincing, like getting a telegram reading “Rock the fuck out” delivered on a silver platter by an aging asthmatic royal retainer.

The main stage seems to be home to some pretty shocking nonsense at this year’s festival, and indeed, the younger clued-up audience seems to treat the Market stage as the place to be, but Ady Suleiman has got to be about the most egregious offender, with his cruddy unplugged Jamiraquoid reggae soul fluff fouling up the air.  On this evidence it wasn’t Curiosity Killed The Cat.  It was shame.  Still, at least Ady has some songs and only stays onstage for thirty minutes, whereas at the other end of the field there’s a great big trailer full of Boss salespeople in which a man in a stupid patchwork cap plays inane blues licks constantly for the entire weekend.  If Nightshift were rich we would have just strolled up, bought every piece of mojo artillery in the place, and then smashed it up, set it on fire and used it to cook marshmallows for the Rotary Club volunteers.

They may have trouble understanding numbers, but once again the BBC Cymru Gorwelion Horizons tent hides some of the festival’s gems.  Not only do Cut Ribbons provide a lovely antidote to the fretwank fraternity – “I don’t think this guitar can go in E, let’s do a different song” – but they play percolated pop laced with melody that resembles Stereolab without the krautrock, or the glory days of Alphabet Backwards when they were all about sherbet and heartache.  Cool Michael Nesmith/Benny from Crossroads woolly hat, too.

We take a quick visit to the kids’ tent, where we find a man dressed as a sheriff sitting in the dirt and singing a very slow, dirge version of “I Get A Kick Out Of You”, like a clown having a break-down, and we decide that the very young have far more taste than any of us, especially anyone aged 16-22, who should be setting the world aflame with music.  Take Homeplanetearth, a not entirely unpleasant but far from weighty young crusty-pop ensemble who make us think of Back To The Planet.  And we’ve not thought of Back To The Planet since 1993.  How blissful those 23 years have been.  Bastards.

Amazons are like The Presidents Of The USA via Then Jericho, except crapper, so we make a trip into The Barn, which now seems to be pretty much sidelined as a stage and which is generally empty all weekend – although perhaps nobody can stand to run the gauntlet past Big Billy Twiddlebollocks and his Boss Box of Bad Blues.  Forty Four Hours weren’t strictly worth the effort, but they are at least interesting, the two of them dressed in black and ranting politely over wistful piano chords and thin drum machines like Richard Clayderman’s audition to join Atari teenage Riot.  Then we notice the boys are twins, and so we’re left with the image of Jedward: The Rehab Years.

People are not walking, they are running towards the Market tent for The Magic Gang, cramming in and dancing like it’s 1999 and it’s going out of fashion and nobody’s watching and there’s no tomorrow.  We’ve seriously not seen this many people crammed into a space since we went to the coffee stall: there are 8 of them stuffed behind that table, but we still have to ask 4 times to get a cuppa?  Is it a test? 

Truck used to be a huge proponent of metal, and whilst Brighton’s Black Peaks don’t signal a return to past interests, they are the only decent heavy band we’ve seen at Hill Farm for about 3 years.  They take the most acceptable parts of noughties metal and weld them firmly to a thrash chassis before spraying it all with the sort Kerrangular post-post-rock we hear a lot of nowadays, and that’s all just fine, but it’s Will Gardner’s vocals that floor us.  His harried screams and guttural growls are like a vortex of crows, and he inspires a proper old-fashioned mosh pit in the packed Nest tent from old-school metallers and members of The Club That Cannot Be Shamed.

The local presence is strong at this year’s festival, but Lucy Leave possibly take the crown.  Their crazing paving pop brings together prog, psych and punk with Blur’s sense of a good tune, whilst the drumming is astonishingly frenetic and jazzy, like Gene Krupa squashing ants for money.   If you wondered what it would sound like if Stump, Tiger, Neu! and Hawkwind got together down the pub for a pint of mild and a game of astronomy dominoes, Lucy Leave’s “40 Years” will give you an inkling.

As if they’ve been playing too much Tekken at the Retro-bution tent, two bands in succession take us back to the early 90s.  Glitched give us politics, anger and syndrums in a way that should make Forty Four Hours hang their heads in shame if they’re still backstage at the Barn, and DMAs relive that brief moment before Oasis became a tedious brand, when they were still an intriguing mixture of influences culled from diverse sources like the Roses, shoegaze, The Who and Flowered Up.  Except, in place of The Beatles DMAs seem to have venerated Simple Minds and The Housemartins.  That’s odd and not always successful, but they make a good case for themselves, and everyone in the tent seems to know the words, so fair enough.  Plus, the acoustic guitarist looks as though he’s got everyone else’s coats on, perhaps he lost a bet.