Belting It Out

A festival in a Christian youth club. A not particularly interesting review with a shit pun for the title. Hardly a marriage made in heaven.

BELOW THE BELT ALL-DAYER, The Mish, 23/11/08


Never let it be said that we don’t enjoy finding new musical experiences, in addition to the usual Friday night down The Sheaf, but who seriously would have thought we’d find ourselves at an all-dayer on a Sunday. In a youth club! Run by a church!! With no bar!!! Once we got over the weirdness of it all, we decided that The Mish, on St Clements, is a rather lovely little place, with a decent sound system and a relaxed friendly atmosphere. It’s like falling into some alternate universe where The Cellar is clean and comfy, and serves mugs of coffee.

G-Block kick things off with panache, but seem to be suffering from that hip hop epidemic, Crewitis, which causes an uncomfortable swelling of the MC roster. There are so many rappers onstage we don’t even notice one of them till he steps from the shadows to take the mike, and although there’s a wide range of styles on offer, not to mention some real talent bubbling under, the entire set feels unfocused and fragmented, with so many vocalists strung together. A jam on a Fugees rhythm, whilst a little too soft-centred to do them justice, shows what G-Block can do when things are tidied up. Ultimately the set tails off, primarily because one unimaginatively strummed guitar can never take the place of a full fat beat, but there’s more than enough potential here to make it worth remembering the name G-Block.

Sadly Vultures don’t reprise their Charlbury set, but instead opt to play in a two guitar, semi-acoustic duo formation that’s relaxing but hardly revolutionary. The vocals are still sweet and catchy, and it sounds not unlike The La’s playing some sort of post-hoedown chill out session, but this is not the sort of stuff to set your Sunday aflame.

The excellent Jon Fletcher revives proceedings with a show that just oozes gigging experience: it’s not just his assured guitar fingering or his loose unhurried vocals that show he’s a past master at this sort of thing, but it’s the off the cuff banter that draws everyone together and manages to make the event feel like an intimate party for the first time that day….which is exactly how a basement full of sofas and hot chocolate should feel on a cold winter’s day. “Hold My Breath” reminds us of Bert Jansch’s unflustered melancholia, and the whole set balances implausibly between introspection and cheekiness in a thoroughly winning fashion.

Excellence of a different sort when event organisers Baby Gravy take the stage, mixing Gang Of Four’s stutter funk with the glorious vacuity of Gwen Stefani’s strip-lit mall pop. There’s plenty of fuzzy early 80s awkwardness here, of the sort you can find clogging the pages of Artrocker, but there’s also an intensity in the performance that other neo-wave poseurs lack (the effect isn’t harmed by the fact it’s bloody loud!). Admittedly the rhythms sometimes stumble when they should bounce, but when the buzzing keyboards stomp inexorably over everything like a giant BBC “B” sprite and the declamatory vocals start thumping at your eardrums, you know that these tiny details don’t matter.

Mr Shaodow pops up unexpectedly to crack out a tune with Baby Gravy, and treat us to his new single, “Grime”. It such a pleasure to see that his confidence has grown to match his wordplay over the past couple of years, and where once we saw him stuttering like an inexperienced comedian between tracks, now we see him working a room to perfection – even if that room is mostly empty and enjoying a nice sit down.

Rambunctious punk pop should have been the ideal chaser to this heady double act, but somehow Among The Giants have missed the target. The lumpy, chugging music is passable, but is let down by the horrible vocal foghorn honking all over it. If he really tried hard, the singer could sound like a bladdered trucker offering you a fight on George Street, but at the moment he’s slightly less charming. Still, nice to have something to aim for, eh?

Just as our thoughts are turning longingly to a Sunday roast, The Repeats cap the afternoon off immaculately. Imagine, if you will, a fizzy pop version of Talking Heads, sprinkled with rubbery bass and spindly guitar that could have been borrowed from Battles or Foals, but reminds us more of Ghanaian hi-life and township jive. There are even some unexpectedly jaunty keyboards that could have come from some ancient stadium gig by Paul Simon, 10CC or even Genesis. Admittedly, The Repeats have so many ideas laying around they do occasionally trip over them, and the vocalist could probably push himself a touch harder but the whole effect is as intoxicating as you’d expect an arch indie band featuring a cowbell and clave breakdown to be. A band to actively seek out.

And sadly, here our festival ended, though there were four acts left to entertain the crowd – which never got particularly large, but never lost its friendly atmosphere – and we leave the Mish hoping that our next Below The Belt experience is not too far away. And features some beer, naturally.

Charlbury Pt 2

CHARLBURY RIVERSIDE 2008

SUNDAY

Strolling past a random tent we find wizard-bearded Jeremy Hughes picking out some bucolic instrumentals on his guitar. He’s not officially part of the lineup, but frankly he’s better than at least half of the stuff we saw yesterday, and five minutes in his company is five minutes well spent. Plus you can’t deny he looks the part. It’s a neat start to a far more satisfying day of music; plus the sun stays out. It’s not the sort of thing we’d normally do, but permit us to quote a poem, in full:

The music comes and goes on the wind,
Comes and goes on the brain.

This was Thom Gunn’s take on Jefferson Airplane, and it could easily refer to The Tim May Band’s set on the main stage Their lilting folky AOR is expertly controlled and performed with some panache, but ultimately proves too polite to make much impression on us, even whilst we have to give them credit for their chops. The lyric “Nice to meet you, I must be going”, however, reminds us painfully of Phil Collins, so they blow it at the last hurdle.

I suppose it’s unhealthy prejudice, but forgive us for thinking that Tamara Parsons-Baker was going to be chortling jodhpurred lass singing nasal, plummy songs about palomino geldings. Imagine our surprise in being confronted with a beautifully clear voice that trickles through the air like a limpid stream above some subtle guitar. The first name that springs to mind is Laima Bite, even though some of the wispy Global Traveller lyrics remind us more of Jessica Goyder. There’s a slight danger of the featherlight tunes getting lost in the breeze, but this is still a great little start to the Second Stage’s day.

Vultures quickly ramp up the tempo with a series of early 60s pop nuggets that have approximately one riff and about 5 lyrics between them. This is not a criticism, in case you were concerned, and it’s like early Kinks played with Arctic Monkeys bounce and insouciance. There’s something about the way the drummer innocently stabs at the snare like it’s 1963 rather than whacking round the toms like it’s 1975 that puts a huge spring in our step.

The farcically named Bommerillo would have to do a lot to kill our mood, and their generic country rock is well turned and cheery even as it’s forgettable. On a Truck stage this wouldn’t last five minutes, but for now it’ll serve. A charming Californian bluegrass banjo player pours us a glass of homebrew and explains that US folk songs are exactly the same as English folksongs, “except at the end they hang the fucker”. Goodbye moral ambiguity. It turns out that Americans wanted simple endings long before Hollywood arrived.

We chat to Banjo Boy quite happily during Bourbon Roses’ set, as their straight up blues has little to offer, beyond some really rather decent harp playing (you know which sort of harp, don’t make me come down there). Once again, dubious non-native accents seem to be pretty common here on the Second Stage – we wonder if American folk musicians try to pretend that they’re Cornish…or whether we should "hang the fucker"

“Tell me, Captain Strange, won’t you be my lover?”. This next band might have taken their name from “I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper”, one of our favourite camp SciFi disco romps (believe me, we’ve got a list), but they haven’t quite captured the fun with their sax-flecked ska-tinged cabaret rock. It’s quite like The Drugsquad with half the band missing, and maybe some fleshing out of the sound could reap dividends.The spirit is there, but most of the music isn’t.

We’re not 100% convinced by Stuart Turner’s growly voice – remember, we saw Mephisto Grande right here just 24 hours ago – but his chugging rockabilly guitar, replete with slapback sound, is a cracker. Banjo Boy offers Seasick Steve as a reference point, which can hardly be sneezed at – we certainly respect Stuart’s ability to lock into a groove and let his rhythms do the talking.

Toby is “the hottest new talent to come out of Oxford this year,” according to the MC. Never heard of him, we must admit. We do love to discover other pockets of music fan beyond our immediate East Oxford Mafia circle, but in this case they’re welcome to keep Toby. The boy can sing, we’ll give him that, but his dull slightly latin songs recall Ben Harper at his weediest, and even Jack Johnson (anecdote: a couple of years ago we overheard two teenage girls in a record shop excitedly discussing their purchase of the Jack Johnson album; we thought they meant the Miles Davis LP of the same name, and were on the brink of deciding that the young weren’t complete idiots, until we discovered he was just some strumming fucker). Toby’s music is accomplished, but only the way that building a model of Minas Tirith from lolly sticks is: accomplished, but pointless and faintly embarrassing. For a performer who’s not yet old enough to visit the beer tent, he has plenty of talent, but at the moment it is being squandered.

We should have watched Gunbunny instead, who seem to have improved roughly tenfold, if the brief snatch of their set we caught was indicative. Seriously tight and meaty grunge, it sounds like all of Mudhoney’s Superfuzz Bigmuff played at once. Do people still call this The Eynsham Sound?Hang on, did they ever call it The Eynsham Sound outside of our tiny mind?

Chantelle Pike has all sorts of elisions and vocal trills in her arsenal, but never pushes them too far, like certain R n B divas we could mention (at least we would if we could tell which one was which). Maybe her songs aren’t all winners, but “Save Me” for one puts us happily in mind of Juliet Turner, and she deserves her high billing.

Before the main stage home stretch we pop in on Deviant Amps, whose cheeky monkey zydeco pop is 50% The Ralfe Band, and 50% a bloody big mess. Good fun, though, and the Klub Kak contingent are dancing in force, which is entertainment in itself.

With their theatrical pomp, natural sense of drama and Woody’s intricate keys, Borderville burst onto the stage like a cross between ELP and Alvin Stardust. We’ll be frank, we have seen better sets from them, but full marks for the audacity of playing a lachrymose “Send In The Clowns” to an audience who were expecting to leap about to The (cancelled) Moneyshots…and then following it up with some Leonard Cohen. So, not up to their own high standard, but still light years ahead of most of the lineup.

It’s left to Witches to wrap up proceedings. At first we thought they’d blown it, the opening two numbers sounding rather like empty stadium bombast, but thankfully they soon settled into their dark, brooding mariachi menace; in fact they build to quite some heights of intensity, Dave at one point hopping round the stage waving some red maracas, looking for all the world like an air traffic controller who’s busting for the loo. “In The Chaos Of A Friday Night” is a jet black lump of insidious passion, which is balanced by a harpsichord led tune that comes off like a baroque consort playing 80s Tangerine Dream, and over it all Benek’s trumpet lines arc poetically. There aren’t many local bands who could take lineup changes in their stride like this and still keep soaring onwards.

And with that, it’s off to the station to get the train (except we find a lift on the way, woohoo!), satisfied with another Charlbury. We can’t pretend the music was as good as last year, and as noted The Beard Museum’s input was much mourned, but still we appreciate the enormous effort that has gone into creating a free weekend of entertainment, just for us. And, criticisms aside, we’d far rather be here for nowt than in Wakestock for £100+. We’ll be there in 2009, maybe we’ll bump into some of you; watch out for Banjo Boy’s homebrew, though, it’s a bit cheeky.