Truck 2011 Saturday

Here we go, part 2. Saturday at Truck. I'm going to eat a pizza soon, and I'm going to have it with spinach leaves and hummus, and just maybe a pint of beer. Then tomorrow I'm going to see the glorious Stornoway (it does mean I'll have to see the rubbish Dreaming Spires, whom I avoided at Truck), and Sunday I'm going to see the Vorticist show at the tate befopre it closes. I can't see why you'd want to knwo this, but I've told been told this site isn't strictly a blog, so I thought I'd add some meaningless eprsonal info. I'm currently wearing dark blue briefs.

Were we slightly critical of the gentrification of Truck’s catering earlier? Opinions change on Saturday morning when we find we can get a proper coffee and some orange juice a few feet from the tent, which balances out the burger we had for dinner. Chav for supper and middle class for breakfast, that’s our motto! What’s that? Lunch? No time for it, we’d rather visit the Butts ale stall, still the non-musical highlight of Truck. Great service, great beer and it costs £2.80 a pint. Two pounds bastard eighty! It’s akin to a miracle. We’re also told by parents that it would be worth our while to borrow a child just to experience Roustabout Theatre’s My Secret Garden, a weird mixture of improvised theatre and archaeology. Well, maybe not, but we do drop in on Nick Cope, who is entertaining some pre-schoolers with his chirpy activity songs. “Stand on one leg”, “Let’s pretend we’re moles”. Not so much later we find ourselves in the presence of Alphabet Backwards, whose music is really the same thing, for those slightly older. “Imagine you’ve just passed your driving test”, “Pretend you just got off with another sixth former”. Unashamedly perky pop, delivered with unashamed chops, it’s pity you don’t see this mix more often. A 21st century Squeeze.

The more spacious Truck layout has enticed us to spend more time away from the main stages, and we are very impressed with some of the Cabaret Clandestino bookings. Ex-Oxonian Face0meter delivers his wordy alt folk with some charm. The obvious reference point is Jeffrey Lewis, though we prefer to think of him as a cross between Richard Stillgoe and Jasper Carrott. Musically it’s beyond sloppy, but as entertainment it’s gold. Hyper-folk performer James Bell doesn’t have the gig of his life, but has energy enough to get away with it. Storyteller Paul Askew also stumbles a few times, but has material to hide the cracks, a long piece about taking a gaggle of words to the botanical gardens before kidnapping a pronoun reminding us of a punk Richard Brautigan; poet George Chopping eclipses him, though, with a perfectly balanced mixture of sweet natured observation and steel-melting bile. And yes, just so the cosmic balance is restored, there’s some absolute rubbish too: The Oxford Imps do fourth rate Whose Line Is It Anyway? guff whilst acting like a punchably upbeat genetically engineered Partridge Family. The festival programme has a typo of “improve” for “improv” – we couldn’t think of better advice for them. Oh, and Mark Niel is just skin-crawlingly awful. He laments the fact that his hometown of Milton Keynes is a bad comic’s punchline – funny, without that comment we’d have no idea he had any notion of what a punchline was.

The main stage bookings are strangely underwhelming in the afternoon, but Two Fingers Of Firewater add some spice to proceedings, their widescreen country rock and well-groomed boogie harking back to Truck history. They make the transition from Charlbury to Truck without losing any punch.

Blessing Force is brilliant: not only is a lot of the music very good, but what is not good is hilarious. In the Last.FM tent on Saturday, we enjoyed being alternately entertained by the music and entertained by the sheer hideous hipster spectacle of things. Sealings fell into the former category. In the past, we’ve been unconvinced by this noisy drum machine backed duo: they weren’t doing much wrong, but it was more a souvenir of good music, than good music in its own right. This time, however, everything fell into place, as the intensity rose from a Jesus & Mary Chain drone to a Swans-inspired squall. Solid Gold Dragons, on the other hand, were possibly the worst thing to happen to us over the weekend – and that includes getting nearly vomited on by a toddler. Their plastic, stadium pop with light reggae inflections might be just about acceptable if the vocals weren’t so clod-hoppingly oafish, even whilst they tried to plumb cosmic realms of imagery. Imagine Big Audio Dynamite on an off night fronted by Bernard Matthews. No, wait, sometimes the trumpet made it more like a tired James lead by Derek Nimmo taking the piss out of Morrissey. No, wait, can we please stop thinking about this, forever?

Alopecia The Action

"That" song is "I Wanna Live In Your Buttcrack", which is how you imagine it but less mature. Harry implausibly were selected to support Girls Aloud (who are pretty great, in case there's any uncertainty) at a Children In Need gig in an RAF base. There, now you know everything.

HARRY ANGEL/ TOUPE/ BEAVER FUEL/ JAMES BELL – Moshka, The Bully, 3/5/08


We’re fascinated by acts that nearly don’t work, performers who skirt the shores of musical embarrassment and somehow arrive safely at the port of artistic integrity. James Bell is a fine example; his supersized, falsetto-heavy cabaret acoustic shows, replete with implausible covers and frenetic leaping, should have all the charm of a precocious toddler, yet somehow he not only escapes with pride intact, but also manages to sneak some powerful emotions into the room. His cover of “Canadee-i-o” may sound like Thin Lizzy, but it reveals a deep fondness for traditional folk song, and “Last Of The Corners” manages to mix Elvis Costello’s lyrical intricacy with authentic Waterboys yearning. A real talent.

That song aside, Leigh Alexander’s songwriting for Beaver Fuel can actually be more subtle than is generally perceived, and he cuts big issues down to size with cheeky verbosity a la Carter USM. Having said that, the new tune is called “Fuck You, I’ve Got Tourettes” so let’s not get carried away. Beaver Fuel is an act that doesn’t normally thrive in the live environment, ending up a stodgy mess. Not tonight, however. Something’s changed in Camp Buttcrack since the lacklustre EP launch scant weeks ago: Leigh’s voice may not be the most versatile in town, but he’s clearly been working on his projection and his lyrics sail clearly over a surprisingly neat and bouncy band. We still wonder whether lumpy punk with Mojo solos is the ideal vehicle for Leigh’s writing, but this is a band improving steadily.

Slap bass. Swearing. Boob jokes. You’re not going to believe us that Southampton’s Toupe are geniuses, are you? Led by stand up comedian Grant Sharkey, they use drums and two basses to create propulsive and surprisingly varied smut funk, coming off like a cross between Frank Zappa and The Grumbleweeds, like a pier-end Primus. Oxymoronically, they survive because they don’t take their silliness too seriously, and goof off more to amuse themselves than to create an air of calculated wackiness – and beneath it all the music is actually superb, with magnificent drumming from Jay Havelock. One of the best bands you’ll see all year, though we know you still don’t believe us.

It’s been two years since we last saw Harry Angel, and we’re glad to report that little has changed. The early Radiohead references may have been swapped for some mid-period Sonic Youth, but otherwise they still spew out fizzing amphetamine goth, a huge wall of irascible noise with Chris Beard’s vocals as a black smear across the front. They also look like they’re playing in the last few seconds of their lives. “Proper rock n roll”, shouts a drunken punter. Girls Aloud must still be getting over it.