Truck 2015 Saturday pt 2

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. 

Truck 2006 pt 2

Of course, the upside is that we get to catch the end of Luke Smith’s set, and the Truck without Luke would be like Christmas without It’s Wonderful Life. As ever he’s heartwarming, hilarious and cosy, even with his new rock (ahem) trio, but the best part is watching the joyous faces of Smith neophytes. You can almost see them thinking, “a cross between Richard Stillgoe and Eddie Izzard with his Dad on drums, who’d have thought that would work?”.

Chris TT has been described as the indie Luke Smith, but he has weightier subjects to pursue than tea and girlfriends, touching on ecology and politics in simple acoustic thrashes. If you can envisage an English Hammell On Trial you may have the right idea – the tunes aren’t quite as good, but he manages to attack his songs with the same vigour, and throw in serious issues without coming off as a facile rock preacher. It’s no mystery why Chris is a Truck mainstay.

It says a lot about the eclecticism of Truck that we can rush from one festival favourite in the form of Chris, to another in the shape of nervous_testpilot. Truck without Paul Taylor would be like Christmas without “It’s a Wonderful Life”, played backwards in Satan’s breakcore bass palace. This year he’s married the thumping beats of last year with the sample heavy gabba mash up of previous incarnations, into a surprisingly coherent half hour. Truly wonderful, but are we the only ones to slightly miss the elegiac melodies of his first …Module… album? Checking the mosh happy Trailerpark, we guess the answer’s yes.

Dancing of a different sort over at The Epstein’s place. Getting more elaborate and noisier with each gig they do (this set features The Drugsquad’s Stef on guitar/mandolin/banjo and a searing mariachi brass section) they still manage to retain the untroubled country lope at the heart of the songs. They rightly go down a storm, bringing the crowd to a rousing finish with a great country tune called “Dance The Night Away”. Well, it makes up for the rubbish one, doesn’t it?

Had we known it was one of their last ever gigs we might have pushed to the front for Suitable Case For Treatment’s set, but instead we give up on the crowds and pop along to see Trademark. Whilst their new album is an adventurous step forward, the songs don’t come across so immediately in a live setting (excepting the monster that is “Over And Over”), so it’s the older tunes that fare the best. But no two Trademark gigs are really the same, and this one ends with a massed choir and an inexplicable Genesis cover.

SUNDAY

Since Mackating sadly lost their lead singer they’ve turned into a bit of a reggae revue, with featured vocalists of different styles on every tune. Whilst this can make for a bit of a mish mash it keeps things chugging along nicely. Best track in today's tasty set is a dancehall tinged tirade, apparently aimed at Fifty Cent, advising “don’t be a gangster, be a revolutionary”. Sage advice, but it’s Sunday morning, so you’ll understand if we just pass on both options for now.

It’s easy to be critical of performance poetry: 2D politics, bad gags and consonants lots in the sound of spit flecking against a mic. But, we haven’t given up on punk rock just because loads of bands are rubbish, have we? Oh no. Hammer & Tongue have done wonders in Oxford – come on, a spoken word gig at The Zodiac that gets better crowds than most bands, who’s not just a little impressed? – and we’re happy to come and support them briefly over at the Performance Tent. Today’s prize really goes to Sofia Blackwell, who’s always had a little more poise than some of the verbal cowboys, who rounds things off with a neat little piece about how she’ll never write a love poem, which of course turns out to be a beautifully honest little love poem.

This year has really been the coming of age for the acoustic tent, now bigger, better and rebranded The Market Stage. Proof of this is the enormous, attentive crowd for Emmy The Great, which is so big they have to take some of the walls down to let people see. As she snaps at each line like a tiger tearing meat from a carcase (albeit an ever so slightly cutesy tiger) many in this crushed tent decide they’re seeing one of the best shows of the festival quietly unfurl. There are any number of lovely images, but one sticks in our head, “You’re an animated anvil/ I’m an animated duck,” not least because it reminds us of an old Prefab Sprout lyric, “God’s a proud thundercloud/ We are cartoon cats”, and Paddy Macaloon is one of the 80s most under-rated lyricists. Oh yes he is.

Rachel Dadd has a wonderful folk voice, and is ably accompanied by two of her old Whalebone Polly pals, but her set doesn’t seem to have the assurance or character of Emmy’s. It’s mostly pleasant, with everything good and bad that this term conjures up.

When we first saw Captive State, a few Trucks ago, they were a firy jazz hip hop ensemble. Sadly, they soon decomposed into a benefit gig rap band: worthy, summery and mildly funky. Thankfully, they seem to have regrouped somewhat, and have come back fighting. The new material actually seems a bit Massive Attack, with paranoiac queasy bass synths cutting through neat vocal melodies and old fangled dance rhythms. Even the older tunes seem to have been tidied up, and are looking leaner than they have for years. A warm welcome back, though we do think that they could do with a proper singer for the melodic parts, excellent though the frontman is as an MC…oh, and a load of trombone solos.

If Thomas Truax looks a tiny bit tired today, his mechanical bandmate Sister Spinster must have been partying in the Barn till the wee hours, as she sputters, wobbles and eventually cuts out. It may not be the best set he’s ever turned in, but with his homemade instruments and downhome narratives he still holds the crowd in his skinny hands. He’s even commanding enough to do a number unplugged. We don’t mean acoustic, we mean literally unplugged from the PA and wandering around outside the tent. Admit it, we wouldn’t sit there patiently waiting for many other performers, now would we?

Since we last saw Piney Gir she’s inexplicably started looking like Brix Smith and playing light hearted Ernest Tubbs style country. It may not be a very challenging proposition, but her breezy vocal can carry anything – even a duet with charming but tone deaf Truck organiser Edmund, who brought us to tears of laughter with one misplaced “Shoobydoowop”.

Every Truck throws up something wonderful and unexpected. Maybe it’sthe direct sunlight, but this year we find ourselves falling for something that we feel ought to be terrible, in the shape of Babar Luck. He’s a Pakistani Eastender with a line in simple acoustic punk reggae with a “heal the world” type bent, which is the sort of thing we’d normally find painfully trite but Babar’s delivery is so perfect we actually start to believe we can change society with a song. We recommend this heartily, but we’ll never be able to explain what was so good about it. And he has cool mad eyes too. My God, we must be getting old, we’re hanging out at the acoustic stage (oh, alright, we couldn’t be bothered to queue for Chicks On Speed).

Artic. Monkeys

This is the Truck that nearly didn't happen, the orginal summer date being rained off, and a rescheduled event happening in chilly September. I think I prefer the idea of an autumnal festival - more time to sup soup and be wistful, and fewer oafs swigging cider and doing something gauche like enjoying themselves.

TRUCK 2007, Hill Farm, Steventon

With the reliably infectious sounds of The Drugsquad wafting over the queue, we find our way into the rescheduled Truck, and straight to The Market Stage for Gog, who display their atonal cabaret schtick with lots of volume and a pink wig. They’re like forgotten local oddballs Dog, but not as good…until we see the programme and discover that they are Dog. But not as good. That’s a bit sad, really.

Actress Hands: Thumbs down; pull your fingers out; read the manual. Oh, somebody stop us! Suffice to say that Actress Hands are a dull punky indie band with rubbish guitar solos.

Enemies of lispers the world over, Restlesslist are an unusual bunch. Their first number is a limp, tinny post-rock bounce, a sort of 65 Minutes Of Static, but then they suddenly throw in some big band samples, drag on a trumpet player, and it all sounds rather wonderfully like the incidental music to Batman. Things taper off again, but that’s probably because all the machines break, along with some of the guitar strings.

Coley Park aren’t that bad, they’ve got some decent light rock and a slight country twang, but they make little impact on the consciousness. If Buffy The Vampire Slayer were set in Swindon, these guys would be playing The Bronze.

Jim Protector are a sort of Scandinavian iLiKETRAiNS: well, we dare say they run on time and don’t smell of piss in Northern Europe. Anyway, they’re a diverting act, with a nicely understated drummer.

Country rock is really the lingua franca of Truck, and Babel have a fair crack at it. There’s some enticingly slurred fiddle, but they really take off when they get that floor to the floor hoedown groove going. Hey, look, we’re literally tapping our feet! Now we’re really in the festival vibe!

Do we really want to hear sensitive post-grunge, fronted by a man whose voice cracks every other syllable? We don’t, which is why we shan’t be seeking The Holy Orders out again. We preferred it when the Barn was full of metal bands - even if they were rubbish they were at least unignorable.

We promised ourselves we wouldn’t spend all Truck watching our favourite local bands, and yet somehow here we are before the mighty Stornoway once again. Maybe the main stage sucks a little intimacy from their winsome folk pop, but eco-jazz shuffle "The Good Fish Guide" still sounds gloriously like The Proclaimers played by The Grumbleweeds, via The Divine Comedy, and we leave with a broad smile.

When A Scholar And A Physician rap, it makes Morris Minor & The Majors look like Public Enemy. There are millions of them, and the whole experience is akin to a techno revue performed by the cast of Why Don’t You? Which means it’s mostly dumb, but you’d have to be a pretty miserable soul to actively dislike it.

We’re going to start a support group for people like us who loved Piney Gir’s debut electro album, and have become deeply disillusioned with her myriad novelty projects ever since. Can this cod C&W Roadshow malarkey and get back to the keyboards, woman!

It seems only right that we go and see some properly apocalyptic, hellfire preacher country after that. With the biggest beard at Truck, and the loudest acoustic guitar in the hemisphere, Josh T Pearson smashes out his Bible-black dirges with arresting intensity. The cavernous sound is strangely like Merle Haggard having a crack at dronecore, and as such is the best act so far.

Back at The Market Stage, which incidentally has the best sound and atmosphere of the festival, we find Sam Isaac plying his acoustic pop trade. A touch of ‘cello, and a tiny tinge of Kitchenware Records makes it a sufficiently enjoyable spectacle to detain us for a few tunes.

Stompin' At The Sav(el)oy

Hello, dear friends, valued strangers and evil spam spewing web-bots, and welcome once more to the David Murphy archives. Here's a review of Top 20 botherers Hot Chip from way before they were famous and the miniature monkey was yet to be wound. They were...quite good. Worth waiting for that verdict, I think you'll agree.

PS Although the BBC editor at the time published this claiming it was a gig at The Bully, this was incorrect. Also, I'm sure I originally indicated in thge copy who promoted the gig, and I think it may have been Vacuous Pop, but I'm not certain enough after all these years to say for certain.

HOT CHIP/ PINEY GIR/ NERVOUS_TESTPILOT, Wheatsheaf, 8/04

Anyone who says electronic music is always the same has got nervous_testpilot to answer to. Not that this would be too frightening as the pilot is quite small and, err, nervous, but the point is that Paul Taylor has the itelligence and musical imagination to make every performance completely different, in a way no supposedly exciting rock band could dream of.

After the tympanic scouring doled out at Truck, tonight he's gone for the danceably melodic. God, give some of those tunes a remix by Fatboy or Sash! and they'd be Top 10 material! Highlights are a crisp "Raiders Of The Lost ARP" and his trademark Queen-mangling gabba finale - OK, it's obvious, but it's so damned well done.

Speaking of doing things well, let us consider Exhibit B, Piney Gir. In lesser hands her kindergarten Korg schtick might wear thin, but underneath the playground melodies reclines a vocalist of great ability and discipline. Add to this A Scholar & A Physician's incisive and elegant production, whicc resists the urge to be too silly (except on a punk "My Genreration" cover, which palls on the second hearing), and everything in Camp Gir looks rosy. Having said this, I can imagine many people being left cold by tonight's textbook performance. I just can't imagine it would be much fun being them.

I'm uncertain about Hot Chip. They look like a mixture of The Beastie Boy's younger brothers and Cabaret Voltaire's chemistry teachers, and they sound like The Bloodhound Gang playing Prince's songs on Chicory Tip's keyboards. Their fiveman wall of electronic funk resembles a Benny Hill sketch about electro.

Trouble is, their suburban sleaze entreaties are sometimes full of wit, and sometimes and overstretched joke; some of the parping synth textures are clever and outrageously funky, whilst some are thin and annoying. Still, I'll be there to watch them next time, and I suppose any performance that leaves an old cynic like me so intrigued must be counted as a victory.

Just Your Average Review Referencing Merzbow, Chuckie Egg And Robin's Nest...

Like a revisionist historian, or Stalinist clerk, I've ruthlessly edited this review, dropping phrases, restoring bits left out by the original editor,and even writing some new lines that amused me. Fuck it, I'm listening to John Coltrane and am therefore suffused with the spirit that I can do whatever I want.

Post-Dubstar band Client didn't get anywhere, I was therefore right. Never forget this fact.

CLIENT/PINEY GIR/ A SCHOLAR & A PHYSICIAN - Zodiac, 3/04

Talk about biting off more than you can chew. Musically speaking, A Scholar And A Physician have tried to swallow in one mouthful the sort of foot-long hot dog that TV leads me to believe New Yorkers eat for every meal. They have far too many instruments onstage, from guitars to electronics to banjos, and their spaceman headgear, whilst striking, makes it hard for them to move around with any pace. One small step for a man, one agonising pause for a bloke in a silly costume.

Still, even with these setbacks they manage to make a pretty fascinating noise. Their main trick is to take rinkydink keyboard melodies, pitched somewhere between 70s sitcom Robin's Nest and ancient computer game Chuckie Egg, and proceed to throw funny noises at it until it collapses in submission. It's the sort of thing Wire editors listen to when they're hungover and can't face another Merzbow CD.

Somewhat overly cute, then, but enticing all the same. Their last song proclaims, "I'm just like you". No you're not, synthboy, no you're not - that's why it's fun.

Did I call ASAP cute? Then I've got no words left to describve the lovely Piney Gir. She used to be in Mute band Vic 20, but is now going it alone. She plays tidy little preset pop numbers on her toy keyboard, with occasional help from the members of ASAP. The references are French chanson, 70s MOR and, of course, 80s synthpop, but they all come out of the Pineytron sounding equally sweet, cuddly and yummily synthetic. Her victory is that this primary-coloured 2D sound dosesn't become wearing, and keeps on delighting, which is mostly down to her voice, which has more to it than is originally obvious. Dreamy, though the final megaphone rant cover of "My Generation" soon wakes us up.

Fresh from daytime Radio 1 play, Client drop into The Zodiac with some, ahem, electroclash stompers, seemingly about either sex or the service industry. It's a far cry from Dubstar. With their drab olive bouses, deadpan vocals and regimented elctro riffs, Client's effect is as joyless and austere as a fire safety lecture in a Polish gulag. The sparseness is alluring...for the first couple of tracks. Sadly, the lack of musical variety begins to bore, and the two frontwomen start to look less like erotic matriachs and more like blank-eyed checkout girls. There could be something here, but they'll have to stretch themselves a lot more first.

Up, Russell & Out

This is a review I did for OHM with my chum Russell Barker (see link to the right). This kind of double-teamed review was the sort of wilfully unprofessional and unwieldy thing we used to do all the time at OHM, just because there were no rules. There was also no money and no mutual comprehension of the concept "deadline", but that's part of the fun of this kind of endeavour.

In retrospect I don't think this particular example of the dialogue review works very well, mostly because Russ and I have such different styles: he's far more considered and impartial, and tends to tell readers stuff like the names of songs, the instrumentation and what the music sounds like. You know, things they want to know. Fools.

The other thing to notice is how much better I am....let's see if he's bothered to read this!

PINEY GIR/ TRADEMARK/ DAVID K FRAMPTON, The Cellar, 21/10/03

DM: They can take my vocal FX unit when they pry it from my cold dead fingers, so I'm predisposed to like David K Frampton, even though this isn't a very successful set. Treated vocals float over little synth loops and cracking 808-type beats, and as such there are more handclaps from the drum machine than from the crowd - draw your own conclusions.

Such is their inherent theatricality, Trademark work better on larger, less intimate stages. And also because Oli is the clumsiest frontman in town, so the more space between his feet and the leads, the better. If you don't yet know, they produce mighty electro-cabaret about human frailty and elementary physics. Tonight's show is their normal labcoated synth-driven joypop, with the addition of a giant perspex plug and an elegant fairytale about destructive interference.

RB: It's true, Trademark's sound seems cramped by the low ceilinged venue. "Stay Professional" struggles to break free of its shackles but "Sine Love" is the sad beautiful tale it always is despite the constrictions imposed upon it. They climax with a new tune which starts out like a synth powered rocker before slipping back into the Trademark style we know and love.

DM: There are three words I promised I wouldn't write in this review. Two of them are "Elfin" and "Bjork", but since I've used them now, what the hell! Take one ex-Vic 20 vocalist, add some toy keyboards, melodica and sweet little songs and you get the general idea of Piney Gir. The sparse sound alternately evokes the ghost of Pram, and a coy, non-swearing Peaches. Somewhat twee for many, perhaps, but I'm happy. "Twee" was the third word, by the way.

RB: There was definitely something bewitching about Piney that overcame the tweeness. Silly little things like forgetting to plug in till halfway through the first song and announcing a song in bossanova style, then struggling to find the right switch on her keyboard. Her face lights up when the rhythm kicks in. She manages to find a suitable saccharine high level and pushes it to the limit without overloading us with sugar coated candyness. And anyone who ends their set with a slow gyrating version of "Let's Get Physical" gets my vote.