Yo, Goldrush The Show!

So, here's a sad day - the very last of the reviews I wrote for OHM. Admittedly, I don't own every issue, so I may have missed one. If you think there's a review from the OHM days I should post, get in touch. Thank you for flying Porcine Airways! Anyway, this is from the very best OHM issue, where we managed to review very nearly every act on the Truck bill in a madly choreographed dance of the notebooks. Sadly, not every act I reviewed is here, since there were some acts that were reviewed by more than one of us, and I've long since lost my original copy (so has Dan the editor) so all you'll get are the bits that saw print. The only good bit I can remember on the discard pile was a review of Red Star Cycle, but I'll keep that to myself as I might use the same gag for some other act in the future! Always recycle, kids!

TRUCK FESTIVAL, Hill Farm, Steventon, 6/04

Heavy rock is more about phrasing and tone than composition, and Days Of Grace are experts. Think the melodic end of metal. Think soaring vocal lines. Don't think emo, no matter what images I'm creating. Think QOTSA play Pantera. Think, "that singer needs to wear a belt".

Developing in oddly contradictory directions, Trademark continue to produce ever more theatrical and elaborate stageshows, and ever more honed and elegant songs. Like breaking your heart whilst appearing on 80s teatime BBC fodder The Adventure Game.

Charming, talented, summery, melodic, the men behind the festival itself - Goldrush are in some ways the best band in Oxfordshire. Yet sadly they bore me rigid. That Travis and The Chills are household names and Goldrush aren't is an injustice; that I'm even mentioning them in the same sentence illustrates the problem. Still, they couldn't play a bad set at Truck if their lives depended on it.

Lucky Benny sounds like a bizarre sexual position, but is actually a jazz-funk outfit. They're sometimes stodgy, sometimes firy. The bassist is good. Err, that's it.

Some huge voiced, super-sincere Dubliner is singing folky dirges about the poor and paeans to positivity, which must be rubbish, right? So why am I almost crying? Either I'm incredibly tired, or Damien Dempsey is a huge talent. Or both.

Tabla? Hurdy-gurdy? Politico-poetry? Some rainy mid-eighties GLC fundraiser is missing Inflatable Buddha! When they get abstract ("Fat Sex") it works wonderfully, when they play straight songs ("White Rabbit") it's flat hippy mulch.

Bert Kampfaert gabba - get in! nervous_testpilot provides the second great performance of the weekend, mangling samples and rhythms into a sproingy tech-tapestry. Slightly too irreverent for me (last year's set had subtle melodies hidden away), but his "action-packed mentalist brings you the strawberry jams" approach satisifes. Bloop.

One year on, Captive State kick even harder. The warm jazz rhythms are bolstered by the meaty horn parts, and draped in fluent rhymes and zig-zag scratch patterns, and the crowd responds rapturously. Forget the slightly crass lyrics, this band is delicious.

Even though they're a pop band, undertheigloo remind me of electronica. Their brittle cramped songs are like the raw material from which Boards Of Canada distill their tunes, or the base ingredient to Four Tet's organic shuffle. Pity they play so clunkily. Maybe next time...

Beware of geeks bearing riffs! A Scholar & A Physician have brung the noise, toybox style. Cutesier than a Puzzle Bobble marathon in a Haribo warehouse, they somehow manage to convince us that if enough people play enough crappy instruments, then even stupid music is a glorious victory. Clever.

There's an angry little New Yorker smoking furiously and telling awful jokes like it's The Improv in 1986; now he's singing a flacid relationship revenge song. Right, I'm off. Hold on, that last bit was funny...now he's singing something incredibly touching. Lach is ultimately moving, likable and acidly funny, but, man, he started badly.

Damn, Thomas Truax is too popular for this tiny acoustic tent. Damn, they're running late. Damn, MC Lars is on in a minute. Let's assume Truax is as much a damn genius as ever.

The Feast Of Steventon

This is my first Truck review, at my second Truck (it being a rather lovely litle festival on a farm in Oxon, if you don't know). Some of this was used on the BBC Oxford site at the time, but not all of it - none of the Sunday review was published for example, so if you've been waiting 6 years to see what I think about Lesbo Pig, the long period in the wilderness is over! I shall miss Truck this year, having been to the last seven, so I may post all the reviews in the run up. Not all the acts I saw were reviewed here, unlike in later years, but this is still pretty comprehensive.

Some rubbish jokes and ultra-short paragraphs, as was the BBC Ox remit, but some interesting thoughts nonetheless.

TRUCK, 2003: SATURDAY

I'm lost. All the stage times have changed completely and I don't know who I'm watching. I turn up at the tent for Vic 20, only to find Bussy, a group of super-talented Frenchmen with a fine clarinetist and a ridiculously good guitarist.

Their songs about pestilence, dominion and battrachian medieval jesters seethe and burn smokliy around the whispered monologues, reminding me of a jazz version of Swans. Highly recommended...should you live in France.

Winnebago Deal keep us waiting for quite a while, but when they crack straight into a rifferama that doesn't let up for 45 minutes the whole Barn erupts into a happy frenzy.

If you've never seen them before, rest assured that they sound exactly as you'd expect: it's only guitar, drums and a whole heap of metal savvy, after all. It's a dense and exciting sound, and WD's victory is that one never wonders where the rest of the band is. Still, like a Belgian choclate it's a bit too rich for my taste, and I can only handle about 20 minutes at a time without feeeling aurally overstuffed.

What the? Hours later, here's Vic 20! They are a super lo-fi electropop outfit, nudging tunes around with medieval synths and covering them in big, sweet, simple vocal melodies. With a singer somewhere between Laetitia Stereolab and Bjork, they're definitely the cutest band of the weekend, but were never cloying.

Highlight was "I Kissed A Girl". Sapphic electro: how can you lose?

You can't be too critical of a Goldrush set at Truck; it's their festival, after all, and a mighty fine weekend it is too. It would be like going to the Royal Variety Performance and giving the queen a bad review.

Anyway, Goldrush are far too professional and talented to play a bad set. This is probably the most relaxed performance I've seen from them, with a bit more power in the sound: maybe they'd spent the day in the Barn and had been infused with rock noise by a sort of osmosis. Or something.

Their greatest strength is the voice, husky and keening without sounding theatrical or stretched, and sitting so neatly on its cushion of country-tinged guitar. To be honest, I've never found the actual songs themselves that interesting, so I'm not overwhelmed...but I'm relatively whelmed all the same.

Whelmed? What am I talking about? Now, where's that beer tent...