Truck Festival 2013 Saturday

On Saturday, the Virgins stage becomes the Veterans stage, hosting old Truck regulars.  We wonder whether the presence of this and the Saloon was some clause in the contract when Y Not took over the Truck name, to give the Bennetts something to do, but it’s quite good fun, even if it does mean that at times on Saturday there’s polite Americana on two stages within feet of each other, which is rather beyond the call of duty.  Thankfully, The Holy Orders aren’t guilty of that, instead thrashing out some scrunchy rock with small grunge inflections, that just screams “Tuning is for losers!”.

Bob Dylan.  Nick Drake. Stevie Wonder.  It’s a favourite Nightshift game to list acts who are great, but who only inspire rubbish artists. In a similar vein, when we see that the programme likens Candice Gordon to Patti Smith and Nick Cave we know that she will actually be a decent, but ultimately generic lightly theatrical rock chick.  There are shades of Little Fish about this band, and some cleaned up Cramps rockabilly, but if they ever come up with anything that sounds remotely like “Tupelo” or “Free Money” we must have been buying coffee at the time.

We’re all for kids who can’t play making pop music, to a certain extent that’s what it’s for, but even we can’t get on with Bentcousin, a pair of twins jigging clumsily about, singing flatly about sibling rivalry and double Chemistry and Panini sticker albums (possibly) over some floppy pop. Plus they eviscerate “Boys Keep Swinging” and dance laughingly on its defiled cadaver.  One of them is wearing a Wham! T-shirt and the make-your-own-fun vibe is so cloying it really is uncannily like watching an 80s episode of Why Don’t You?  So, naturally, we go off and do something less boring instead.

Nairobi offer oddball pop of a more palatable nature.  As we enter the Jamalot tent, the band is laying down some refined white funk and someone is doing a strange yodelling vocal over the top.  It’s like Hall & Oates fronted by Emo Philips, which is obviously great.  Later they do some African jive, and throw in a few synth lines that sound like chase scenes from Knight Rider, and it’s all bloody good fun, and approximately four thousand times better than last time we saw them.

We’re told Interlocutor are an 11-piece band, so we go and see them just to repay their effort carrying all the gear across the field.  But, what’s this?  Tenor sax, yes, but baritone?  And a trombone?  Oh, man, this is going to kick jazz-ska-swing botty, let’s get a beer in, and go mental to the first number which...sounds like “Dancing In The Moonlight” at half speed coming down the phone whilst we’re on hold to British Gas.  Oh.  And the next track is a drab elevator waltz that sounds like Ian Brodie having a crack at being a crooner, but with the theory that Hasselhoff was a better role model than Sinatra.  And a cold. 

We drop in on The Heavy Dexters just to burn this image from our mind, and get some proper sax action, as we know their skirling soprano playing is the cherry on their acid jazz cake.  Admittedly, the JTQ styled funk workouts fit the afternoon better than the open-ended muso jazz ballads, but there’s definitely a place at Truck for a locally-grown live dance act to wear out some shoe leather.  Some ropy jazz-sex faces on display from the keyboard player might be too much for those with weak stomachs, though.

Kimberly Anne is today’s Ady Suleiman, except she’s actually better.  Whilst she plays guitar a percussionist adds flourishes on a small stand-up drum kit (side on, we’re happy to report), and her outstanding muscular, low voice draws a line between the rich sincerity of Tracey Chapman and the sweet urban froth of TLC.  This set of young, slick pop sounds as though it was built to move the heart and the feet, and not shift mobile phones, which is sadly rare nowadays.  She must be good, because we’ve got this far into the review and not mentioned her amazing hair, which looks like a drunken guardsman’s wonky busby.

In a throwback to our Candice Gordon experience , the programme likens Pylo to Radiohead and Pink Floyd, but we are unsurprised to find that they sound more like Keane and U2.  They at least have the decency to sound like the very best bits of Keane and U2.  Passable.

Toy have been recommended to us by a big Meatloaf fan, which would normally be enough to send us striding in the opposite direction, but this Meatloaf fan also really likes Beefheart, so we thought we’d give them a try.  Very good choice.  Toy’s post-Velvets pop is a little like The Primitives, but with taut motorik drums driving everything relentlessly onwards, and some nifty McCartney guitar parts to hold the tunes together.  We’re not sure if it’s bubblegum kraut or amphetamine shoegaze, but it’s pretty damn intoxicating, and there always seems to be another plateau of guitar noise for the songs to leap up to: if you’ve ever listened to the first Psychedelic Furs LP and thought, “this could really do with fat layers of Korg in place of the goth”, you’re in luck.  They have horrible ratty bogan haircuts though, perhaps they could give Kimberly Anne’s mum a ring.

The Ramshackle Union Band are playing some pretty good country stuff in the Saloon, according to what we catch through the window.  Still, there won’t be a shortage of country in there for the rest of they day, so let’s not tarry.  Back in the Veterans tent, we realise that Katy Rose is actually KTB – we think we did know this, somewhere deep down – and that The Cavalry Parade is actually Joe Bennett on a lap steel, which we didn’t know but is still not causing any reels of shock, let’s be honest.  Katy has a very good voice  as we well know, and, if the material can be a touch refined for our tastes, “Bluebird” is still a lovely song.

Catching sight of a frisbee arcing across the sky as we leave the tent, we investigate the campsite to find out just how many people go to music festivals to play catch and sit on folding chairs a long longb way from any music.  Do they not know that you can do that in the park from free?  Still, better than the Barn on Saturday, which has been filled with sand and now has a tiki beach bar and a prominent volleyball set, so that people can ignore the musicians right in front of their faces.  Seems odd to us, and it looks as though Axes feel the same, judging by comments.  The band is good enough to get attention, throwing tricksy elements together with just enough gleeful abandon to stop them turning into annoying clever dick neo-proggers (the fact that they have track titles like “Jon Bon Jela” and “Fleetwood Math” probably puts paid to that danger).  They’re sort of Islet junior, and they’re fine by us, although the music tends to be all breaks and endings, corners and offcuts on offer when a prime fillet would be tasty once in a while.

We can’t really believe that Big Scary Monster and Alopop! have bothered to lug all this sand into the Barn, but then again we don’t quite see the attraction of CDs in the shape of Megatron or compilation download codes hidden inside taxidermied squirrels, or whatever else it is they come up with.  We do, however, like the idea of small acts playing in front of the stage between the main bands, such as Thrill Collins, a busking trio who knock out some energetic, slightly ironic medleys.  Nothing revolutionary, but as a little sorbet between courses, we think they’re pretty great.

Truck 2012 Friday Pt 2

We pop in on Delta Alaska, who are like nothing else than a blythe AOR version of Oxford’s Scrappy-Doo pop wastrels, Secret Rivals, and end up with Josh Kumra, a young man with a surprisingly eloquent vocal delivery, who isn’t above showboating or swiping a tune form MGMT to keep the party going.  Not a chart-topping act we expected to get excited about, but Josh is a talented, professional performer who deserves to capitalise on his sudden success.

Oh, and, speaking of which.  Late on Saturday the staff at the Rapture merchandise tent tell us they’ve not sold a Fixers album all day.  Inconceivable when this outstanding, gorgeous record has only recently been released after a long delay?  If you saw their set, then no.  A hundred times, no. As if to prove our claim that past glories can never be relived, Fixers contrast last year’s joyous, epochal Truck performance with what can most generously be described as a wonky drunken stumble somewhere in the rough vicinity of their songs.  Jack Goldstein spends some while slurring into the mike about how he isn’t sure if this is a “festival” or a “festiVAL!”  The set is a hiLARious disasTER, put the random emphases where you like, Jack, old son.

Over in the Barn, Spring Offensive are snatching Fixers’ local hero crown, sharpening up the angular points, and dousing it in pop sugar.    They have a knack of writing vast music with the drastic emotional pull of a Hollywood blockbuster, and making them sound subtly intimate.  It’s a trick Clock Opera could do with learning, as their set is far from bad, building heart-wrenching songs on slightly fidgety rhythms, but it becomes two dimensional and predictable long before we wander away.

Jamalot is a small tent hosting DJs and a few live acts – it also has a couple of very comfy sofas, which we make grateful use of once or twice over the course of the festival – although it’s hard to know who’s on when.  We’re not sure if this is because a dance tent is on the periphery of the organisers’ concerns, or because the sort of people who book a stage like that don’t quite get round to arranging the acts before the programme copy deadline.  Judging by the timetable outside the tent, which is so randomly inaccurate it was probably created by John Cage with the I Ching and a box of twelve inches, we lean towards the latter interpretation.  We do, however, manage to see funky jazz outfit The Heavy Dexters, over an hour later than advertised.  Like the Disco Pimps, they could do with adding some proper filth to their sound, but their saxophonist does have lovely, conversational phrasing, and they also do a pretty cheeky arrangement of “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, so it’s a close but clear victory at the final count.

The very second their set is finished, beatboxer Pieman takes over.  It takes us a few bars to realise the chunky beats are coming from a man’s mouth, not the DJ.  Of course, as with most beatboxing, turntablism - or arguably live hip hop in general - the show is a showcase of techniques and effects rather than a cohesive artistic statement, but in the face of someone who can make a righteously flatulent dubstep bass like that with their lips, our criticisms evaporate.  Top stuff.

Nipping back to the Barn we hear what sounds like a cross between metal and techstep drum ‘n’ bass from Turbowolf.  Then the track stops and we think we must have imagined it.  Regardless, the rest of their greasy cartoon heavy rock is infectious fun.

Tim Minchin isn’t funny, and The Guillemots don’t really seem to be delivering, probably due to Fyfe Dangerfield’s throat infection, so we return to the Barn for Future Of The Left.  We think we’re scribbling lots of insightful notes about their angular hardcore, but in the morning we discover we’ve just written “Grrrrrr” for twelve pages.  Two things are sure: a) when they add a buzzing, two finger keyboard to their sound, it’s like a hideously brilliant cross between Bis and Atari Teenage Riot, b) when they finish with an unfeasibly distorted, disgusted and dystopian Mclusky track, it literally recalibrates our ears so that we can’t listen to Mystery Jets.  Seriously, don’t recall any of it.  We think they were probably harmless and vapid and bouncy and perfectly acceptable, but we have no real memory of doing anything whilst they’re on except replaying the preceding ten minutes in our minds. 

Sing it.