Bank Statement

Here's the annual Riverside review, shorter than other years, by necessity.  Inevitably, the discussion has started again in earnest, but this time it's about what wasn't written, rather than what was.  Most years someone says, "If you can't write anything nice, don't write anything at all", whereas this year the tone sems to be "It's far worse to write nothing than it is to write a something negative".  All good fun and games in the world of illogical musicians!

Did I use the pun Bank Statement for a previous Riverside?  Probably.

 

RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, 29/7/12, Charlbury

When we were growing up, there was one of those “Everything’s a quid” type shops near us, called Kincheap.  After a while, some people complained that this cheeky name lowered the tone of Chelmsford High Street – they’d clearly never wandered down it on a Saturday night – so the local paper interviewed the owner.  “It’s a pun,” he explained, “because we’re king of the cheap shops”.  The journalist noted that this wasn’t very obvious, and asked why they didn’t make it clearer.  “Because if we did, it wouldn’t be a pun, would it?”  So, for a few weeks, Mr Kincheap became our favourite man on the planet.

We mention this, because it meant we were prepared for King Terrible.  We realised it was going to be a joke.  What we didn’t realise is that it was going to be nothing but a battery powered fluffy toy on a chair doing a little dance for 30 seconds.  Bloody funny, but we reckon they should have gone the whole hog, and had him on as headliner, with a sea of lasers and an intro tape of “Also Sprach Zarathustra”.  If you’re going to do bathos, do it big, and wait until more than five people have turned up.

Of course, starting a day with a shockingly poor practical joke is exactly why we love Riverside – it’s homely, it’ s friendly, it doesn’t care desperately for fashion or good sense.  This year, after some torrential rain, the festival was rescheduled because of ground conditions (the clue’s in the name), and we’re deeply glad the festival went ahead, even though it meant we could now only attend for one afternoon.  We feel as though we’ve fallen into some vast Duracell commercial as Blin’ Jonnie, the first real band of the day, play on the main stage: their set of harmless busker’s fluff is so drab and lifeless the battery powered toy beats them hands down.  If it weren’t for a bit of lively, fluent flute from Glenda Huish, we’d have trouble staying conscious for the duration.  In fact, we spent most of the set pondering why they pronounce it “blinn Jonnie”.  So, is it not short for “blind”, then? Weird.

  

Simon Batten reminds us a little of Riverside alumna Chantelle Pike, with his rootsy elegance and subtle melodic twists, but his voice isn’t as enticing, and it’s left to the drum accompaniment to keep things lively.  Over on the main stage something odd is happening, not only as Secret Rivals play a relaxed set with the minimum of ADD bouncing and yelping, but as it sounds unexpectedly great.  These songs shouldn’t work in a hungover Sunday afternoon incarnation, but they do.  The vocals twine together well, and the drums are crisp, not longer sounding like a dog made of snares chasing its own tail round a cymbal warehouse like in the band’s early days.  It’s highly enjoyable, we just hope they don’t go getting all grown up on us.

In some ways, the only negative thing about The Grinding Young is how bleeding Oxford their polite, ornate bookish rocking is.  Then again, the best song we hear is “The King And The Knave”, a medieval murder ballad that sounds like brilliant a cross between Radiohead and Fairport Convention, and you couldn’t get much more Oxfordshire than that unless you had Jacqueline Du Pre doing a Mr Big medley.

From across the field, The Shapes (sadly unconnected with Micachu) have a fruity organ that makes them sound like Squeeze.  Up close they’re less bouncy, but they do have a keen ear for a hook, and some neat mandolin licks, and we’rer enjoying it, when they blow it all by saying, “We’re going to do an old Bob Dylan song, don’t know why”.  Jesus, if ever a statement summed up weekend Dads’ bands.  Don’t do anything as an artist unless you can defend it.  If we thought they’d done it just to annoy us, it would have been something...

Now, Undersmile, they know exactly why they’re doing what they do, and they also know that it will annoy a lot of people.  We love them, from the unexpected grooves hidden in their deathly slow doom, to the odd vocal harmonies, that are so microtonally awkward it sounds like one person singing through a broken chorus pedal.  We’d used the word “elemental” in our notes, and that was before the cold heavy rain stopped the exact second their set did: metal bands invoking Zeus are ten a penny, but only Undersmile can attract old Cloud Gatherer himself.

Swindlestock are just another in a huge line of decent Americana acts from Oxfordshire, and we have to wonder whether Arkansas is clogged with Supergrass tributes and morris sides to balance things out.  Anyway, you’d have to be a pretty grim individual not to find something likable about Swindlestock’s bottleneck and fiddle spattered tunes.  On the Second Stage Count Drachma have at least come up with a new folk music seam to strip mine, playing traditional Zulu songs.  Last time we saw them they were a well-drilled quartet, but today they’re a duo, playing bass and guitar, using the odd loop pedal to allow space for some sax and harmonica.  It’s a slapdash, slipshod, shoved together affair, but we find a lot more to like about it than last time.  Ollie Steadman (of Stornoway fame) may not have the most commanding voice ever, but spacious duo arrangements reveal that he does have a skill in the natural, conversational phrasing that much folk song demands.  Fewer members and less rehearsal seems to be the key for this band – but don’t tell any others.  

The MC tells us that Mogmatic have been trying to get a slot at Riverside since the very beginning, and they’ve finally relented.  This’ll be good, then.  Well, be fair, they’re better than the intro makes them sound, bashing out some big boots pub rock with minor Sabbath inflections, but they can’t hold our attention when Ran Kan Kan are on the main stage, because big latin bands will nearly always trump clunky blues rock quartets.  With a vast lineup that almost demands the title of orchestra, Ran Kan Kan prove very adept at balancing their sound, and never let too much colour swamp the primacy of their Afro-Cuban rhythms.  Admittedly, Ran Kan Kan are doing nothing new with their material, but as we think it’s never a bad time to hear a good rendition of Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va”, we’re very contented.  Bonus points to the trumpet player, for quoting “Black Magic Woman“ in their solo, offering us two Santana hits for the price of one.

Right next to the main stage, a Fire Service tent is offering the experience of being in a burning building, but from the outside it looks like a giant, surreal dry ice machine.  Over near the Second Stage, in a Bushcraft tent, some experts are showing tiny kids how to start campfires.  Some sort of cosmic balance is restored, you have to feel.  Our final visit to that end of the field rewards us with Skittle Alley favourites Superloose. Their banjo-picking tunes are sloppy and not hugely challenging, but their onstage giggles are infectious.  Having a laugh; there’s a good reason to make music, if you’re still reading, The Shapes.

Our day finishes with the excellent Brickwork Lizards.  As they play a mixture of 30s music hall, Hot Club jazz and North African melodies, you could easily imagine them tearing the roof off some NAAFI dance on the African front: not only would their music sound as good as it does today, but they’d have invented hip hop, too.  A brilliant end to our day, although there were still the pop treats of Dance A La Plage and Alphabet Backwards to go (Legal note: only one of these bands constitutes a “pop treat”).  Great to see Riverside bouncing back, with better sound than ever before, especially on the Second Stage.  Also, any festival that has Undersmile and Superloose on the same stage is alright with us – Riverside’s booking policy is a damn sight more adventurous than any number of big trendy promoters around the county, wouldn’t you say? 

Another great day out in Charlbury: King excellent.

Charlbury 2011 Sunday Pt 2

Our love of louche Gallic troubadours Les Clochards is well documented, so we shan’t dwell on it here. One thing that leaps out at us is the quality of the lyrics in their set (thankfully for this shamefaced monoglot, pretty much all in English today). “Some things were never made clear/ Behind the surface, another veneer” is a lovely couplet in “Lavinia”, and the line “I stood on the fire escape and watched the sunrise” still raises the hairs on the back of the neck in “Tango Borracho”. Songwriting: some of you bands reading this really should try it one day.

Remember Banjo Boy from a few years back? Well, he’s here today, playing with The Headington Hillbillies, and we forget to watch. Very poor. We do see some of The Fenns, a family affair featuring different generations of Charlbury locals who get the best response of the weekend. Proficient covers isn’t really our bag – and having to listen to “Magic Carpet Ride” twice in one day is really testing us – but The Fenns boast plenty of charm, and there’s evident pleasure being had on and off stage, so we just sneak away quietly.

So, congratulations are in order to the Riverside organisors once again for another wonderful festival. A lovely weekend, and entirely for free: an obvious point, perhaps, but one worth repeating. If you doubt the effort that goes into running Riverside, take a look at the film of the site being set up on their website, embedded from Twitney, which we suppose is a Witney version of Twitter (of course, they’ve had social networking in West Oxfordshire for millennia, it’s called in-breeding). Riverside should be supported, cherished and celebrated by anyone who appreciates live music, especially today, when so many festivals have all the character and charm of a gulag in a Welcome Break motorway services. Same time next year, then?

Charlbury 2011 Sunday

Hello, good people of the internet. And wankers; a big "hi" to the evil wankers. To be honest, you're relative moral merits are irrelevant to me, just read the reviews and enjoy them. If it turns out you steal nuts from squirrels immediately afterwards, it's no concern of mine.



RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, CHARLBURY, 19/6/11


As much fun as Saturday was, Sunday packed in a few more surprises for us, not least with Grey Children, the new project for Dave Griffiths, once of Eeebleee and Witches. As befits a first live performance of songs played by a scratch band, there are hesitant, uncertain moments in the set, but the material is very strong, with a muscular poeticism that’s something like a cross between Tindersticks and Sugar, with some excellent baroque curlicues from Benek Chylinski’s trumpet and Chris Fulton’s violin. Not a project we expect to see gracing the stage with great regularity, so it’s a real treat for those who turn up early.

After discovering him last year, we have to hang around to catch a bit of Sonny Black’s performance. You see so much hollow showboating in blues, it’s just great to see a relaxed, unhurried musician who lets his technique serve the music, and not the other way round. Hints of Davey Graham and John Renbourn abound, as well as the greats like Doc Watson. Sonny also plays some nice bottleneck national guitar, a gorgeous instrument which is only spoilt by the fact that just looking at the thing reminds us of Brothers In Arms.

A complete change of style at the other end of the festival, with thumping drum machines and squelching 303 basslines. We have an admission: we have no critical faculties in the face of acid house. None whatsoever. Honestly, just the sound of it immerses us in a wash of serotonin-drenched euphoria, taking us direct to cloud 909. So, for us to observe that Manacles Of Acid are very good indeed is probably meaningless, but they do a bang up job of reliving that wonderful space between Phuture and early Orbital. There’s a lovably ramshackle edge to the show, as lines come in at different volumes, and jack leads are swapped on the fly, but really if you do this music well, it always sounds good, you don’t have to rewrite the rulebook. So, not that dissimilar from Sonny Black after all.

Main stage engineer Jimmy Evil disappears at about this time, so we follow him over to the second stage to witness his progcore outfit Komrad. Since we last saw them, the tracks have been rearranged a little, and the music is less the unforgiving technical metal of old, and has a lighter, post-Zappa bounce: it’s not the all-out jape of Mike Patton’s more leftfield projects, but there is definite humour on display, not least in the genius song title “Parking Restrictions In Seaside Towns (Strongly Worded Letter To The Council)”. At moments the set is a little approximate – with intricate arrangements like these there’s nowhere to hide the odd fluff – but this is a band well worth watching.

People might look at Steamroller and call them dinosaurs. That would be forgetting, of course, that dinosaurs are COOL. An unreconstructed power blues trio will send some people into frothing excitement (especially those who remember the younger Steamroller from their Corn Dolly days), just as it will bore others to silent tears, but even the most vehement critic would have to admit that Steamroller have more than earned their place in Oxford music history, and that drummer Larry Reddington’s lyrics have a knowing humour: he could probably pen a witty lyric like “Back In Ten Minutes” whilst most of his peers were still trying to find a rhyme for “Cadillac”.

We’ve never quite managed to warm to Gunning For Tamar, for some reason. Their music is equidistant between Hretha and Spring Offensive, but for us they don’t have the rigorous elasticity of the former nor the emotive beauty of the latter. Solid, twitchy Oxford artpop, played very well, but not much else to our ears.

The Prohibition Smokers Club have developed in the past year from a random jam session to smooth, stadium soul party. Sort of a mixed blessing, as some of the set is too polite, but the highlights are excellent: “Graveyard Shift” is a smoky sketch of urban night owls, like a collaboration between Tom Waits and the Love Unlimited Orchestra, and the final track is a spicy open-ended funk workout. Really they’re the sort of groove revue that can only be judged after two 90 minute sets and a gallon of Long Island Iced Tea, it seems as though they’re just getting warmed up when the gig finishes.

One great thing about Riverside is all the children in attendance who seem to actually love the music. We saw a lad of about four moshing away to Gunning For Tamar, and by the time Alphabet Backwards come on, he’s rounded up a whole bunch of chums, all right in front of the stage. “Oh God,” observes an audience member to us, “they’re flocking. It’s like The Birds”. But then, Alphabet Backwards are a band for the unabashed child inside us all, an improbably joyous froth of pop melodies and chirpy keyboards. The closing track, new to us, sounds like a mixture of The Streets and Supertramp. Brilliant.

We thought Every Hippie’s Dream was world peace, with perhaps the chance to smoke a joint and look at a lady’s boobs taking a close second, but apparently what they like is 60s and 70s rock covers. So, look, when the sun’s out and someone’s playing “Foxy Lady” and they’re not completely rubbish the world can never seem an entirely awful place, but someone’s clearly been bogarting the originality round at EHD’s commune, as there isn’t much character to speak of on stage. They also seem to run out of steam a couple of numbers before the end of the set: if getting from one end to the other of “Sunshine Of Your Love” is a terrible chore, perhaps the covers circuit isn’t for you, lads.

Death Of Hifi give us instrumental hip hop next, which is a tribute to Riverside’s diversity. There are some nice mid-90s beats and some cheeky samples, plus decent scratching and guitar playing, but none of the tracks go anywhere. A rapper hops up to freestyle over one of the tracks, and whilst he’s not quite got the flow of Half Decent, who guested with Prohibition Smokers Club, his presence lifts the music from a moraine of unconnected ideas. A blueprint for future developments, perhaps.

Bank Data

The review of this year's Riverside is up at MIO. No arguments yet, but it's early days. Course, I like people moaning about my reviews, because it proves they're being read...yes, even idiots who don't understand what a review is are welcome to join the fun.

I did want to post the first paragraph and put the rest up 24 hours later, but the editor wasn't up for me fighting my petty battles on the front of his website. Pah.

I'll stick Sunday up in a day or two.



RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, CHARLBURY, 18-9/6/11


Riverside was brilliant because it was free and everyone had a good time and all the musicians were great and it was brilliant.










Right, is the coast clear, have they gone? You know, those people who can’t tell the difference between a review and a press release? That lot who don’t quite grasp that the best compliment you can pay a musician is actually to listen to them? The gaggle who do one of the absolute highlights of Oxfordshire’s music calendar a disservice by getting upset if someone dares admit that one of the performers was, perhaps, not that great?

Good, then we level headed people can get on with talking about the Charlbury Riverside festival 2011, always a beautifully run, welcoming event, and one that we organise our summer around because we’d hate to ever miss it. In some ways, it doesn’t spoil the event if the music is duff at Riverside but we must admit, this year the lineup was, pound for pound, the strongest it’s been for quite some years. And starting with Peerless Pirates certainly couldn’t dampen anybody’s spirits, even as the first of many showers blew across the festival. They play classic indie welded onto rugged, shanty-style basslines that justify the band’s name: think The Wedding Present with arrangements by Guybrush Threepwood. Not always painfully original – you don’t have to be Scott Bakula to make the quantum leap from their opening tune to “This Charming Man” – but they offer friendly, jolly music that inaugurates the festival almost as well as the near visible battle in compere Lee Christian not to say naughty words on the mike.

This year’s lineup on the second stage is definitely the strongest and most intriguing since the Beard Museum left the helm, and our first visit rewards us with one of the sets of the weekend. Last time we saw STEM, it was all acoustic guitars and bongos and it couldn’t have been more worthily earthy if the PA were powered by a tofu wind turbine. Now they’ve returned to their Neustar roots to give us fat, brooding trip hop in the vein of Portishead and Lamb. Emma Higgins has a richly soulful but mysteriously intimate voice, like Grace Jones whispering secrets in your ear over port and cigars, and John West’s electronics envelop her with dark wings of autumnal sound, that's often only a breakbeat away from early Moving Shadow material. Perhaps a tad too in thrall to their mid-90s influences, this is still a band that is worth investigating as soon as possible.

We cock a quick ear in the direction of Mundane Sands, whose expansive folk rock is played with relish and personality, before visiting the charmingly odd man selling the coffees. You want a tasty Americano and a string of confounding non-sequiturs, you won’t get a better option anywhere in England. Last year we began to wonder whether he was some sort of live theatre installation, so unexpected were his utterances. You wouldn’t get that at your corporate energy drink sponsored mega-fests, eh?

They ought to show videos of Samuel Zasada before every acoustic night and open mike session in the county, with a subtitle reading “This is what you’re aiming for; if all you’ve got are miserable sub-Blunt moans, go home and try again. Thank you”. There have been alterations and expansions to the Zasada lineup since our last meeting, but they can still imbue their tunes with a gravitas and texture that’s sadly lacking from nearly all of their peers.

The Black Hats have only really got one song. It’s a goodie, though, a slick new wave canter with an anthemic culture-yob chorus and the hint of some amphetamine ska lurking just below the surface. They play it a bunch of times today. We like it every time. Job done.

Like Samuel Zasada, Tamara Parsons-Baker has been showing up the paucity of talent in most acoustic performers with a powerful, dramatic voice and some bleakly imposing lyrics. The Martyrs is her new rhythm section, featuring colleagues form the recently disbanded Huck & The Handsome Fee (not to mention much-missed sludgehogs Sextodecimo). We like the fact that there is pain and bitterness evident in the songs, but the delivery is always melodically accessible; they sugar the pill like Oxford’s answer to The Beautiful South.

What’s that? No, we quite like The Beautiful South. No, honestly. Anyway, Tamara & The Martyrs don’t actually sound like them, they play a sort of gothic blues, it was just an analogy. Look, let’s make this easier, and move on to The Dirty Royals. No room for confusion here because they sound – and to a certain extent, look – like first album Blur. Not a band that has “develop sonically” at the top of the To Do list stuck to their fridge, maybe, but to dislike their mixture of upbeat indie and airy West coast psychedelia you’d need a cold, black heart and a suspicion of music in general. And we have both those, and we still enjoyed it.

We wander over the see Welcome To Peepworld, and are simply astonished by the first two songs we hear. Their semi-acoustic sound is cohesive and balanced, but like mid-period Dylan the songs are allusive and intriguing to keep you hooked as the music floats by. We’re just wondering how amazing it is that two vocalists as different yet as impressive as Tamara Parsons-Baker and Fi McFall could share a stage at a free provincial festival, and pulling out the thesaurus to look up “astounding”, when Welcome To Peepworld toss it all away. Why, why, why did they have to start the affected cod-Brazilian vocal trilling? What possessed them to do all the horrible, Morrisette trash with the lazy repetitive lyrics about bad relationships and the criminally uninteresting use of two good guitarists? We thought we’d found one of the best bands in Oxfordshire, but Peepworld broke out heart and we had to leave. No, no, it’s nothing, there’s just something in our eye...

Things are more reliable over on the main stage, with The Anydays. As the name suggests, they’re a band for all seasons. So long as that season is early summer. In North London. In 1964 or 1994. Again, this is a good band, but not one who are interested in pushing the envelope. In fact, they probably wouldn’t even open the envelope unless they knew it contained loads of lager and Chelsea boots and old Pye seven inches. But if ever there’s a place for well-made moddish rocking, that place has got to be a big field at a free festival. Even as we’re nodding along, we imagine somehow merging The Anydays, The Dirty Royals and The Black Hats, to turn three solid local bands into one world-beating Friday night behemoth.

Smilex are playing on the second stage, uncredited in the programme. If you don’t like Smilex, you should get a bit tired and a little damp, and walk over to find them playing a set just when you weren’t expecting it, and we reckon you’ll come out loving them. Days like this is what Smilex are for - well, this and Your Song - rousing flagging crowds with their irrepressible energy and remarkably well-made sleaze-punk. Each of their songs is like the quick, sharp tingle of pulling gaffer tape from your chest; can’t think where we got that image from, Lee.

Borderville are sort of the opposite of Smilex. They are a truly excellent band, but one whose music, for all the bow ties and bombast, works better on record, where the sensitive playing is evident and where it’s possible to relish the subtle melancholy beneath every epic composition. An evening in a field just doesn’t do them justice, the environment seems to demand more immediate gratification than they offer. It’s like putting P G Wodehouse on Mock The Week. A favourite act of ours, but not a set that we really got much out of.

And then it was home, because that’s what the transport dictated - the countryside’s all very well, but it’s nowhere near our bed. There was still Charly Coombes, The Rock Of Travolta and Leburn to go, all of whom we know to be highly reliable options. A very strong day of music, in a delightful setting, it’s pretty hard to find fault with that.

Charlbury Switchblade

And here's part 2. Nothing much more to say tonight, I'm tired; winning the pub quiz by a record margin was nice, but I shoudln't have had that victory pint. In bed with the prom, I suspect.

RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, Mill Field, Charlbury, 20/6/10

“Please welcome Slantay,” yelps the main stage MC as Sunday kicks off. Well, it’s written Slainte, but pronounced “slawncheh”, meaning “health” or, colloquially, “cheers”; a tough word for an Anglophone, perhaps, but surely if your job basically boiled down to saying the names of bands before they played, you might make the effort to work out what the words sounded like, no? Not as bad as the announcer later on who introduced Redox by telling us they played “one of” his weddings (classy), and yet still laboured under the misapprehension they were called Reedox.

After a slightly scratchy opening Slainte, who are a Gaelic folk act (get away), build to a great head of steam, leavening the predicted foot tapping reels with “La Partida”, a luminescent harp showcase.

Apparently, gents think of the Alphabet Backwards if they’re trying to stave off, shall we say, a particular moment of intimacy. Funny, then, that the band is a huge explosion of pure energetic release. The beauty of the band is that they balance their Sunny Delight exuberance with some excellent song writing, not to mention the fantastically ornate and playful synth lines, that are like being wined and dined by a sexually predatory Ms PacMan. My God, Sunday has started well.

And it doesn’t stop there. Sonny Black is a white haired chap playing acoustic blues, and although we sometimes feel we’ve heard enough white haired chaps playing acoustic blues in provincial music events to last us until the day the lost chord is unearthed, Black really is worth a listen. Not only does he have some effortless bottleneck technique and a great little bucolic melody in the lovely “North Of The Border”, but he can also celebrate Mississippi John Hurt’s “easy-kickin’ fingerpickin’” in an English accent without sounding like a dick. There’s a quiet grace about him and his music, and he should have been higher up the bill with a few more train loads of listeners to greet him.

Lee Christian’s Prohibition Smokers Club are a loose-limbed latin pop jam band, looking like a mushroom ingesting cult pretending to be Kid Creole & The Coconuts. The horns are punchy, and the set is pitched as a little interlude of fun, but still we felt it didn’t quite come together, and a cover of The Fun Lovin’ Criminals’ “Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em” drove us to the bar. Everybody else in the whole of Charlbury seemed to love it, though, so what do we know?

“Think Maroon 5 meets Beverley Knight combined creatively with early Red Hot Chili Peppers,” says the programme’s write up of Alyse In Wonderband. Jesus, if we had thoughts like that we’d turn ourselves in to the nearest police station for the good of the nation. Actually, they’re not bad at all, a youngish band who have a natural control of their pop-funk, and perform it with plenty of vim, Alyse Kimsey’s voice working well above fluent keys. “Creep” in particular (no, not that one) has a groove that even cuts through our professional cynicism.

As is the case every year, billypure make like The Levellers to cheer up the revellers, and if it isn’t a revolutionary leap from their previous sets, they do a good job, as ever, and the James cover is an interesting arrangement. The violin sounds horribly scratchy though – get a new pickup!

The Shakellers make a big-boned chirpy rock racket, something like The Bluetones pepped up on MSG and barndance cider, but The Black Hats do the perky guitar bit far better, their new wave ditties as excitable as a friendly puppy – and, oh look, there’s Lee Christina on guest vocals, with some of that sneering chutzpah we missed from the PSC set. However, it’s Von Braun that really win us over, making a good grungy early Muhhoney noise with drums, two guitars and a frankly buggered mike lead. At times the songs lift off into surreally wired mantras approaching The Pixies at their effervescent best. A great discovery.

You have to wonder how some of the acts find themselves on the Riverside bill, and what they think of it when they get there. Take Dead Like Harry, who have travelled all the way from Sheffield and who have recently toured with Scouting For Girls, do they think “finally, back to the roots”, or “disembowel the agent” when they roll up onto Mill Field? Not to mention all the stall holders selling dayglo dope leaf hoodies and all that crud, who look as though they make about three sales all weekend, do they feel swizzed? Well, fuck ‘em, the Riverside crowd is too sensible for that rubbish – the wacky hats are left to wilt in the sun whilst the home made cakes stall does a justifiably roaring trade.

Dead Like Harry are, of course, awful, but they don’t enrage us as much as we expected, even though they sound like Keane played by Hothouse Flowers. In fact, they come across as a likable bunch, and their piano-flecked pop is easy to tune out whilst finishing the crossword.

Phyal have been warmly welcomed back for a few reunion gigs, and Riverside is exactly the sort of place their approachable rock romps make sense. “Crude” doesn’t quite hit the spot, but after some drumkit surgery and a few swigs of lemon squash – oh, Kevin Eldon, if only you’d been there – “Daisy” flies out of the traps, setting the clattering tone for the next thirty minutes. A superb set but, it must be said, after three reunion gigs Phyal need to stop with the nostalgia and make some new recordings, or shut up!

Nah, only joking, they’re always good value, as are The Mighty Redox. They are a truly under-rated band outside of the furry fraternity in which they move. Nick Clack and Graham Barlow, aside from looking like shiftless dropouts from some Restart scheme for unemployed wizards, are an outstanding rhythm section, but they certainly know their place, leaving the lion’s share of the stage to Phil Freizinger’s fuzzy guitar and the frankly loopy Sue Smith’s acid-sauteed vocal wailing. Set highlight “Eternity” sounds like Gong freaking out in a banshee wife swapping party, until the world is fed through Freizinger’s giant phase pedal, which probably has its own generator backstage.

The weekend finished with The Quiet Men, who aren’t the band aging scenesters will remember, but an Irish folk rock band, with a big line in Pogues songs. Well, that’s OK, we all like The Pogues, right? Crowdpleasing, we suppose, but a disappointingly unadventurous end to the weekend. But then again, the beauty of Riverside is that it can entertain old West Oxfordshire boozers, sun-drenched children, well-heeled salmon sandwich picnickers as well as miserable musical zealots like ourselves. And, the real miracle is not that they’ve managed to put on a festival for free that aims to please so many people, but that they actually succeed. We’ll definitely be back for more next year.

Slantay.

Riverside 2010 Saturday Pt 2

Huck & The Handsome Fee are very good, if a little one-paced, and Tamara Parsons-Baker vocals really shine in this unabashed ‘50s throwback. The Roundheels’ trad rocking is less intense, a bit of a light, fluffy country meringue, but is pleasant enough. The Delta Frequency make out that they’re all about the aggressive, subversive rock, but what we hear is like The Foo Fighters playing over a tinny old Front 242 LP. Ho hum.

Undersmile amuse us, not least because their name sounds like coy slang for a fanny. They supply a thick, dense grunge sound that just trudges on slowly forever, like a man ploughing treacle. The twin vocals detract from the Babes In Toyland effect a little, sounding like two girls who don’t want to eat their sprouts, but that aside they’re a fun new band.

Far more fun than Charlie Coombes & The New Breed, despite the fact they’re several squillion times more experienced. Actually, he’s not that bad, and has a very smooth voice, like a 70s sit com vicar having a crack at Nik Heyward, but the songs just aren’t there. He only needs one great Crowded House style pop hit and we’d love him, but for now we’re bored enough to consider going for a quick game of chess with the guy from the Mexican food stand.

With flagging energy levels, Riverside keep back three excellent acts to round off the day. The Family Machine still have the chirpiest pop songs in Oxford concealing sharpest barbs, but they feel distant on the big stage. Beard Of Zeuss make a sort of bang bang bang noise for a while and it sounds bloody great; by the end we’re not only unsure whether it is wrong to spell Zeus with two esses, but we’re wondering whether a few more might not go amiss.

Borderville synthesise the twin poles of the sometimes mystifying Riverside booking policy. They play “proper” music, with choruses and schoolroom keyboard technique and a respect for rock classics, yet they also throw it together with such calculatedly wild abandon and desperate drama that the gig becomes almost aggressively experimental. They start with a string quartet, which is over-amped and out of tune, but sets the tone of faded glamour from which the set springs in all its camp glory. This is what Glee would be like if Roxy Music sat on Mount Olympus and Pete Townshend carried amps down Mount Sinai. Improbably excellent music.

Riverside Babylon

The giant monkey fun of Truck is coming this weekend, and I shall be there with a biro, some ripped notepaper and a rucksack filled with cheap bitter. To get you in the festival mood, today and Friday I'll post my review of the smaller, freer and, let's be honest, not really as good but bloody great fun all the same, Riverside festival. Lots of people thought this review was too harsh, because the event was free, but I - naturally - disagree. What's the value of giving a band a good review at a free event and a stinker a week later when the gig costs a fiver? And is there a sliding scale in the middle? "£3.50? Hmmm, let's pretend the bass was in time, even though we'll admit the guitar was out of tune". Poppy, and indeed, cock.

RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, Mill Field, Charlbury, 19-20/6/10

A work colleague has a mug reading “A bad day fishing beats a good day working”. Hardly Kierkegaard, but bear it in mind when reading this review: although we saw very few acts that really inspired us (on Saturday at least), we’d rather spend a weekend watching disappointing music at Riverside than a night with decent bands at The Academy. It’s something to do with the delightful landscape, the excellent Marsh Gibbon ales, the friendly atmosphere and the knowledge that some people have gone to a lot of effort to create a weekend out for us all, and not asked for a penny.

Deer Chicago are a decent opener to the festival, constructing large scale edifices of ever-so-slightly angular rock with a sturdy, emotional voice spread over the top. All very Fell City Girl, though Jonny Payne’s voice doesn’t have the natural power of Phil McMinn’s. The odd Jam interlude works surprisingly well.

At first Alan Fraser & The Resignation Orchestra offer flat jazz with Tom Waits Gruffalo growling from festival organisor Dave Oates. Diverting, but not much else. However, after a minute or two they start to warm up, and Fraser’s soprano sax solos become more interesting and contrast with some excellent honks and bubbles from Tony Bevan’s bass baritone, which is roughly the size of a hatchback.

Music For Pleasure entertain us as ever. Their mixture of spicy mid-reign R.E.M. melody and pre-leyline Julian Cope energy is always fun, even if it lacks the character of their day job bands (Harry Angel and The Unbelievable Truth). It’s like many of long term local trier Mark Cobb’s bands, but with bigger balls.

The Black Dog Emporium sadly sound nothing like techno trailblazers The Black Dog, nor much like Black Sabbath, despite the programme’s allegations. Instead they play a tedious brand of lightly funky 70s rock. The word “Reef” came to mind, and not least because it felt as though we were grounded inextricably in musical shallows. The drummer made things mildly interesting with some carbonated fills, but the vocals were honked out as if by a bingo caller trying to communicate across a Swiss valley.

More foghorn vocal subtlety from Crackerdummy. They’re a capable post-grunge trio who remind us of average Irish act Mundy. They playing is good, and it’s all well put together, but only in the way a small brick wall is. A small wall where you were hoping to find a bouncy castle and bourbon jacuzzi.

Remember David Oates’ functional blues growling? It starts to feel like a halcyon era once Stuart Turner starts his rubbish gravelly groaning. It sounds as though he’s trying to scare an errant toddler, not entertain adults. Pity, as The Flat Earth Society are a good band, spinning a nice sticky rockabilly web, and capable of a John Lee Hooker style boogie chug. We live in a frustrating world in which most post-rock instrumental bands sound half finished, but where most blues bands are ruined by duff singers.

Last year Diplomat’s Coffee kept us awake for the weekend. Sadly, this year we’re forced to buy our brew from a drunk man selling Mexican food, who was frankly fortunate not to have burnt his fingers off or inadvertently stabbed himself with a potato wedge at any point over the weekend. On one visit he mumbled something impenetrable about Mary Whitehouse and pronounced “hot chocolate” with one syllable, and at the next he blessed our coffee, even though we doubt he’s taken holy orders.

If Music For Pleasure hark back to R.E.M.’s Green, David Celia immediately reminds us of Around The Sun. Wrong choice, Dave. But we give him a chance and although the music is a little grown up for us, he has some a warm voice with decent Neil Young flourishes and some nice delicate keyboard parts, so we’ll give him the thumbs up.

Riverside 2009 Pt 3

Next up, Ginger Toddler Rucksack Headbutt. No, not the latest Poor Girl Noise booking, just a thing that happened whilst we were laying back watching Two Fingers Of Firewater. And, hey, it’s a festival, if you want to express yourself by bashing our bag about, feel free – decent soundtrack to do it to, as well. We could talk about Two Fingers’ dry humour, their contempo-country lope, their chiming pedal steel or their ‘60s rock touches (we heard the odd waft of Love in the climax), but all we can think about is their wah-wah mandolin.

The Epstein has long been a favourite of ours, and it’s been a long while since we saw them, but at first our rendezvous wasn’t too joyous. The opening two numbers just didn’t grasp us, and seemed overly polished and polite after Two Fingers. Thankfully, “Black Dog” gets things back on track, Stefan Hamilton’s electric banjo scuttles drawing us in, and Oli Wills’ easy, fruity vocal grasping us by the hand and leading us down some dusty mesa. Even if it’s not their finest set, their encore was the track of the weekend, despite an awkward false start, a monolithic sonic surge creating valleys in its wake.

And after that, Liddington were a disappointment, to put it mildly. All the things that have been alleged about Inlight, and against which we have (partly) defended them, ring clear and true of Liddington: empty, vacuous stadium pop, with no discernible character and a vocal that is drab and lifeless just when the music is crying out for something, anything, to lift it out of the slough of over-amped indie balladeers swamping our nation’s musical profile. And, yet again, we feel bored stupid by the giant gestures that the music is trying to make: what’s wrong with you lot? Are you so concerned that your point won’t get across that you have to make it as big and obvious as possible? What are you, a pop band or air traffic controllers? After all, you don’t find us standing dead centre of the stage miming an elaborately theatrical yawn to show how little we’re enjoying the set, do you? OK, OK, Liddington aren’t the worst band of the day (no kilts, see), and a few of the keyboard sounds were well chosen, but by this time we really need something to engage us, and not a whole bunch of vapid honks that sound like old Huey Lewis tunes left out in Chris Martin’s allotment for twenty years until every glint of colour has been bleached out, and nothing is left but the clumsy shell.

But, this brief concluding burst of rage notwithstanding, this has been an excellent festival. It’s our third Riverside, and the first at which we’ve felt that the two stages have been equally interesting. Once again, the effort of putting on this event for free is an astonishing thought to contemplate, and whilst we wish that the organisers could try paddling outside of their safety zones, we’re always happy to roll up our trouserlegs and join them for a dip. Book us in a Diplomat’s Coffee, we’ll be there as soon as the doors open in 2010.

Riverside 2009 Pt 2

After a quick burst of Winnebago Deal’s palate cleansing bludgeon, we check in with Oxfordshire’s other favourite duo, as Little Fish crank up on the main stage. Reviewing them makes us feel like some Oxford music Grinch – no matter how good they clearly are, nor how entertaining their set is, we just can’t see them conquering the world and changing the face of music as we know it, as so many people seem to expect. A topic for another day, perhaps, as they certainly don’t put a foot wrong onstage (although not talking breathless nonsense about chickens between every song might be nice), and Juju and Nez are definitely the only people performing today who look like they were born to be onstage: they manage to eclipse the spectacle of Smilex’ caffeinated cabaret just by, you know, being there. In fact, far from being the authors of life affirming pop anthems, we think of Little Fish more as old fashioned craftspeople. The songs are pretty much all two chord bashes, with little more than repeated blues rock yelps over the top, and they don’t really say or do anything at all, but they are gorgeously honed and shaped and whittled to perfection. Less like the universal soul poetry of the much referenced Patti Smith, then, and more analogous to expert niche electronica producers, creating generic yet immaculate music for the discerning connoisseur.

“We’re very lucky to have them,” announces the Riverside MC about the closing act. Wait, is it a reunited Morrissey and Marr? Has Beefheart been coaxed out of retirement? No, it’s Tristan & The Troubadours, some lads from down the road. Keep some perspective, love. But admittedly they’ve come a very long way since they opened the main stage two years ago, and now offer a very confident set, replete with literate lyrics and interesting arrangements, something like Belle & Sebastian’s early effete library pop filtered through the matinee rock of locals Witches and Borderville. Very good indeed, and a fitting end to what had been a hugely satisfying afternoon of music – and all for blinking free, lest we forget. Some acts made more impression than others admittedly, but there was literally nothing on the bill deserving harsh criticism, and it was a pleasure from start to finish. The effort that goes into the festival should be applauded by all right-minded music fans.

Sunday

What could be more Gallic than a stripy top, an accordion and a Jacques Brel cover? Except for singing in like, French, and Les Clochards do that too. But even if you’re semi-bilingual, like us, there’s tons to enjoy here, from the intimate vocals to the tight, buoyant drumming, to the rich chocolaty bass, which wraps round us on “Lavinia”. Like The Relationships, a band with whom they share a close history, Les Clochards show that you don’t have to be like Tristan & The Troubadours, and fill your lyrics with death, ravens and black portent to be poetic, a well phrased piece of story telling can cut right to the quick. Pound for pound Sunday’s lineup wasn’t a patch on Saturday’s, but Les Clochards quietly turned in one of the sets of the weekend to a smattering of listeners.

Oh, fuck off! Look, we like covers bands in principle, we like ska and punk, we even like fun every once in awhile, but the repugnantly named When Alcohol Matters come from that horrible school of non-thought stating that a complete absence of talent and ideas are instantly justified by putting on some silly clothes. So, here we go, one of WAM is wearing a red beret and a kilt. Wild. The new wave era tunes they play are generally fine – “Geno”, “Too Much, Too Young”, and so on – and the dual saxes aren’t bad, but the rhythms are sluggish and the vocals are just terrible. Talk about a paucity of ideas: simply playing songs you quite like doesn’t make you a good band, especially if you don’t play them very well. Still, a kilt. Just imagine.

Anyway, if you really want to know when alcohol maters, talk to some of the revellers about their attempts to smuggle it onto the site! Some were successful, but Banjo Boy, our homebrew proffering chum from last year, was stopped at the gate with four cans of beer, so he just stood there in front of the entrance and drank them one after the other. Before lunch. You have to admire that sort of behaviour…unless you’re a hepatologist.

Over on the second stage young Chipping Norton outfit Relay may not be laden down by new ideas, but they’re worth a hundred WAMs. Most of their songs are lean and poppy jaunts very much on the vein of Arctic Monkeys, but when they strip things down they have quite a subtle touch, and Jamie Biles has the beginnings of a pleasant indie croon.

“Hi, I’m Judi, and I’m fourteen,” says Judi Luxmoore of Judi & The Jesters. And then she says it again. It’s either an apology in advance, or an attempt to make your friendly neighbourhood hatchetman reviewer look deep into his dark soul. And, no, we’re not in the business of destroying the dreams of nervous teenagers who have bit the bullet and climbed onstage, so let’s get this over with. The Jesters play dirt simple lightly countrified songs, that are part Kitty Wells, and part “The Wheels On The Bus Go Round & Round”, and once she gets warmed up Judi has a pleasing voice. There’s a huge amount of potential here, but let’s be straight, at the moment that’s all there is, and Judi’s presence on the bill is something of an indulgence. Worth investigating in a couple of years, perhaps, and definitely worth investigating if the alternative is WAM.

A walk back to the main stage really brings home how very different in size the two stages are. We wonder how many festival goers never even get past the toilet block over the weekend. Anyway, Alan Fraser is getting the benefit of the excellent PA on the main stage, and his jazz sax floats across the crowd with crystal clear sound. His tone is amazing, so pure and smooth, but the set itself is a real old West Coast jazz dawdle, like Stan Getz locked in an old folks home store cupboard and half buried under discarded surgical trusses. As the set progresses Fraser starts to bring out some interesting low end honks and rasps, and a decent swipe at Miles’ “All Blues” mean we almost let him get away with it, until his sanctimonious sign off, “Thanks for listening, those of you who were listening and not just hearing”. And there we were waiting for you to start playing, and not just making the right sounds. Supercilious old trout.

We’ve got a bit muddled, but we think the band we drop in on back at the second stage briefly is Man Make Fire. How about Man Throw All Your Instruments On It Whilst He There, if the limp soggy rendition of “Purple Haze” is anything to go by. Time for a swift exit.

Back To Haunt Us, Part Four: billypure make mention of our review of last year’s festival during their main stage set, and our allegation that they want to be The Waterboys. Well, that’s not quite what we meant, but they do knock out the same Waterboys cover version and unless we misheard, it sounds as though they actually got their name from the lyrics, so we reckon they’re being a bit defensive. Anyway, the song actually sounds lacklustre amongst some of their own, and their arrangement of “The Raggle Taggle Gypsy” is a searing folk rock delight. It’s a chirpy, chunky set, with some useful fiddle parts, and we enjoy it enormously. Does remind us a little of another band, though…oh, what are they called again…

Rob Stevenson from A Silent Film is firmly in the same breed as Juju from Little Fish, he looks so relaxed prowling around on the huge stage you’d think he was born and raised there. They play a textbook set of wide-armed emotirock (featuring a genius reworking of Underworld’s “Born Slippy”), Rob’s warm, falsetto-happy voice twining gorgeously around his keyboard lines (a synth in the body of a parlour upright piano, nice touch). No offence meant to the man, but our favourite track is the opener during which the guitarist is busy trying to sort out his hardware, and we get a spacious marimba led tune, as some of the music felt clogged and overly rich. And that’s our only criticism: ASF are like Inlight - although clearly so much better - in that their songs are all huge and simple, as if they’re trying to create music that can be seen from space. Look, we’re just over here, a few feet away, no need to telegraph the emotions, just let them happen. When the scale is brought down a peg or two, this band is disarmingly impressive.

Riverside Is Painless

The harpsichord was once described as a "cage of flies". Apparently this is suposed to be a bad thing. Madness. I love a bit of harpsichord, me, the more like an insect prison the better.

RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL, Mill Field, Charlbury, 20-1/6/09

Saturday

Back To Haunt Us, Part One: A year ago we saw Jeremy Hughes busking before the 2008 festival started, and suggested that he was better than many of the official artists. We’re certainly not deluded enough to think that his presence as half of Moon Leopard has anything to do with that observation, but they are the ideal opener to the festival, encapsulating the strengths of this year’s best bookings: approachable, handmade, rootsy, melodic and with a pleasing absence of pretension. The aforementioned Hughes (who looks like a gentle cross between a blasted hippy and Dumbledore’s understudy – you’d recognise him even if you don’t know him) adds chiming, lucent guitar lines to Julie Burrett’s rhythm and vocals on a selection of relaxed Americana tunes. The set might contain more noodles than Norris McWhirter’s chilli ramen, and Burrett’s voice may occasionally drop into a mildly grating whinny, but they do manage to turn “Big Yellow Taxi” into a subtle waft, hanging in the air like a Texarkana blacktop heathaze, and many moments of the performance are implausibly lovely.

The Inventions Of Jerry Darge is a glorious development on Moon Leopard’s opening gambit, taking us further into the mid-west, and playing an even more ethereal set. Theirs is a blurred, intoxicating sonic mist, sounding like a sleepy mixture of country balladry and vintage shoegaze. Gram Parsons fronts Slowdive, if you will, with added ‘cello and a guitar with tolling bells dangling from the headstock. A barely audible vocal even adds to the woozy effect. We’re so floored by the allegation that this is a Deguello side project that we check the programme twice and order a strong coffee.

Ah, yes, the coffee. Non-musical festival highlight is the excellently named Diplomat’s Coffee, served by a dapper, well-spoken chap with a gentility that belies the drizzly surroundings. Presumably a Rocher pyramid is available on demand. We chat about whether the toddlers in the crèche adjacent to his stand will prove louder and more difficult to handle than the musicians on the stage opposite. Probably a draw, all things considered.

Ex-members of Mondo Cada shock us slightly less than the Deguello boys with new act Ruins. They play deep fried, artery clogging rock, with plenty of passion and intensity. However, not only does the under-powered vocal mike cause them more detriment than Jerry Darge, but the bass and drums duo is becoming an increasingly over-stuffed corner of the rock spectrum, and they may have to come up with something else to make a mark. A decent listen all the same.

“No one can hear you scream”, alleges Thin Green Candles’ Elm Street referencing track. That’s as may be – it certainly sounds like none of the band can hear each other, such are the wild variations in tuning and time-keeping. But whilst “tidy”, or even “vaguely proficient”, are terms highly unlikely to be applied to TGC in the foreseeable future, their twisted, hallucinogenic, paranoid techno rock actually gains from being a bit out of whack. Listening to their set is like watching a 3D film without the special glasses – you’re not likely to follow the plot, but you might have a whale of a time all the same.

We’d completely forgotten we saw Jamie Foley’s adequate semi-acoustic rock combo, until we wrung the beer out of the notebook. That probably speaks volumes, though what we can actually recall was pleasant enough. The fader for the vocal channel seemed to have been located by this time, but the effect was negligible, as the singing was an incomprehensible slur somewhere between Damien Rice and Rab C Nesbitt. The last tune reminded us unexpectedly of Pearl Jam, and we conclude that it’s all decent, but not for us.

Music For Pleasure were forced to pull out of the gig, so Dave Bowmer is promoted to the main stage, widdling away on his Chapman stick, whilst a chum clatters about on a percussion rack that seems to primarily constructed from biscuit tins and washing up liquid bottles, placing him equidistant between Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason and Blue Peter’s Yvette Fielding. Pretty easy to ridicule this sort of polite mid-80s fusion (especially when they have a reggae tune celebrating hippy Volkswagen vans called – wait for it – “V Dub”), but the playing is able without being ostentatious, and the arrangements are intricate without being poncy, and Dave ends up as our surprise hit of the weekend.

“This does sound very heavy, but it’s certainly not classical,” says a man walking near us back towards the second stage, who has clearly misread the programme slightly. This turns out to be the sound of Punt favourites Desert Storm, who turn in some top notch, Pantera influenced metal. “Roaches feed on my brain,” growls Matt Ryan; we dare say, but they’ll probably find your black gravelly larynx less digestible.

There are three glaring reasons why you shouldn’t name your band Flutatious: 1) It’s a frankly unforgivable pun, 2) “Flautatious” would be more eloquent, if you really must go down that drab route, and 3) it’s liable to be misspelt in listings until the end of time. Lo and behold, the official Riverside T-shirt claims that “Flutations” played, although seeing as this was just one of a wopping seven errors, we suppose it’s immaterial. They’re a surprisingly good band, though, cooking up a crusty shuffle that loosely recalls Afro-Celt Soundsystem, with plenty of firy folky fiddle and (duh) flute. Unlikely to make the transition for balmy afternoon field to dank city centre basement well, but plenty of fun at the time.

Back To Haunt Us, Part Two: Just a few weeks ago we claimed that given a large enough festival stage, Inlight could make a huge impact. Well, OK, we didn’t find ourselves transported with bliss at the section of their set we caught, but it was a good listen. They do have a well thought out, wide-angled sound, that’s neither over-egged nor emptily bombastic, but once again we felt that the songs lacked depth, even if they were well-played. A note on the Wishing Tree read “I wish the world were one big sweet”. If you think like this, you’ll adore Inlight; if you find the very concept of a Wishing Tree to be fatuous claptrap, then you can come and scowl in the corner with us.

Back To Haunt US, Part Three: In last year's review we hoped that Death Of A Small Town (FKA script) could hold onto their rhythm section for long enough to get their wonderful baroque pop across to the people of Oxfordshire. Sadly personal issues mean that the whole band can’t be present today, but Pete Moore and Corinne Clark put in the effort and turn up with an unrehearsed set of songs for piano and guitar. Several thousand marks out of ten for not letting the organisers down, but the reserved, slightly hesitant set won’t be one for the annals.

A recent viewing of the 2004 Riverside DVD reminded us how good Smilex can be, but this year’s show blew that old recording out of the water. Recent claims that their show is becoming more grown up and less theatrical only serve to remind us that everything’s relative: yes, there is no full frontal nudity or bloodshed during the performance, but the rest of their comicbook punk maelstrom is all present and correct, thankfully. Mind you, Lee Christian’s eye-jarring lime shirt and purple satin jacket make him look like a gameshow host in Hades, and we almost prefer him half naked. Almost. Anyway, none of that matters when the music is so great, with sleazerock hooks tossed onto monumental glam punk rhythms, and Tom Sharp’s formidable guitar (his technical ability is sorely under-rated, but then again does a band that looks like a massacre in clown town want people stroking chins over their technique?). Even if they don’t like the music, locals can amuse themselves by shouting “Sorry, Trev” every time Lee swears.

Scry Me A Riverside

I'm sure I went to the whole of Charlbury weekend in 2007, but for some reason I only reviewed one of the days, can't think why.

CHARLBURY RIVERSIDE FESITVAL, Saturday 16/6/07

“Got midgets on my mind”. “Sitting on a tall cushion”. Well, that’s what it sounds like Dave Ellis is singing, anyway. We can’t be sure, he has this slurred blues style that is as impenetrable as it is attractive. As his husky voice weaves its way around the slapped strings of his trusty guitar, it doesn’t take long to realise that Ellis isn’t doing anything too revolutionary, but it’s a good listen all the same. And, seriously, who doesn’t like that old John Lee Hooker boogie clomp just a little?

It may sound a bit like “You don’t sweat much for a fat lass”, but over on the main stage, Life Of Riley prove them selves to be pretty good for their age. Musically there are no great ideas, but the performance is tight and the vocals are surprisingly strong and melodic. I mean, I can’t remember a note of it now, but it sounded fine at the time.

A sudden downpour means that the Beard Museum tent is packed full for Lagrima, which is exactly the way it should be. You’d go some way to find an acoustic duo in Oxfordshire with more variation: Roz’ vocals can leap from sinister whispers to operatic howls (is she the rootsy equivalent to Ivy’s Itch’s Eliza Gregory, or am I getting carried away?) whilst Gray’s assured guitar work can recall The Cocteau Twins and Andres Segovia in the space of one song. And he has the best reverse reverb sound ever.

Is there anyone left who doesn’t revere The Family Machine? Not only are they movers and shakers behind stage hosts The Beard Museum, but they also write some wry country-inflected pop that can raise a grin and wring the heart simultaneously. Admittedly, there was nothing particularly special about this individual performance, but we can listen to songs like “Lethal Drugs Cocktail” and “Flowers By The Roadside” forever.

A dub band with a Tunisian vocalist singing in Arabic? Implausibly, that’s Raggasaurus. They get a huge response, but what impresses me is the control over their material. It would have been easy just to have everyone soloing at once, and to throw everything at the wall like a million crusty festival reggae bands, but Raggasaurus know exactly when minimalism works, and make sure that very little gets in the way of their taut bouncy rhythms and soaring vocals. OK, it might work a little better in a smoky dive than in a sunny field, and perhaps the keyboard could be toned down a little, but this is good stuff.

When my esteemed colleague Colin saw Earnest Cox recently, all he could see was some pub rock. Well, we heartily disagree, and can say nothing against their simple wired rock, which revels in draping a world weary vocal sneer over glorious endless two chord chugs. The lyrics to songs like “My Favourite Walk” and “State Of That” seem to recall tedious bar room conversations with spitting vitriol, and as ever we’re reminded of an amphetamine version of The Blue Aeroplanes; or we would if the fruity organ parts didn’t sound like they’d come straight from a Stax soul revue. A fascinating band.

We’re big admirers of Baby Gravy’s cubist prog-punk melange, but perhaps a balmy afternoon in Charlbury isn’t the ideal place to experience it. Iona (who may have had a couple of shandies) is swearing and insulting the crowd, desperate for a reaction, but ultimately we’re just too relaxed to plug into Baby Gravy’s abstract new wave. However, stick us in The Cellar and fuel us with cheap lager and we’ll be up there with the best of them.

Is it patronising to call a band “charming”? Well, fuck it, we don’t care, because we’re always charmed by Foxes!, especially Kayla’s honest and unadorned vocal. They have a home made bass, and in fact, the entire band has a wonky, school woodwork project feel, all odd angles and unplaned surfaces. But beneath all this lie some beautifully constructed melodies and a quiet sense of rock dynamics. Foxes! Is a band that has unobtrusively grown in stature to become one of Oxford’s favourites. We shall miss them when they move away later in the year.

If Foxes! slid into our consciousness slowly, then Witches did the opposite, bursting onto the scene with the whole package intact: baroque pop arrangements, dense and forceful live shows and even beautiful collaged record sleeves. By rights the prominence of the cabaret mariachi trumpet should become cloying, but somehow Witches never crumble under the weight of their own ornamentation. It’s odd to watch a live show with such a black density of sound, and still walk away humming the melodies.

Fearing we’d neglected the main stage, we leave the fine This Town Needs Guns to their own devices and investigate Souljacker. What we find is a bunch of young groovers giving it some chest beating wah wah rock action. They sound like Free, but they should be locked up. Ah, well, it’s a festival, let’s cut them some slack – plus they have a tune called “Jimmy Page Drank My Tea”, so at least they don’t take themselves too seriously. They’re perfectly good players, but it’s all somewhat stodgy, and we don’t imagine they’re a band who’ll be troubling us again soon.

Just goes to show, Charlbury is a fine day out, but the Beard Museum is the reliable option.

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.

Charlbury Beret

Charlbury is ace, because it's completely free, put on for the hell of it, and about 20 minutes on the train from Oxford centre, even though it feels like it's lost somewhere in the 1920s. Always challenging to review because you have to balance the celebration of a great free day out with the fact that some of the music is, inevitably, a bit duff.

The punters tend to be 50% dyed in the wool Oxford live music fans, 25% local retirees who've popped along for a day out, and 25% 16 year old identikids from the surrounding villages, mashing themselves on cider and skunk, and kicking shite out of each other by Saturday evening. Heh heh, brilliant.

The exhaustive text below formed part of Oxfordbands' report of the day. I see I accidentally wander between the 1st person singular and plural quite randomly in this review, but I left it in, because that sort of thing amuses me. Banjo Boy is real, by the way, we really did meet him & drink his frightening homebrewed ale

CHARLBURY RIVERSIDE FREE FESTIVAL, 2008

SATURDAY

Charlbury’s a grand mix of your favourite local scenesters, some less well known (to us, anyway) Oxon musicians, and some random bands from places like Essex and Leeds, who frankly must wonder where in the name of holy fuck they are. We love it.

First up is the Leeds contingent, who kindly save us the effort of writing a review by calling themselves Dead Leg, which captures their clumsy loping pretty well. They offer litely funky Zep rock with a good drummer and a silly rawk vocal, and then they offer some more. Was that first number called “Batten Down The Hatches”? Oh yes! Does the following tune boast the refrain “Wanderlust, wanderlust, wooh yeah”? Damn straight! Do they actually claim their slow tune is “One for the ladies”? Scout’s honour! Do we grudgingly like them just a teensy bit? Yeah, they’re a laugh, we can imagine far worse openers. In fact, their attempt at rock hedonism falls wide of the mark in a lovably British way…perhaps in the same way that our dreams of musically freaking out with Mother Nature end up with us huddled in a kagoule opposite a train station…

Over on the other stage (the eccentric placing of the toilets means that everybody at this festival will see something on the Second Stage, which we rather like the idea of) Huck shimmers out ghostly slivers of country/blues laments, which would be rather lovely if the sound wasn’t mired in some horrible mid-range bubble, and his tuning wasn’t so wonky. He’s probably shooting for subtle, fragmented and delicate, but he’s ended up stuck in a maudlin and minimal country marsh. Can we do our Boggy Prince Billy joke now, please?

“Family time is over, people”. So claims Eliza from Ivy’s Itch, and her stunning orc maiden operatics doubtless send children round the festival running for cover, except the ones that think they’ve ended up in Where The Wild Things Are. It’s easy for frequenters of seedy basement gigs like us to forget just how powerful playing bloody loud can be, and after all that hatch battening nonsense from earlier, Ivy’s Itch sear across the field with tautly reined in sludge rock and artfully controlled cacophony. This is probably the best we’ve seen them, and it’s certainly the most cohesive – oddly we find ourselves thinking of Nirvana, especially their tribute to dumbass rock, “Aero Zepellin”.

Dave Oates is a big hearted, open throated, string strummin’, Van Zandt coverin’ classic singer-songwriter, who is perfectly adequate, but sounds woefully 2D after Ivy’s Itch, although some mandolin accompaniment enlivens proceedings. He also alleges that “Folsom Prison Blues” was written by Cash especially for the famous prison concert, which is about 15 years wide of the mark; whenever he wrote it, he certainly didn’t write what the lead guitar plays. Oops.

By the time Jamie Foley starts up, we’re beginning to really miss the Beard Museum input into this second stage, because we seem to be confronted by an average open mic night instead of the well picked selection of performers we saw last year. His performance isn’t terrible, but his sloppy pub voice is so far from “strong” and “unique” that we start to think that the programme writer must have been on a bet. Or have been Jamie Foley.

Nagatha Krusti bring some straight up rocking with touches of rap, metal and ska, but most importantly they bring a bit of blooming fun to the Second Stage. We’d be lying if se said it was the tidiest and tightest set we’ve ever witnessed (it’s more a sort of Vague Against The Machine), but we are definite converts. They have some nicely silly cowbell too, which always tickles our fancy.

Much as we’ve always respected Rubber Duck’s ability, we’ve never quite been convinced; they’ve always sounded somewhat polite and tinny, whereas we expect sweat from our funk bands. Blood, sweat and beers. Out in the open air, however, the buzzing synths and the chirpy rhythms seem not only intoxicating but a neat companion to Nagatha Krusti. “Emotional Revolution” proves itself to be a solid gold toe-tapper, and we leave with our mind changed.

Some bands choose their covers to show their versatility, some do it for a laugh, whilst some just play the song they wish they’d written and make no pretences about how much they’ve nicked in the rest of the set: ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as evidence of this last breed, I give you billypure and their Waterboys tune. Still, there’s nothing much wrong with admitting your influences, and billypure throw out some well put together folk rock songs with some useful fiddle interjections. The children love it, and there are moshing toddlers everywhere we look, which lifts the spirits. Careful though, kids: The Waterboys are harmless, but they can lead to stronger and more deadly vices, such as The Levellers. Tell a grownup if anyone offers you a dog on a string.

script’s opening tune is a tasty mixture of Blondie and Morrissey. Songs like this are superb, and belie the fact that this is the first gig for a new lineup (which is good, because the rhythm section is the best it’s been since script’s very early days); at other times, however everything gets a little timid, such as when four harmonising vocalists are managing to make less impact than one. script’s Pete Moore is the songwriting equal to anyone on the bill today, and tracks like “City Limits” are arresting, but they could do with loosening up if they want to capture the passing toilet-bound punter. File with The Mile High Young Team, and expect some great music from this line-up (if it can stay together for more than 10 minutes, that is).

If Ivy’s Itch played like demons, Mephisto Grande play like a vengeful Old Testament God with a serious hangover. As they intone “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” as a prelude to their own gospel-inflected gasoline rock, we imagine Mephisto as the soundtrack to judgement day. You can just see them bashing out some blues dirges behind St Peter whilst he checks his ledgers, Liam gappily grinning, shaking his head and pointing downwards.

Some lads are beating the shite out of each other, the rain has started in earnest and the bar’s closed: this looks like a job for…Smilex! Just as we consider sneaking off home our spirits are lifted with what is possibly the best set we’ve ever seen from Oxford’s cartoon punk crusaders. Lee’s unfortunate haircut is Travis Bickle via the council gardeners, but everything else about this set is perfect, from the high octane thump of the rhythm section, to the preposterous guitar heroics and the expected vocal tomfoolery. Smilex only really have one song, but it’s a cracker, and it’s testament to their honed craft that no matter how many times we see them, we always leave happy (and covered in beer if we’re too near the stage): in fact, could there be mileage in describing Smilex as the punk equivalent of Redox? In truth, there’s not really mileage in anything except shaking your head like a loon and just going along with the whole gloriously silly rock blancmange that is Smilex. Oh look, even the rain’s stopped.