Globe Arty Folks

Not a single trick or treater last night.  Sweets for me!

V/A – THE FOOD OF LOVE PROJECT (Autolycus Records)

“If music be the food of love, play on” is doubtless one of the most misconstrued quotations from English literature.  Duke Orsino is not cueing up some Illyrian bedroom jamz to get in the jiggy mood, but in context of the speech he’s trying to kill his romantic desires with music (whilst also being a bit of an affected pouty flouncer, to be honest).  We wouldn’t like to predict whether the participants in this compilation, co-curated by Sebastian Reynolds’ PinDrop Publicity and featuring a strong Oxford contingent, realise this but it must be said that this neo-folk album has more to do with Shakespeare’s era than his oeuvre; Alasdair Roberts admits the song he sings is “referenced somewhat obliquely” by the bard, which about sums up the approach.  Still, the conceptual underpinning to an album is less important than its quality, and this is a strong collection.

Highlights are Stornoway’s take on Carrol O’Daly’s famous Gaelic love song “Eibhlin a Riun”, a clean dainty little gem of counterpoint that sounds like something Johnny Trunk has dredged up from eerie early 80s kids’ TV, and Thomas Truax’s “Greensleeves” which reinvigorates the familiar tune as a Plaid-a-like clockwork gamelan lullaby.  Scottish singer Kirsty Law’s lovely lilting drone and voice piece is the most traditional here, balanced nicely by The Children Of The Midnight Chimes, who sound like a Russian choir going down a plughole (ie great).  Only Mann Castell’s “Peg-a-Ramsey/ Yellow Horse” is a let-down, some drunks mumbling in a culvert which no amount of ghostly reverb or flagrant Autotune can salvage: clear the taste away with Brickwork Lizard’s good-natured take on “Fortune My Foe”, which ends by tossing the tune into a raucous tavern in which the weird sisters themselves may well be pouring the pints.

This may not be Oxford’s musical response to Shakespeare’s universal drama and glorious poetry – we’d suggest Borderville and Bug Prentice head the bill for that one – but it’s a recommended listen.  A hit, a very palpable hit.

 

I Want You To Play With My Stringaling

I thought that this was going to be a rubbish gig, and that I was bored of Thomas Truax.  but I wasn't.  So hooray for him.

THOMAS TRUAX/ THE AUGUST LIST/ HUCK, Pindrop, The Art Bar, 19/4/14

Huck’s voice is a fascinating thing, a delicate, charred blues keen that can be roughly triangulated from Chris Isaak, Neil Young and Kermit.  The songs he’s playing tonight, with a second guitar to add electric trills, all come from his folk operetta Alexander The Great, which isn’t about Alexander Of  Macedon (or even Eric Bristow), but appears to be a beat-flavoured rites of passage tale.  The full stage show is coming to town soon, and should be well worth a visit, but perhaps the songs feel a little thin without the theatrical element: they have all the grand dramatic gestures, as well as a dollop of highly literate tragedian’s nouse that can throw Pandora, Babel and Thomas Aquinas into a single lyric, but sometimes feel sparse when we yearn for a big, Jacques Brel arrangement.  The final number ramps up the gutsy bluesiness in a way that unexpectedly reminds us of PJ Harvey circa To Bring You My Love, and provides the set’s highpoint.

There’s not much we can tell you about The August List except that they’re great: they’re the sort of act that encapsulates you for 30 minutes, and leaves you realising you’ve still got a blank notebook.  We could tell you that “All To Break” sounds like Sabbath’s “Paranoid” rewritten by Johnny Cash and played by The White Stripes, or that their cover of Scout Niblett’s “Dinosaur Egg” has the rootsy quirkiness of a downhome Lovely Eggs, but what really matters is that this duo has the unhurried, natural sonic chemistry of all your favourite boy/girl duos, and a neat way with a high octane country blast like “Forty Rod Of Lightning”.  Alright, some of the yee-hah accents are of dubious provenance, but the music is wistful and frenetic by turns, and one tune features a Stylophone, so they’re clearly not too in thrall to deep South influences to add a cheeky Brit wink.

Stick insect thin and surrounded by home-made mechanical instruments, Thomas Truax looks like he’s come direct from a scene cut from Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.  His creations, such as the Hornicator and Mother Superior, are either too well known to require a description, or too alien to be captured by one, but tonight’s set really brings home the quality of his songwriting – we’ll be honest, we thought we’d seen all he could offer, and that tonight’s show would be a tired trot through his cabaret schtick, but we were wrong.  A straight, eerie ballad version of Bowie’s “I’m Deranged” turns up early in the set, and quickly confirms that Truax is a talented performer without all the trappings (even as it confirms that he ain’t David Bowie), and from there it’s only a short hop to the abstract campfire howl of “Full Moon Over Wowtown”, performed acoustic in every cranny of the venue, including a quick jog round the block and a free shot of tequila behind the bar.  “The Butterfly And The Entomologist” is still a beautiful tale – and surprisingly apposite for Easter weekend – and a slow, treacly cover of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is a proper dues-payin’ roadhouse grind.  Perhaps the evening’s high point is “You Whistle While You Sleep”, which uses our favourite instrument, the Stringaling, to build a cubist house loop a la Matmos, before cutting to allow Truax to improvise insults to a loudmouth at the bar (who stayed wonderfully oblivious for the whole tirade).  Truax has enough tricks and techniques to last a roomful of musicians a lifetime, but this set proves that it’s in good old-fashioned composition and performance that he really shines.

Truck 2011 Saturday Pt 2

The Rockingbirds, over on the Clash Stage, prove you don’t need to have a spurious movement and ugly stage sets to be exciting, they simply bash out vintage rock with country flourishes with self-effacing charm and leave everyone happy. See, sometimes that’s all you need, kids: some good music.

Anyone missing the surprising absence of Luke Smith from the lineup this year could have done worse than dropping in on wry pianist Matt Winkworth. Like Smith he has a relaxed sense of humour and a deft way with the ivories, but there is a glitzy, cabaret heart at the centre of Winkworth’s music, every tune leaving a waft of greasepaint and mildewed curtain velvet. Standout is “Elixir Of Youth”, a song about wanting to die that is made impossibly tragic by the jaunty old Joanna underneath it.

Wild Swim open their set with a proto-drum ‘n’ bass rhythm topped with a light operatic tenor. It could be the lost theme for Italia 90. Later they sound like Spandau Ballet might have, if they’d discovered a copy of Amnesiac in a time portal. All of which sounds slightly demeaning, but we are impressed with this young band, who may have grasped more than they can quite deal with as yet, but who look as though they have the potential to develop along exciting lines.

We choose to listen to Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou from outside the Clash tent. We’re quite partial to their winsome folk music, but can’t stand the sight of them gazing longingly into each other’s eyes, like a mixture between A Mighty Wind’s Mitch & Mickey and an 80’s Love Is... cartoon. Something tells us that if this act breaks up, it won’t be because of “artistic differences”...

We return to the Blessing Force hootenanny to hear a keyboard line that sounds like a medieval recorder part, putting us immediately in mind of Danish genius/madman Goodiepal. It turns out that this is the pinnacle of Jonquil’s set, but it’s all still good, taking ersatz 80 pop soul and creating new shapes form it in a way that must make Solid Gold Dragons weep with envy.

The fugu fish is apparently delicious, but in all but the most skilled hands it is a deadly poison. Sounds like the bagpipes and the djembe to us. We only hear small amount of The Geees’ pedestrian world-fusion jamming, but it’s a hideously painful experience.

There are only two ways to experience Thomas Truax’ home made instruments. Either watch him after a full 90 minute soundcheck in a high-end venue, where the subtleties of his Tom Waits songwriting can win out, or see him after no soundcheck, in a sweaty flurry of feedback and confusion that seems to capture part of his wired triple espresso New York charm. Today we have unexpected noises, guitar coming in at random levels, and songs lost in an Eno-ish dub. Wonderful.

You know that horrible Innocent Smoothies type trend, where packaging for allegedly healthy foods says “Look at me, I’m 100% natural, aren’t I lovely?”, so that now products can be as smug and enraging as their consumers? Well, Fixers should carry a label stating “this band is made entirely artificial components, and is bloody great”. Their set is mixture of fake Beach Boys keyboards, Ronettes vocals and Meatloaf tom flams, all tied to together with a catering sized delivery of delay. The effect is some of the most euphoric music we’ve ever witnessed, a whirlwind of sugary melody and psychedelic treatments, all of which is as inauthentic as Jack Goldstein’s California-Eynsham accent. Outstanding - and we’ve not even mentioned Jack’s vast tentacular beard, making him look like a Captain Birdseye from the Cthulhu mythos, or the endearingly over-excited exclamations between songs. A set for the annals, and vindication for a band some see as trendy Animal Collective copyists.

Slightly more refined local heroes, next, in the shape of Young Knives. And it’s a warm welcome back, as the set is far more enticing than last time we saw them live. They may not have got the wired maniacal electricity of their early sets, but they’ve moved through the safe, foursquare indie sound that typified gigs at the height of their fame. In fact, we swiftly remember all the things that we loved about them – although the sight of a middle aged mother, carrying her weeping toddler away from the stage, whilst singing along to “The Decision” says a lot about how time can cruelly catch up with you in this game. The House Of Lords, however, seems to be trying to cheat time, with a horrendous grebo haircut: is he living his life backwards, from chartered surveyor to petulant teenager? Any Carter USM covers likely on the next album?

Having missed Kris Drever earlier, it was pleasant to see him accompany Kildare singer, Heidi Talbot. Like delta blues, early minimalism and acid house, you don’t have to do much with Irish folk song to make us feel warm and fuzzy, but Heidi has a gorgeous papery whisper of a voice, that sounds as though it’s offering each song to you as personal indulgence, and when we open our eyes, thirty minutes has gone blissfully by.

The Long Insiders have turned the cabaret tent into a 50s burlesque show for the evening, which we mostly steer clear of, primarily because we don’t think we have the critical vocabulary to adequately review boobies, but we do catch some of the hosts’ opening set. Very good they are too, knocking out a fizzy rockabilly with stridently melodic female vocals...but you do suspect they go home every night and stick pins into an Imelda May voodoo doll.

Truck 2010 Saturday Pt 2

We decide to watch Thomas Truax in the Rapture tent instead of the main stage, as there’s a something wonderfully intimate about his music, behind all the carny Meccano band schtick, and it’s nice to sit close enough to see the manic madness in his craggy eyes. A young lad of about eight leaps up to take a photo of mechanical drum machine Mother Superior with the same excitement most boys would reserve for David Beckham, so we conclude that the nation’s future is safe. The music is wonkily great as ever (clunk click, every trip), but his cover of the Eraserhead theme is like an ice cream van in Hades, which is just about perfect.

The name Man Without Country sounds like a Truck billing rebellion, and they also sound great on paper, but they’re running late and Bellowhead are starting early, so we never find out what they actually sound like. Bellowhead don’t get mentioned often when people compile their top local acts, but they should: find an act that can mix musicianship, melody, arrangement and danceability together anything like as well, we dare you. Everything about their big band folk concoction is amazing, and if our notes are illegible it’s because we were trying to write them whilst dancing like a stevedore on annual leave in a Threshers warehouse. Bellowhead have thrown so many ideas at the wall they’ve had to build another wall, but what’s astounding is how well it all works, and how much fun it manages to be underneath all the musical cleverness. Reassuringly extensive.

After that Lau are a let down, which is harsh because they’re clearly a superbly virtuosic folk act, but we’ve had our folk bones reset in funny shapes by Bellowhead. Next time, maybe.

“This is the future” chant Phantogram, because they’ve got some synths, see. Not really the future, is it, more a refracted present, seeing as they sound like The XX mixed with Crystal Castles. Bloody good, though, as only glacial synth pop drenched in reverb (splash it all over) can be. Ah, the reverb, surely it’s the sound of 2010. If you want to taste the zeitgeist buy an Ariel Pink album. Or sit at the bottom of an empty culvert with a broken radio playing Heart FM, there’s not much in it.

Mew sound alright, but their gate reverb stadium drum sound reminds us of Simple Minds so we sneak off to see Ms Dynamite. Us and the rest of Oxfordshire, as we don’t get in, but it does let us watch the headliner we should have been watching all along, The Original Rabbit’s Foot Spasm Band. Most trad jazz and blues comes to us pickled and dried with all the life leached out of it by some dead-eyed sense of heritage; The Rabbit’s Feet let the music live, but this time it’s the band that are pickled. Seriously, half of them seem to be drunk. And the other half paralytic. But they can still play fast, loud, funny and with as much passion as anyone on the bill. They’re grrrreat.

An OFF Night

I've just realised that this is the second time I've reviewed The Braindead Collective, and the second time that Human Leaguer Phil Oakey's fringe has been mentioned. The oddest thing is that one of the Collective is bassist (and one of Oxford's best and most understated musicians, in my non-humble opinion), Phil Oakley. Coincidence, or labyrinthine sub-conscious connection?

THOMAS TRUAX/ ERIC CHENAUX/ THE BRAINDEAD COLLECTIVE/ LUM COL CON PIX – OFFshoot, Holywell, 6/3/10


OFFshoot is the Oxford Folk Festival fringe. Well, in fringe terms Lum Col Con Pix make Phil Oakey look like Duncan Goodhew, we haven’t the merest conception how they relate to folk music in any form, as they hover styli above record decks, using the natural warp of vinyl to create jagged loops. It’s fascinating that the layered fragments are of a similar brief length, yet have such different sonic qualities, and the set feels intriguingly like battling through a blizzard of cracked Lego blocks.

Improv scamps The Braindead Collective play traditional and well known themes tonight and, the odd synth burr or hushed scuffle aside, sound like a slightly augmented pub song session – which is no bad thing, and the set is gorgeous, especially a plangent take on Mercury Rev’s “Holes”, Chris “Harry Angel” Beard’s delicate voice sounding like Art Garfunkel bounced to us from the surface of the moon.

Toronto’s Eric Chenaux has a warm intimate voice and a neat lutelike guitar plucking technique, but he doesn’t leave a huge impression. His songs are decent, but feel as though the salient points are all missing, like a half-sucked sweet. Pleasant? Definitely. Interesting? Let’s just say, on the fringe.

Despite his famed mechanical instruments, like the product of dusty frontier cybernetics, it’s easy to see a link between Thomas Truax and folk, his songs all have the easy narrative drive of Cash, and the downhome grotesquery of Waits. This is an intermittently successful show by his standards, but the mixture of eloquent storytelling and clunky cabaret wins out. He embodies folk as low-end showbiz, rather than heartfelt cri de coeur: Furry Lewis jamming at a medicine show, not Ewan MacColl rallying the workers. With his joco-futurist noise makers and his twists on rock and blues stylings, Truax makes the whole of the twentieth century into a carny freakshow: no wonder he made that David Lynch tribute album.

A Flash In The Pandemic

I've just found this review. I think it was written for BBC Oxford years ago (the TOTP and Lavigne references date it hugely), but that the Truax part wasn't used, which is why most of it was recycled for later reviews. Oddly, I reviewed Truax again for this month's Nightshift, and I'll post that on Saturday, just so you can see that I generally repeat myself tediously - I mean, I'm gloriously consistent.

The Epstein-Barr Virus Band dropped 3/5 of their name soon after this.

Oh, the review is rubbish, by the way, no wonder I'd forgotten about it. Atrocious ending.

THE EPSTEIN-BARR VIRUS BAND, SCHWERVON, THOMAS TRUAX, Trailerpark, The Cellar

You've got to love Thomas truax.

Not just because he plays grimy pieces of grotesque Americana, like a nice neat Tom Waits after a bucketfull of Lockets, but because of his wonderful homemade instruments. Sister Spinster is a clanking mechanical drum machine, based around an old pram wheel, and is the sort of thing that might have transpired had Hary Partch been involved in designing the Roland 707.

I'm not even going to begin to describe The Hornicator - part instrument, part sculpture, part headgear - but I'll tell you that when if goes through a giant delay pedal, it sounds like Portishead as prodiced by Wilf Lunn from The Great Egg Race.

Over these queasy, lurching rhythms we find twisted vignettes about the fictional municipality of Wowtown. Now, if there were any justice in the world Truax would have a huge hit, and perform "The Fish" on Top Of The Pops, and every kid would have a Wowtown T-shirt.

Then, to make this fantasy even remotely plausible, he'd be instantly forgotten, and, in twenty years, the ability to recognise a Hornicator would be pop quiz gold dust, like correctly spelling "Sk8rboi".

Schwervon have a man with a guitar, a girl on drums, and a bunch of trashy blues progressions. but I'm not going to mention The White Stripes, because a) they'r eprobably fed up with it, and c) The Stripes hardly invented the concept of lo-fidelity, hi-octane garage punk, now did they?

The clattering workouts are relatively inept, but they're pretty endearing, especially the comical inter-song bickering: Schwervon, the Terry & June of swamprock! Sadly the effect begins to pall after about ten minutes, and attentions begin to wander. Oh, look at that over there...

Is it me, or is there a lot of country rock in Oxfordshire? Not that I mind, it's just unexpected.

Still, The Epstein-Barr Virus Band have got to be one fo the best on offer, cranking out their slide-laden laments with great aplomb. Alright, precious few boundaries are being broken here, but the songs burst out and envelop the room like warm zephyrs, so who's worrying?

They have slight trouble with the quieter bluegreass number, "Leave Your Light On", but generally they truck along fine. With lines like "If I can't have the one I love, I don't want no one at all," they even manage to get away with real cliches. I wonder whether I can: EBVB are a darn good toe-tappin' li'l band.

Apparently not...

Truck 2006 pt 2

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

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

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

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

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

SUNDAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truck 07 Cont.

Buck 65 has made a career out of sneaking up on hip-hop from the rear, tip-toeing from beat poet to MC. His vocal delivery is immaculate, and so intimate it feels like he’s telling you a private joke, and his lyrics are gritty and often hilarious, so it’s another Truck victory for him. But, his beats are actually a little flaccid, and we wish we’d managed to see him doing his spoken word set earlier.

To paraphrase a review of Waiting For Godot, at a Fuck Buttons show nothing happens, perfectly. Huge distorted keyboard drones swirl around the tent, punctuated by occasional percussion loops that all sound like the opening of Iko Iko by The Dixie Cups, for some inexplicable reason. It’s something like rave without the drums and something like death metal without the songs. Ah, it’s just fucking great, go find out for yourselves.

The Will Bartlett Orchestra doesn’t have nearly enough members to be an Orchestra, or nearly enough ideas to be onstage at all. Yes, they can all play to a passable level, but jazz is a music of fire and ideas, not irritatingly facile “Scooby doobies” and crap drum fills.

Trademark’s new club-friendly stage show is banging, but it somewhat diminishes the effect of some of Oxford’s best pop songs: imagine if Witches played all their tunes like Led Zeppelin. However, the final mashed cover of the Beatles’ "Me And My Monkey" wins us over, not least because it has an actual dancing monkey.

They eventually turn out to be a subtle jazz group led by a pianist with a wonderfully light touch, but Barcode have turned us against them before they start. There’s a place for thirty minute soundchecks, and there’s a place for getting bored and going to the bar. Guess which one we favoured.

Sunday

Nostalgics that we are, it’s good to see a proper old-fashioned backing tape, none of this laptop nonsense. Unfortunately, Napoleon III’s beautiful vintage reel to reel overshadows his songs, which are fine, but all sound a bit like Pink Floyd’s "Corporal Clegg" without the chorus.

Back to the main stage for Mules, who sound like David Byrne and David Bowie trying to play their way out of a deep South queer-bashing lynch mob barndance and barbeque. With polka. What’s not to like?

Maybe some of us stayed up last night, but Thomas Truax looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. It doesn’t affect his fantastic performance any, though, which is a wobbly stroll through Tom Waits’ notebooks with mechanical machines instead of a band. If Oliver Postgate had made Twin Peaks in his shed after The Clangers, it would probably have sounded like this.

The Winchell Riots is the band formed by 50% of much missed local boys Fell City Girl. They pretty much pick up where FCG left off, but have swapped some of the epic guitar crescendoes for stabbing snare rhythms. It’s extremely promising stuff, with one drawback: it may be the hangar-like reverb of The Barn, but every song feels a tiny bit overly emotive. Stop twisting our arms, and start leading us by the hands, we’ll end up coming a lot further with you.

We feel bad that so few people investigate the Theatre tent, so we make another foray into it. Biggest cunting error of the weekend. Sunshines is two drunk men, one of whom is wearing a dress. Think about that for a second – a man in a dress!! Anything could happen!!! It’s all wild and improvised! Fuck Thatcher! And so on. After they’ve spent ten minutes making the sound of a cyborg farting from a little machine, and giggling, we back swiftly away.

Ineptitude of a different sort in the Quilting Bee tent (tweer than a glittery bunny playing glockenspiel in a bouncy castle made from coloured vinyl and flying saucer sweets) as Seb from The Evenings and The Keyboard choir sings whilst Chris from Harry Angel accompanies him inaudibly. It’s bloody awful, but at least it’s unpretentious.

Hammer And Tongue provide some reliably incisive poetry as we edge back to the Market Stage for Alberta Cross. Despite a winning high-range male voice, they play pretty predictable country rock – and if you’re going to play country rock at Truck, you’d better be good, that’s all we can advise.

About this time we enter the traditional Sunday afternoon doldrums, where tired legs and jaded ears mean that nothing holds our attention for more than a few seconds. The local Butts ale keeps us going: is the fact that hordes of Truckers are buying fizzy brown gloop at the other bar for £3 a pop, whilst high quality, cheap, local, organic ale is barely touched a metaphor for the state of the music industry, or have I had a pint too many?

Truck 2008 Pt 4

We wait for a while for Cats In Paris. Presumably they’re still there, as after ten minutes there’s not even mike or lead brought onstage. Good DJs and amusingly wrecked dancers to entertain us, luckily.

Pete Kember, AKA Sonic Boom is one of the big names of the festival, and has made some of the most amazing psychedelic music we own. He begins his performance as part of Spectrum with a slow simple keyboard piece, underpinned by elementary drum machine. It actually sounds rather like Jean-Michel Jarre, in a good way, and draws us into a head nodding state of bliss. Once his rhythm section get onstage, they start doing something that sounds like The Shadows in a wind tunnel, with some slightly unconvincing vocals. Seeing as our indie legends quota hasn’t been good this weekend, we quit while we’re ahead and nip off to see Thomas Truax.

Five years ago we saw Truax play to handful of bemused listeners on this very spot, but now he’s one of the most popular acts on the bill. Thirty minutes isn’t really long enough to get to grips with his Tom Waits on The Great Egg Race marriage of American grotesquerie and homemade instruments, but it’s interesting that one of the biggest cheers is for the bitter sweet “The Butterfly & The Entomologist”, played with a handheld battery fan and a guitar, showing that Truax has songwriting abilities to back up his post-industrial carny routines.

Following some tent dismantling operations, we arrive halfway through YACHT’s set, where two people are taking a bizarre Q&A session. Thankfully this is dispensed with forthwith in favour of a sort of new wave disco rock that sounds like a contemporary electro take on Arthur Russell, overtopped with ranting vocals that remind us of Talking Heads in the way disconnected comments are pushed together to make implausible sense. The statements “I married a doctor”, “It’s better than awkward silence” and “I used to live a in a psychic city” linger in the mind after the show, as if to be decoded like arcane jottings. We’ve seen a million bands who do live vocals over backing tracks, but YACHT are the first act in a long time to marry compositional ability to stage performance successfully: seriously, the robot Pan’s People interpretations of the programmed sounds are beautifully controlled, and probably just as hard to perform as actually playing the music would be. So we go home feeling we’ve seen one of the festival’s best and most unexpected sets.

Which is of course what Truck’s all about. The overall music quality this year was phenomenally high, and the ambience was always friendly and tolerant. Yes, the ticket price has gone up, but it’s still peanuts compared to the huge cost of Weakstock, for example – and it has a vicar serving ice cream instead of a giant energy drink logo, which would you prefer? We’re sorry we doubted you, Truck; see you next year.

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.

Truck 03 Continued

TRUCK, 2003: SUNDAY

Start your day the broken machinery way! nervous_testpilot is one man and a lot of wiring, making fine noises in the venetian-aphex-pusher-ziq jittercut style, and finishing with a gabba mix of Morrissey and Queen.

Anyone who thinks that electronic music is easy should see this man's fingers fly around the machines, like Ruben Gonzalez as court stenographer. Wonderful and sometimes slightly frightening sounds.

Lo-fi? God, Lesbo Pig make Vic 20 look like Pink Floyd! They're three girls, a guitar and some toy percussion, none of which are played with any noticeable ability. Add some half remembered, flat vocals about fauxmosexuality and labial discomfort and there you have it.

Very endearing, in an infant nativity sort of way, but, ultimately, a load of old nonsense.

Live hip-hop troupe Captive State give the tent soundperson some trouble: they're far too big for the stage, and have more equipment than you can imagine. They also have trouble with distorting bass, which turns summery jazz-hop into a ribb-shattering womb of J. Saul Kane dirt.

No matter, though, because the music is superbly executed, with a fantastically punching horn section and great MCing. Plus, it's their first gig, which can only bode well.

More horns from Misty's Big Adventure. In fact the whole band are tight, but almost indescribable. Imagine some parlour song pianio, dissonant backing vocals and random keyboard sounds underneath silly, childlike soungs about biscuit tins and the like. Imagine Rod, Jane & Freddy infused with the spirit of The Mothers Of Invention round at Viv Stanshall's house. Oh yes, and imagine a man in a big suit made of gloves who does approximately nothing.

Perhaps it wouldn't work in a dank club, but in the glorious sunshine, who's to complain?

I don't think Vera Cruise would work anywhere, for me at least. There's nothing wrong with them, and they're tight and well-rehearsed but the slightly grunge-laced rock songs don't find anything new to say.

A man next to me in the crowd says, "They sound like loads of bands whom I can't even be bothered to remember," which probably sums it up. Foursquare harmless rock with plenty of pedal stamping. Ho hum.

If Captive State gave the soundman a hard job, Thomas Truax steals the prize, playing homemade instruments built from scrap with occasional guitar and keyboard. These go through a giant fx/delay pedal, to build queasy, lurching soundscapes, atop which Thomas recites some odd vignettes about a fictional place called Wowtown.

I'm not even going to begin to describe the hornicator, part instrument, part sculpture, part headgear, but suffice to say this is the most unpredicatble set seen all weekend.

Musical ineptitude? The Zoltan-Kodaly School For Girls make Lesbo Pig look like Pink Floyd...which must make Vic 20 look like...oh, never mind.

Four women in school uniform play pop songs on the recorder. Badly. They are later joined by someone playing headmaster for a seeedy "Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus". A lot of people enjoyed this hilarious set. Then again, alot of people enjoy anything that features four women in school uniform...

Not sure about Meanwhile, Back In Communist Russia on the main stage. Full marks for their audacity, playing if anything more delicately and quietly than usual, but I still would rather have seen them in a dark, damp place.

You probably know the score: woman recites bleak poetic fragments whilst the band chug through the chords, throwing in odd noises occasionally. It seemed harder to build an atmosphere in the evening sun, as MBICR have a fundamentally claustrophobic sound, and some of the keyboards sounded light and airy, trather than menacing, but a good gig all the same.

However, my dear, smoking is bad for you; and affected smoking is very lazy stagecraft.