Stars Of Truck & Field

I heard one of those phrases today that send me into an irrational rage. "We're going through it with a tooth comb". You mean "fine-tooth comb", you cretin; all combs have teeth, otherwise they'd be fucking sticks.


TRUCK FESTIVAL, HILL FARM, STEVENTON, 7/05

Apart from the fact that they seem to have Marcella Detroit on bass, the most unusual thing about The Spiralist is that they play their rare groove acid jazzery with such a deadpan air. In a genre which is overloaded with forced smiles and positivitaaaay, this is refreshing indeed. As such their understated funk reminds me far more of Chic than The Brand New Heavies. Like a sticklebrick Matterhorn, the music may be a little blocky, but it's certainly imposiong and tightly knit.

Two drum kits, heavy on the cowbell. This is how you do main stage good times, I hope everyone is paying attention to this Mystery Jets masterclass. With lots of springloaded silliness and new wave bounce it's reminiscent of the roster of Wrath records (some of which is in evidence elsewhere during the weekend), which must be a point in their favour. Also, "You Can't Fool Me, Dennis" is my favourite song title of the festival. I leave after about half an hour, when they inexplicably and unexpectedly start sounding like The Cure.

"Hip Hop is the new stadium rock: Discuss with special reference to Solisai". Well, their introduce-the-band outro gets cut short when it threatens to extend into the middle of Sunday afternoon, and their soundfield as a whole is a bit unsubtle and clogged (come on, guys, does that tune really need four vocalists, three keyboards and two guitars?), so there is a whiff of 1985 Sting all-daywers to proceedings...no, not that sort of Sting all-dayer, you pervert. There's also far too much comping and water treading in the middle of the compositions, and a slightly rubbish sax solo to seal the deal.

Still, beneath all this is the seed of an excellent hip-hop group, all the MCs pulling off that difficult balance between lyrical flow, rhythmic ingenuity and - most often forgotten - simple enunciation. Add a powerful rhtythm section, on loan from Mackating, and a storming ragga showpiece, and you could conclude that Solisai is a name to watch out for in the future.

It's one of Oxford's great musical disappointments that when undertheigloo play live, they somehow manage to turn all their records' brittle, icy and enticing rhythms into a mildly bleepy indie stumble. They fare better this year than last, but something still gets left behind when they leave the studio. The sound of Sexy Breakfast in full flow bleeding through the tent doesn't help matters, either.

worthless_testpilot. OK, OK, that's not really fair, but I couldn't resist it. Pedro makes all the right noises (free jazz sax, exotica-tinged breakbeats, laptop scrunchtones) but for some reason they just won't fit together. Hopefully it's just an off day. As a work in progress this is very promising indeed, but as a finished product it's sadly a bit of a mess.

If there were such a thing as a cross between Quentin Tarantino and Crossroads, then The Schla La Las would surely be playing in the background whilst a coachload of ninjas fought over the last mini-Mowbray. Five feisty outfit coordinated ladies playing 50s bubblegum and surf will never stop being fun, no matter what vast muscial empires rise and fall along the way, and this Piney Gir led ensemble are no exception. It's a pity the performance isn't as good as the couture, but who cares: the sun's come out and they'r eplaying a song based on German menus. Einfach klasse!

Stoney are on in the barn. Stoney play a mixture of 70s glam pop and lightweight cock rock/ Stoney do it incredibly well. I wonder if Stoney feel deep down, as I do, that this music is just pretty rubbish no matter how good the band is?

Sadly I can't take credit for the phrase "A one man Muse", the chap next to me came up with it, but when talking about the piano and emotive falsetto of Patrick Wolf it's dead on the money. You can't deny that Wolf attacks the songs with every ounce of his soul, but you aslo can't deny that sometimes they sound a little like Elton John. With his pale, lanky, long-haired frame and general nocturnal demeanour, he's the sort of person who might do incredibly well if they had Fame Academy for vampires. It's an exemplary performance, but unfortunately one that leaves me completely unmoved.

Did you ever see that episode of Duncan Dares where he had a week to start up a homonazi electrogoth band? I fear it may only exist in my head, but watching the farrago that is Motormark's never-ending soundcheck is not at all dissimilar. When they do get going, yelping and pogoing away to some cheap industrial beats, the effect is quite entertaining, moderately samey, and so very, very gay. If Altered Images spent an evening injecting demon's blood and Buckfast they would probably sound something luike this. Good stuff, in other words.

One day the musical public will realise that folk can boast just as much drama and balls as the most theatrical death metal band. Until that day, Jim Moray will continue to entice the non-believers into investigating the genre. He plays traditional tunes in a contemporary style...by which I mean he approaches them as if he were a stadium-sized singer-songwriter, not that he puts lame trance beats behind them.

Sadly his set, whilst impressive, doesn't live up to his first "acapella laptop" number, on which he hamonised with samples of himself triggered from a handheld joypad, to hair-rasing effect. Probaby the best track of the day.

"You hate us 'cos we're feminists!" chant Malmo's Radical Cheerleaders. No we don't hate you, we're just a bit bored with you because you don't have any discernible act beyond shouting your sexual politics at us whist failing to hop about in unison. Gimme a D! Gimme a U! Gimme an L! Gimme another - ah, you're way ahead of me.

I'll assume that you've never read any local publications, and also that you've been avoiding the national music media for a while too, and inform you that The Young Knives play the sort of wonky new wave disco that will raise a smile and trouble your best tapping foot. Years spent playing together and extremely hard work have also turned the band into a super-slick rock unit and they turn in what must be the tightest set of the festival. Sadly, an airless tent full to bursting, and a sound composed almost entirely of treble mean that lasting the duration of the gig is hard work for the fatigued. No matter, they'll be playing much bigger gigs in the very near future, I suspect.

In contrast to their recent glorious Cellar gig, The Ralfe Band's folk-pop set doesn't seem to quite come together. Maybe it's because, in the tiny Lounge tent, the sanre drum played like a timbale feels like the loudest thing on God's earth and my ears start to bleed.

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.