Tate's Vorticism show today - just snuck in on the last day of the exhibition. Wonderful to see some of the stuff, but the show was a little thin for £12.70 - not their fault lots of it has been lost, but there was a lot of archival material amongst the actual artwork. Perhaps a little bit of Epstein & Lewis post-Vorticism would have filled things out.
Blasts & Blesses still one of the greatest pieces of writing/page design in the English language, and beuatiful to see wall-sized.
The bonuses were Nike Nelson's amazing The Coral Reef and a pleasant surprise in walking past Selfridge's on the way to the Oxford tuvge and discovering a new show from the fantastic Museum Of Everything. No, I don't have links. You heard of Google?
We’d be lying if we told you that Mat Gibson was an amazing, ground-breaking artist, but laying on our back, listening to his plangent, pedal steel drenched songs, watching the white clouds form and disperse as if we were submersed in a giant, freshly poured Guinness is a pretty great way to start Sunday. Cashier No 9 play comfy rootsy pop on the Clash stage, like a Northern Irish La’s, and they’re followed by Lanterns On The Lake, who make grown up indie folk with Sigur Ros crescendos, which isn’t seismic, but is actually better than Mew’s set at last year’s festival. And that’s the gist of Sunday: lots of good stuff, very little bad, but very little great.
Take Maybeshewill, for example. They have a dense, muscular sound, and we enjoy their set a lot, but there are only so many times one can get truly excited about this Mogwai tumescent guitar trick. Alessi’s Ark are also listenable, but help us to work out what Americana actually means. It means “leftovers”. It’s not folk, blues, country, rock, bluegrass or anything else that’s actually good, it’s just the offcuts you get when you’re making any of those. Ho hum.
As the music isn’t sparking any synapses, we drop in on the Free Beers Show’s comedy stage, who are quick to announce they can’t give out free beer because of licensing restrictions. Lucky it’s a well behaved crowd at Truck, they could have been lynched in other festivals. As a sort of object lesson in the value of delivery, we see Alex Clissold Jones, a man who strikes us as being potentially very funny, die on his arse, before being followed by Chris Turner, a comedian with inferior material, who is connecting with the crowd. In actual fact, the bays should go to compere Matt Richardson, who manages to keep coming back with funny, mostly improvised stand-up between every set.
Much as we respect it as an addition to Cowley Road, we have to say that the Truck Store’s selection for the Last.FM stage is noticeably the weakest of the three days. Tribes, for example, play a sort of CITV grunge, big-boned, melodic punky tunes lobbed skywards, as if to see where they land. It’s all pretty good, but doesn’t quicken any pulses. Islet should be the ones to turn things upsidedown, but they can’t capture the magic of their Barn set last year. The show is still a beguiling mixture of howls, whoops and keyboard washes, all held together by occasional dub basslines and percussion that sounds like an autistic class day out in a cowbell factory, but it is fun rather than mystifying. Last year we felt as though we were caught in a harrowing Branch Davidian ritual, this year it’s more like being in a training camp for a Chuckle Brothers franchise.
The main stage has been a bit of a parade of worthy solo and duo sets all day, so Tunng liven the soundscape somewhat, with Casio African rhythms, and well placed layers of sound a la vintage Four Tet. If we’re honest, we found the songs to be a bit less interesting than the soundscpaes underneath them, but it’s still a very strong performance.
Phil Selway also puts in a strong performance, but it leaves us entirely ambivalent. His voice is decent, which is a nice surprise, and he plays some well-structured, but slightly twee semi-acoustic numbers, one of which reminds us strongly of “Little Drummer Boy”. As befits a member of Radiohead, there are some subtly evocative touches in the arrangements, such as the “O Superman” backing vocals on the second number, but overall the conclusion is that this is music that would work better on midnight headphones, not in a tent on a sunny afternoon.
Sunday, 4 September 2011
Friday, 2 September 2011
Truck 2011 Saturday Pt 3
Back at the Blessing Force love-in, Chad Valley is showing us round the dessicated remains of a freeze dried Ibiza night from 1989. By putting sweaty, nightclub music of the past into an amniotic reverb womb, Chad Valley’s set is a little like what the staff of Ghost Box records might play if they were cruising for a shag. It’s actually remarkably good music, although we often worry that Hugo Manuel’s voice isn’t strong enough to carry the material, but as with all the Blessing Force endeavours, we feel as though we’d need to be Mahakali to make air quotes sufficient to capture the levels of reference and irony. Which is why the collaboration between ODC Drumline and Coloureds is a pleasant surprise. Far from being a smug game for BF buddies, as feared, the drumline is actually four very well drilled players, who have rehearsed some decent arrangements to complement Coloureds’ jittering techno. It’s highly enjoyable, although in a twist of inverse logic, a collection of crisp, clattering martial snares actually detracts from the rhythmic power of Coloureds’ material, and we can’t help feeling that, despite the evident skill and effort involved, it would be more satisfying to just hear Coloureds. Oh, and twice as loud, too, thank you.
Plus, no matter how hard they tried, they could never actually be more of a noisy party conclusion to the night than The Rabbit’s Foot Spasm Band, who turn the cabaret tent into a jazz apocalypse. Limbs stick at random from the beyond capacity tent, mikes are used and discarded to the confusion of the engineer, dancers leap onstage and are summarily booted off, and all to the sound of solid gold brutal jump jazz. Everyone who doesn’t like jazz should be made to watch the Rabbit’s Foot...and many people who do like jazz should too, because they like the wrong bit. Sheer carnage, there’s no better sound to turn in to bed to.
Plus, no matter how hard they tried, they could never actually be more of a noisy party conclusion to the night than The Rabbit’s Foot Spasm Band, who turn the cabaret tent into a jazz apocalypse. Limbs stick at random from the beyond capacity tent, mikes are used and discarded to the confusion of the engineer, dancers leap onstage and are summarily booted off, and all to the sound of solid gold brutal jump jazz. Everyone who doesn’t like jazz should be made to watch the Rabbit’s Foot...and many people who do like jazz should too, because they like the wrong bit. Sheer carnage, there’s no better sound to turn in to bed to.
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.
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 2011 Saturday
Here we go, part 2. Saturday at Truck. I'm going to eat a pizza soon, and I'm going to have it with spinach leaves and hummus, and just maybe a pint of beer. Then tomorrow I'm going to see the glorious Stornoway (it does mean I'll have to see the rubbish Dreaming Spires, whom I avoided at Truck), and Sunday I'm going to see the Vorticist show at the tate befopre it closes. I can't see why you'd want to knwo this, but I've told been told this site isn't strictly a blog, so I thought I'd add some meaningless eprsonal info. I'm currently wearing dark blue briefs.
Were we slightly critical of the gentrification of Truck’s catering earlier? Opinions change on Saturday morning when we find we can get a proper coffee and some orange juice a few feet from the tent, which balances out the burger we had for dinner. Chav for supper and middle class for breakfast, that’s our motto! What’s that? Lunch? No time for it, we’d rather visit the Butts ale stall, still the non-musical highlight of Truck. Great service, great beer and it costs £2.80 a pint. Two pounds bastard eighty! It’s akin to a miracle. We’re also told by parents that it would be worth our while to borrow a child just to experience Roustabout Theatre’s My Secret Garden, a weird mixture of improvised theatre and archaeology. Well, maybe not, but we do drop in on Nick Cope, who is entertaining some pre-schoolers with his chirpy activity songs. “Stand on one leg”, “Let’s pretend we’re moles”. Not so much later we find ourselves in the presence of Alphabet Backwards, whose music is really the same thing, for those slightly older. “Imagine you’ve just passed your driving test”, “Pretend you just got off with another sixth former”. Unashamedly perky pop, delivered with unashamed chops, it’s pity you don’t see this mix more often. A 21st century Squeeze.
The more spacious Truck layout has enticed us to spend more time away from the main stages, and we are very impressed with some of the Cabaret Clandestino bookings. Ex-Oxonian Face0meter delivers his wordy alt folk with some charm. The obvious reference point is Jeffrey Lewis, though we prefer to think of him as a cross between Richard Stillgoe and Jasper Carrott. Musically it’s beyond sloppy, but as entertainment it’s gold. Hyper-folk performer James Bell doesn’t have the gig of his life, but has energy enough to get away with it. Storyteller Paul Askew also stumbles a few times, but has material to hide the cracks, a long piece about taking a gaggle of words to the botanical gardens before kidnapping a pronoun reminding us of a punk Richard Brautigan; poet George Chopping eclipses him, though, with a perfectly balanced mixture of sweet natured observation and steel-melting bile. And yes, just so the cosmic balance is restored, there’s some absolute rubbish too: The Oxford Imps do fourth rate Whose Line Is It Anyway? guff whilst acting like a punchably upbeat genetically engineered Partridge Family. The festival programme has a typo of “improve” for “improv” – we couldn’t think of better advice for them. Oh, and Mark Niel is just skin-crawlingly awful. He laments the fact that his hometown of Milton Keynes is a bad comic’s punchline – funny, without that comment we’d have no idea he had any notion of what a punchline was.
The main stage bookings are strangely underwhelming in the afternoon, but Two Fingers Of Firewater add some spice to proceedings, their widescreen country rock and well-groomed boogie harking back to Truck history. They make the transition from Charlbury to Truck without losing any punch.
Blessing Force is brilliant: not only is a lot of the music very good, but what is not good is hilarious. In the Last.FM tent on Saturday, we enjoyed being alternately entertained by the music and entertained by the sheer hideous hipster spectacle of things. Sealings fell into the former category. In the past, we’ve been unconvinced by this noisy drum machine backed duo: they weren’t doing much wrong, but it was more a souvenir of good music, than good music in its own right. This time, however, everything fell into place, as the intensity rose from a Jesus & Mary Chain drone to a Swans-inspired squall. Solid Gold Dragons, on the other hand, were possibly the worst thing to happen to us over the weekend – and that includes getting nearly vomited on by a toddler. Their plastic, stadium pop with light reggae inflections might be just about acceptable if the vocals weren’t so clod-hoppingly oafish, even whilst they tried to plumb cosmic realms of imagery. Imagine Big Audio Dynamite on an off night fronted by Bernard Matthews. No, wait, sometimes the trumpet made it more like a tired James lead by Derek Nimmo taking the piss out of Morrissey. No, wait, can we please stop thinking about this, forever?
Were we slightly critical of the gentrification of Truck’s catering earlier? Opinions change on Saturday morning when we find we can get a proper coffee and some orange juice a few feet from the tent, which balances out the burger we had for dinner. Chav for supper and middle class for breakfast, that’s our motto! What’s that? Lunch? No time for it, we’d rather visit the Butts ale stall, still the non-musical highlight of Truck. Great service, great beer and it costs £2.80 a pint. Two pounds bastard eighty! It’s akin to a miracle. We’re also told by parents that it would be worth our while to borrow a child just to experience Roustabout Theatre’s My Secret Garden, a weird mixture of improvised theatre and archaeology. Well, maybe not, but we do drop in on Nick Cope, who is entertaining some pre-schoolers with his chirpy activity songs. “Stand on one leg”, “Let’s pretend we’re moles”. Not so much later we find ourselves in the presence of Alphabet Backwards, whose music is really the same thing, for those slightly older. “Imagine you’ve just passed your driving test”, “Pretend you just got off with another sixth former”. Unashamedly perky pop, delivered with unashamed chops, it’s pity you don’t see this mix more often. A 21st century Squeeze.
The more spacious Truck layout has enticed us to spend more time away from the main stages, and we are very impressed with some of the Cabaret Clandestino bookings. Ex-Oxonian Face0meter delivers his wordy alt folk with some charm. The obvious reference point is Jeffrey Lewis, though we prefer to think of him as a cross between Richard Stillgoe and Jasper Carrott. Musically it’s beyond sloppy, but as entertainment it’s gold. Hyper-folk performer James Bell doesn’t have the gig of his life, but has energy enough to get away with it. Storyteller Paul Askew also stumbles a few times, but has material to hide the cracks, a long piece about taking a gaggle of words to the botanical gardens before kidnapping a pronoun reminding us of a punk Richard Brautigan; poet George Chopping eclipses him, though, with a perfectly balanced mixture of sweet natured observation and steel-melting bile. And yes, just so the cosmic balance is restored, there’s some absolute rubbish too: The Oxford Imps do fourth rate Whose Line Is It Anyway? guff whilst acting like a punchably upbeat genetically engineered Partridge Family. The festival programme has a typo of “improve” for “improv” – we couldn’t think of better advice for them. Oh, and Mark Niel is just skin-crawlingly awful. He laments the fact that his hometown of Milton Keynes is a bad comic’s punchline – funny, without that comment we’d have no idea he had any notion of what a punchline was.
The main stage bookings are strangely underwhelming in the afternoon, but Two Fingers Of Firewater add some spice to proceedings, their widescreen country rock and well-groomed boogie harking back to Truck history. They make the transition from Charlbury to Truck without losing any punch.
Blessing Force is brilliant: not only is a lot of the music very good, but what is not good is hilarious. In the Last.FM tent on Saturday, we enjoyed being alternately entertained by the music and entertained by the sheer hideous hipster spectacle of things. Sealings fell into the former category. In the past, we’ve been unconvinced by this noisy drum machine backed duo: they weren’t doing much wrong, but it was more a souvenir of good music, than good music in its own right. This time, however, everything fell into place, as the intensity rose from a Jesus & Mary Chain drone to a Swans-inspired squall. Solid Gold Dragons, on the other hand, were possibly the worst thing to happen to us over the weekend – and that includes getting nearly vomited on by a toddler. Their plastic, stadium pop with light reggae inflections might be just about acceptable if the vocals weren’t so clod-hoppingly oafish, even whilst they tried to plumb cosmic realms of imagery. Imagine Big Audio Dynamite on an off night fronted by Bernard Matthews. No, wait, sometimes the trumpet made it more like a tired James lead by Derek Nimmo taking the piss out of Morrissey. No, wait, can we please stop thinking about this, forever?
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
Holy Truck
Of course, since I wrote this review Truck festrival (or rather, Steventon Events, who run it) has gone bust. I decided to leave the review as it was writtena day or two after the event, rather than go into hysterical eulogies. I'll miss it, though, for all its faults.
Sat & Sun copming very soon.
Yes, there are a lot of words here. Don't read them if you don't weant to, I don't mind. There are plenty of blogs out there that average 10 words a post, go and find them, if you don't like reading. You deserve each other.
TRUCK FESITVAL, Hill Farm, Steventon, 22-4/7/11
FRIDAY
Oh, there’ll be letters. Pints will be mumbled into. The internet may be utilised. Truck has done the unthinkable, and redesigned the festival site. Not only is the main stage in a different place, it’s in a different damned field. And the barn is gone. Everyone loved the barn. Everyone loved the atrocious acoustics, awkward bottleneck entrance and lingering smell of cow faeces. Who wants this new Clash stage, with its high-quality PA and easy access?
Well, we do. We feel that, for the most part, Truck’s new, more spacious layout is a success, and if they have co-opted some of the trappings of the well-heeled boutique festivals they helped to create – posh sit-down dining, stalls selling over-priced nick-nacks made from old Penguin paperbacks – the old, unpretentious, home-made atmosphere still survives. And, yes, you can still buy doughnuts from the vicar and grub from the Round Tablers (quote of the weekend: “I got a lovely burger, but it was weird to buy it from the masons”).
Our weekend starts in the new Clash tent, with Gaggle, a large bunch of vibrantly bedecked young ladies doing a line in big tribal pop chants. It’s something like a school nativity play version of Bow Wow Wow, and is good honest fun. There are about 35 of them, which we suppose might look impressive if we hadn’t just spent 20 minutes as part of a large and twitchy crowd at the Steventon level crossing, as some sort of ovine emergency meltdown caused by sheep on the line a few miles away meant that the barriers had to be kept inexplicably closed.
The Wood stage is a cosy, intimate tent that is sadly a little underused over the weekend, but it’s a the perfect place to watch Water Pageant, a likable folk-pop trio, whose delicate sound might get lost in larger spaces. At another corner of the site, the Last.FM stage is curated on the Friday night by BBC Oxford Introducing, and we’re tempted to say this was the lineup of the weekend. The Braindead Collective swap their free improv racket for an exploration of open-ended pop, and it works beautifully, Chris Beard’s lucid, careening voice sailing high above a mixture of dub touches and Fripp-like effects.
Mr Shaodow follows them admirably, with a crowd pleasingly boisterous set that may have hidden some of his clever lyrics, but highlights his way with an eager audience. Shadow is one of an odd breed of Oxford-connected artists who always get a rave reception at Truck, but who generally play to small, indifferent audiences in the city (cf testpilot, nervous), and with this in mind we can hardly blame Shaodow for keeping things accessible. One question though: are we missing something or is DJ Watchcase the worst hip hop moniker in a fifty mile radius?
You Are Wolf aren’t mentioned in the programme, but we stumble across her making complex loops of vocals and keyboard, to deliver a lilting traditional folk song over the top. She then announces it was actually a Dolly Parton cover! Did we imagine this?
Back at the Wood stage, London’s Non-Classical club have taken over for the evening, and we have the pleasure of being amongst the small attendance for one of the sets of the weekend, from Consortium 5, a recorder quintet. In previous years a recorder only ensemble at Truck might have meant Piney Gir and chums arsing about and playing smugly dire Steely Dan covers, but Consortium 5 is a highly drilled, professional group of musicians, offering us a little Purcell and a lot of contemporary composition. The sonic range is astounding, from the sound of a baroque traffic jam through a Ligeti-like cloud of chirrups to the final number, a mass of breathy percussive bursts and gasping trills, like Thomas the Tank Engine and friends playing Takemitsu. It’s random discoveries like this that make Truck special.
There are lot of people on the Truck bill this year who Used To Be In Bands, which is fine, but there are also a lot Whose Dads Used To Be In Bands: Truck wants to watch that it doesn’t become some sort of indie Cornbury. An example for the prosecution would be Liam Finn, offspring of him out of Crowded House, who is decent enough but pretty dull, going for a wall of sound pop effect, but losing us swiftly.
Perhaps feeling guilty for giving up on Finn so quickly, we decide to give Africa Junction more of a chance, and are amply rewarded for doing so. At first, they sound too studied to make anything from their polite African percussion – Jesus, we left East Oxford for the weekend to get away from this stuff – but as the tempo drops, and the balafon starts to lead the music, it wafts out of the Cabaret tent like a warm sirocco.
Johnny Flynn reminds us happily of childhood TV, and Rolf Harris painting vast wall-sized pictures with house paints. Flynn’s band similarly takes simple, bold strokes and throws them together to create something impressive. There’s nothing here we’ve not heard before, just chunky folky choruses, lively trumpet lines, bluesy guitar licks, and a bit of ‘cello to underpin things, but the whole is rather lovely.
James Surowiecki wrote a book called The Wisdom Of Crowds, claiming that large groups of people are effectively cleverer than individuals. Our problem with this theory has always been that vast crowds of people are generally seen assembled to watch adequate but unexciting things like Coldplay or Michael McIntyre – just how fucking clever can they be? Still, we get a little buzz of pleasure in seeing hundreds of Truckers swaying along to Bellowhead’s outstanding version of “Amsterdam”, squeezing every drop of tawdry voyeurism and tragic celebration from Brel’s composition. In truth, this is the outstanding moment of set that is very good, but doesn’t reach the heights of their 2010 performance. Uncharacteristically, it’s the slower tracks that are more successful this time round, although the wah-wah mandolin does lend a funky edge to the more upbeat songs (images of Starsky & Hutch driving through Cecil Sharp House in a flurry of madrigal manuscripts). Not up to their own high standards, perhaps, but still probably the best festival band on the circuit.
Nipping out to catch some of Spring Offensive’s set turns out to be an excellent decision. We’ve always admired their music, but tonight the Introducing stage witnesses a band coming of age. Not only do they perform with an acidic intensity we’ve never seen before, but new track “52 Miles” takes the melancholic triumphalism of their best songs, but replaces the Youth Movies guitar twiddles with a slow-burning haze that eventually erupts into a bloom of furry beauty. A very good band just got better.
And we follow that be revisiting a good local band whom we had somewhat forgotten. Dive Dive remind us that they can produce bitter little nuggets of pop excellence, and send us off happily into the night, or at least towards the beer tent.
Sat & Sun copming very soon.
Yes, there are a lot of words here. Don't read them if you don't weant to, I don't mind. There are plenty of blogs out there that average 10 words a post, go and find them, if you don't like reading. You deserve each other.
TRUCK FESITVAL, Hill Farm, Steventon, 22-4/7/11
FRIDAY
Oh, there’ll be letters. Pints will be mumbled into. The internet may be utilised. Truck has done the unthinkable, and redesigned the festival site. Not only is the main stage in a different place, it’s in a different damned field. And the barn is gone. Everyone loved the barn. Everyone loved the atrocious acoustics, awkward bottleneck entrance and lingering smell of cow faeces. Who wants this new Clash stage, with its high-quality PA and easy access?
Well, we do. We feel that, for the most part, Truck’s new, more spacious layout is a success, and if they have co-opted some of the trappings of the well-heeled boutique festivals they helped to create – posh sit-down dining, stalls selling over-priced nick-nacks made from old Penguin paperbacks – the old, unpretentious, home-made atmosphere still survives. And, yes, you can still buy doughnuts from the vicar and grub from the Round Tablers (quote of the weekend: “I got a lovely burger, but it was weird to buy it from the masons”).
Our weekend starts in the new Clash tent, with Gaggle, a large bunch of vibrantly bedecked young ladies doing a line in big tribal pop chants. It’s something like a school nativity play version of Bow Wow Wow, and is good honest fun. There are about 35 of them, which we suppose might look impressive if we hadn’t just spent 20 minutes as part of a large and twitchy crowd at the Steventon level crossing, as some sort of ovine emergency meltdown caused by sheep on the line a few miles away meant that the barriers had to be kept inexplicably closed.
The Wood stage is a cosy, intimate tent that is sadly a little underused over the weekend, but it’s a the perfect place to watch Water Pageant, a likable folk-pop trio, whose delicate sound might get lost in larger spaces. At another corner of the site, the Last.FM stage is curated on the Friday night by BBC Oxford Introducing, and we’re tempted to say this was the lineup of the weekend. The Braindead Collective swap their free improv racket for an exploration of open-ended pop, and it works beautifully, Chris Beard’s lucid, careening voice sailing high above a mixture of dub touches and Fripp-like effects.
Mr Shaodow follows them admirably, with a crowd pleasingly boisterous set that may have hidden some of his clever lyrics, but highlights his way with an eager audience. Shadow is one of an odd breed of Oxford-connected artists who always get a rave reception at Truck, but who generally play to small, indifferent audiences in the city (cf testpilot, nervous), and with this in mind we can hardly blame Shaodow for keeping things accessible. One question though: are we missing something or is DJ Watchcase the worst hip hop moniker in a fifty mile radius?
You Are Wolf aren’t mentioned in the programme, but we stumble across her making complex loops of vocals and keyboard, to deliver a lilting traditional folk song over the top. She then announces it was actually a Dolly Parton cover! Did we imagine this?
Back at the Wood stage, London’s Non-Classical club have taken over for the evening, and we have the pleasure of being amongst the small attendance for one of the sets of the weekend, from Consortium 5, a recorder quintet. In previous years a recorder only ensemble at Truck might have meant Piney Gir and chums arsing about and playing smugly dire Steely Dan covers, but Consortium 5 is a highly drilled, professional group of musicians, offering us a little Purcell and a lot of contemporary composition. The sonic range is astounding, from the sound of a baroque traffic jam through a Ligeti-like cloud of chirrups to the final number, a mass of breathy percussive bursts and gasping trills, like Thomas the Tank Engine and friends playing Takemitsu. It’s random discoveries like this that make Truck special.
There are lot of people on the Truck bill this year who Used To Be In Bands, which is fine, but there are also a lot Whose Dads Used To Be In Bands: Truck wants to watch that it doesn’t become some sort of indie Cornbury. An example for the prosecution would be Liam Finn, offspring of him out of Crowded House, who is decent enough but pretty dull, going for a wall of sound pop effect, but losing us swiftly.
Perhaps feeling guilty for giving up on Finn so quickly, we decide to give Africa Junction more of a chance, and are amply rewarded for doing so. At first, they sound too studied to make anything from their polite African percussion – Jesus, we left East Oxford for the weekend to get away from this stuff – but as the tempo drops, and the balafon starts to lead the music, it wafts out of the Cabaret tent like a warm sirocco.
Johnny Flynn reminds us happily of childhood TV, and Rolf Harris painting vast wall-sized pictures with house paints. Flynn’s band similarly takes simple, bold strokes and throws them together to create something impressive. There’s nothing here we’ve not heard before, just chunky folky choruses, lively trumpet lines, bluesy guitar licks, and a bit of ‘cello to underpin things, but the whole is rather lovely.
James Surowiecki wrote a book called The Wisdom Of Crowds, claiming that large groups of people are effectively cleverer than individuals. Our problem with this theory has always been that vast crowds of people are generally seen assembled to watch adequate but unexciting things like Coldplay or Michael McIntyre – just how fucking clever can they be? Still, we get a little buzz of pleasure in seeing hundreds of Truckers swaying along to Bellowhead’s outstanding version of “Amsterdam”, squeezing every drop of tawdry voyeurism and tragic celebration from Brel’s composition. In truth, this is the outstanding moment of set that is very good, but doesn’t reach the heights of their 2010 performance. Uncharacteristically, it’s the slower tracks that are more successful this time round, although the wah-wah mandolin does lend a funky edge to the more upbeat songs (images of Starsky & Hutch driving through Cecil Sharp House in a flurry of madrigal manuscripts). Not up to their own high standards, perhaps, but still probably the best festival band on the circuit.
Nipping out to catch some of Spring Offensive’s set turns out to be an excellent decision. We’ve always admired their music, but tonight the Introducing stage witnesses a band coming of age. Not only do they perform with an acidic intensity we’ve never seen before, but new track “52 Miles” takes the melancholic triumphalism of their best songs, but replaces the Youth Movies guitar twiddles with a slow-burning haze that eventually erupts into a bloom of furry beauty. A very good band just got better.
And we follow that be revisiting a good local band whom we had somewhat forgotten. Dive Dive remind us that they can produce bitter little nuggets of pop excellence, and send us off happily into the night, or at least towards the beer tent.
Monday, 8 August 2011
Trevor Trove
"Blackbird singing in the dark/ Falling like a star/ But singing like a lark"
I allude to these lines later in the review, but thoughtthey were worth quoting here. C'mon, Trev, don't you know that a simile is supposed to find unexpected relationships between two things for poetic effect, not to liken something to something pretty similar in such a way as to emphasise their differences?
"The dog was barking as loud as another dog - quite a loud one", is not a great simile.
If Robbie Burns had been Trev he'd not have written "My love is like a red, red rose," but "My love is like fondness. You know, an emotion that expresses amorous feelings. Yeah, that's about right".
I personally think Trev wanted to write about blackbirds because he likes Paul McCartney...
TREV WILLIAMS – KEEP SINGING EP (Self release)
Trev Williams is one of the good guys. One of Oxford music’s nice blokes, he always has a smile and a positive lyric for any passer by. Except when he gets a bit angry and moans about everything, but even the he tends to apologise afterwards. Top man. But still, we’ve never really got a grasp on his music, which we’ve always found pleasant, harmless and – let’s be frank – trite. His trio The Follys, despite an infuriating approach to pluralisation, made a tight enough noise we’ll admit, but we still couldn’t find much in the songwriting to get excited about.
Then, about 18 months ago, we were watching Trev play at the arse end of some bill somewhere, and suddenly realised that we were enjoying it. The new songs wormed their way into our consciousness in a way the older ones never had, and a Labi Siffre cover proved that Trev had polished his singing voice. This new EP proves conclusively that the best thing a musician can have is not perfect pitch, posh equipment or a Dad who works for EMI, but determination and dedication. It’s a great little listen, and welcomes Trev into the upper echelons of Oxford’s singer-songwriters.
“Happy Song” might be the sort of platitudinous pop that Trev is wont to indulge in, but it does sound pretty great, with a delayed toy piano complementing an approachable vocal melody. Its optimistic bonhomie can be a little wearing, like having some Phil Daniels impersonator slap you on the back gurning “Cheer up, might never ‘appen” every 8 bars, but it’s undeniably well put together. “In The Dark” is similar fare. The song doesn’t set us alight – in fact, the only memorable bit is snaffled from “My Girl” – but it’s probably the best vocal performance Trev has ever put onto wax, and the crisp production is built around a supply dark keyboard part that puts us in mind of Red Snapper.
This pair are all very well and good, but it’s the other two tracks that really show how Williams has developed. Nightshift Demo Of The Month winner “You Cut, We Bleed” still sounds wonderful, a burst of rage and reverb that blossoms into a life-affirming piano jaunt when the pressure threatens to break the song apart. It was composed in response to recent public spending cuts, but frankly the lyrics are so opaque that it could easily have been about sloppy management at Trev’s favourite football club, or the time his housemate drank all the milk. No problems there, the simplicity and directness of the lyrics makes the song feel universal, and suggests it may have a shelf life beyond the current administration.
It’s a great tune, but it’s eclipsed by the title track. We’ll skim over the opening couplet, which has one of the clumsier similes we’ve ever heard, and jump straight into the meat of the song, a gorgeous cyclical, floating melody that wafts over the top of delicately plucked guitar. Live versions have often drifted away into loop pedal heaven, and our only real criticism of the piece is that we could have done with more of it. Anyone who thinks this review sounds a bit patronising or distant might like to know that the last time we found ourselves inadvertently humming an Oxford tune this much, it was “Zorbing”, which is high praise indeed. Keep singing? If there’s one thing we can conclude about this release, it’s that we hope Trev takes his own advice, and that there’s lots more like this to come.
I allude to these lines later in the review, but thoughtthey were worth quoting here. C'mon, Trev, don't you know that a simile is supposed to find unexpected relationships between two things for poetic effect, not to liken something to something pretty similar in such a way as to emphasise their differences?
"The dog was barking as loud as another dog - quite a loud one", is not a great simile.
If Robbie Burns had been Trev he'd not have written "My love is like a red, red rose," but "My love is like fondness. You know, an emotion that expresses amorous feelings. Yeah, that's about right".
I personally think Trev wanted to write about blackbirds because he likes Paul McCartney...
TREV WILLIAMS – KEEP SINGING EP (Self release)
Trev Williams is one of the good guys. One of Oxford music’s nice blokes, he always has a smile and a positive lyric for any passer by. Except when he gets a bit angry and moans about everything, but even the he tends to apologise afterwards. Top man. But still, we’ve never really got a grasp on his music, which we’ve always found pleasant, harmless and – let’s be frank – trite. His trio The Follys, despite an infuriating approach to pluralisation, made a tight enough noise we’ll admit, but we still couldn’t find much in the songwriting to get excited about.
Then, about 18 months ago, we were watching Trev play at the arse end of some bill somewhere, and suddenly realised that we were enjoying it. The new songs wormed their way into our consciousness in a way the older ones never had, and a Labi Siffre cover proved that Trev had polished his singing voice. This new EP proves conclusively that the best thing a musician can have is not perfect pitch, posh equipment or a Dad who works for EMI, but determination and dedication. It’s a great little listen, and welcomes Trev into the upper echelons of Oxford’s singer-songwriters.
“Happy Song” might be the sort of platitudinous pop that Trev is wont to indulge in, but it does sound pretty great, with a delayed toy piano complementing an approachable vocal melody. Its optimistic bonhomie can be a little wearing, like having some Phil Daniels impersonator slap you on the back gurning “Cheer up, might never ‘appen” every 8 bars, but it’s undeniably well put together. “In The Dark” is similar fare. The song doesn’t set us alight – in fact, the only memorable bit is snaffled from “My Girl” – but it’s probably the best vocal performance Trev has ever put onto wax, and the crisp production is built around a supply dark keyboard part that puts us in mind of Red Snapper.
This pair are all very well and good, but it’s the other two tracks that really show how Williams has developed. Nightshift Demo Of The Month winner “You Cut, We Bleed” still sounds wonderful, a burst of rage and reverb that blossoms into a life-affirming piano jaunt when the pressure threatens to break the song apart. It was composed in response to recent public spending cuts, but frankly the lyrics are so opaque that it could easily have been about sloppy management at Trev’s favourite football club, or the time his housemate drank all the milk. No problems there, the simplicity and directness of the lyrics makes the song feel universal, and suggests it may have a shelf life beyond the current administration.
It’s a great tune, but it’s eclipsed by the title track. We’ll skim over the opening couplet, which has one of the clumsier similes we’ve ever heard, and jump straight into the meat of the song, a gorgeous cyclical, floating melody that wafts over the top of delicately plucked guitar. Live versions have often drifted away into loop pedal heaven, and our only real criticism of the piece is that we could have done with more of it. Anyone who thinks this review sounds a bit patronising or distant might like to know that the last time we found ourselves inadvertently humming an Oxford tune this much, it was “Zorbing”, which is high praise indeed. Keep singing? If there’s one thing we can conclude about this release, it’s that we hope Trev takes his own advice, and that there’s lots more like this to come.
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Automatic For The Pupil
Been ages, hasn't it? Fear not, there shall be a mammoth Truck review coming next time we meet. In fact, it'll be so long you won't actually read it. Even if you mean to, you'll get bored or sidetracked. I don't mind, I'm relatively phlegmatic about it all.
THE SCHOLARS/ DEAD JERICHOS/ PEERS/ VON BRAUN/ MANACLES OF ACID, Upstairs/BBC Introducing, Academy, 16/7/11
“Not from round here, are you, boy?”. Some of you may be cynical about this statement, but the worst band by far at the latest in the Academy's showcases are the one from outside Oxford. Reading’s Peers make a clumpy sort of epic indie, that’s a bit like Echo & The Bunnymen meets Simple Minds, but is more like a Runrig tribute made by flustered heifers whilst nearby a maudlin drunk honks out indecipherable paeans to a shop dummy that his addled brain thinks is his Mum. Dead Jerichos have an easy job reinvigorating us after that, their music still a flurry of skittering hi-hats and beery bonhomie, like The Jam on a weekend long stag do with Suggs. We could do with a more restrained use of the delay pedal, but otherwise familiarity has not spoilt this young band.
Much earlier The Manacles Of Acid reprised their Charlbury set by playing to almost nobody – in fact, even one of the band wasn’t there this time. Like the coelacanth in 1938, many have just discovered that acid house is far from extinct, and that it laughs in the face of evolution. The Manacles have a great sound, half-inching bits from Bam Bam and Model 500 to make a sleek yet squelchy ride. One noodling Sven Vath wrong turn is swiftly forgiven.
Sadly “Black Saxon” isn’t a NWOBHM retelling of Shaft, but in it and other tracks, Von Braun present a honed rock sound that balances light Sonic Youth guitar chug with Allman Brothers vocal harmonies. The set starts shakily, but builds to great head, complete with wired Frank Black declamations. The Scholars, conversely, play a balanced set of evocative pop, honed and studied (as the name suggests), all forlorn, dewy eyed vocal lines bolstered by keyboard washes and well placed crescendos. We consider The Scholars to be an impressive band with full control over their material, and the ability and focus to present it convincingly, even whilst our heart is screaming “Stop making these boring noises at us, and do something worthwhile”. Call it a draw?
THE SCHOLARS/ DEAD JERICHOS/ PEERS/ VON BRAUN/ MANACLES OF ACID, Upstairs/BBC Introducing, Academy, 16/7/11
“Not from round here, are you, boy?”. Some of you may be cynical about this statement, but the worst band by far at the latest in the Academy's showcases are the one from outside Oxford. Reading’s Peers make a clumpy sort of epic indie, that’s a bit like Echo & The Bunnymen meets Simple Minds, but is more like a Runrig tribute made by flustered heifers whilst nearby a maudlin drunk honks out indecipherable paeans to a shop dummy that his addled brain thinks is his Mum. Dead Jerichos have an easy job reinvigorating us after that, their music still a flurry of skittering hi-hats and beery bonhomie, like The Jam on a weekend long stag do with Suggs. We could do with a more restrained use of the delay pedal, but otherwise familiarity has not spoilt this young band.
Much earlier The Manacles Of Acid reprised their Charlbury set by playing to almost nobody – in fact, even one of the band wasn’t there this time. Like the coelacanth in 1938, many have just discovered that acid house is far from extinct, and that it laughs in the face of evolution. The Manacles have a great sound, half-inching bits from Bam Bam and Model 500 to make a sleek yet squelchy ride. One noodling Sven Vath wrong turn is swiftly forgiven.
Sadly “Black Saxon” isn’t a NWOBHM retelling of Shaft, but in it and other tracks, Von Braun present a honed rock sound that balances light Sonic Youth guitar chug with Allman Brothers vocal harmonies. The set starts shakily, but builds to great head, complete with wired Frank Black declamations. The Scholars, conversely, play a balanced set of evocative pop, honed and studied (as the name suggests), all forlorn, dewy eyed vocal lines bolstered by keyboard washes and well placed crescendos. We consider The Scholars to be an impressive band with full control over their material, and the ability and focus to present it convincingly, even whilst our heart is screaming “Stop making these boring noises at us, and do something worthwhile”. Call it a draw?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
