Day 3 at T finally sees the Main Stage casting aside all bubblegum pop pretenses (that honour is shifted to the unsuspecting NME Stage, where Tinie Tempah, Bruno Mars, Professor Green and euck, Youmeatsix bump manufactured uglies) and taking up its well-earned mantle as bastion of the finest quality indie rock known to the good people of these United Kingdoms, delivering a line-up fit to burst with the legendary, the stupendously talented and Cast. Frankly, the less said about John Power the better, and his successors All Time Low for that matter, although a surprise guest appearance from Rivers Cuomo at the very least raises an eyebrow or two.
No, it’s the return of everyone’s favourite punk-pop pioneers Blondie that’s the catalyst for the stage’s redemption, Debbie Harry still looking like the coolest fucker in the world, resplendent all in white (yes, even her hair) and effortlessly crooning her way through every last one of her band’s timeless, instant, life-affirming hits. With an Atomic here, a Heart of Glass there and the occasional Maria thrown in for good measure, this is the kind of set that most bands would sell their grannies to be able to play, jam-packed with tantalising singalongs and ridiculously addictive melodies. And so what if Debbie forgets a few words here and there… having paid her dues a million and one times over, she’s allowed the odd slip-up. Or three. Bless her, it’s all in good fun, right?
Rivers Cuomo certainly seems to think so. As the heavens open and the rain proceeds to lash down on everyone’s heads, the Weezer frontman takes it upon himself to lighten the mood and bring smiles back to our faces by continuing the midlife crisis he began at last year’s Reading and Leeds Festivals and being, quite simply, daft as a brush for 45 minutes. In a hit packed set that takes in covers of Teenage Dirtbag and Paranoid Android, the bespectacled one clambers down into the quagmire, getting up close and personal with both his audience and the mud, spending five minutes trying to figure out how to don a T in the Park poncho during the Undone intro before ultimately giving up and and wearing it as a cape. He high fives everyone, wears our hats, takes photos of himself with our cameras and occasionally, when he feels like it, plays a little bit of guitar. It’s a deft move, accurately judging the mood of the crowd and giving them exactly what they need to take their minds off the fact that they’re drenched from head to foot; by the time an extra-bouncy Buddy Holly rolls around, no one really gives a shit anymore. A triumph all round, then.
And while the precipitation withers and the sun breaks through the clouds for My Chemical Romance’s return to these hallowed shores, this doesn’t make their job any easier. Faced with a withering crowd and an air of palpable disinterest, MCR have everything to prove and by gosh, do they know it. Striding onstage with guns blazing, looking every bit the cartoon characters depicted on their most recent LP, Gerard, Mikey, Frank and Ray storm through a visceral speed-punk set, mixing the finest cuts from their colorful 2010 release Danger Days with the usual Three Cheers and Black Parade classics. This is no nonsense, four-to-the-floor stuff, an attempt to showcase the talent at the heart of the often image-conscious band and it works. The effort is commendable: Ray works more spidery wonders than usual, delivering guitar riff after guitar riff after guitar riff, Gerard finds whole new rock star poses to pull and shapes to throw and Frank nearly breaks his neck in the process of losing himself in the music. By the closing Famous Last Words, the crowds have doubled, the moshing has multiplied and the victory is assured. A job very well done.
There’s just enough time between the smoke settling on MCR’s blistering set and Jarvis Cocker strutting suggestively onstage to hot-tail it over to the BBC Introducing stage to catch Beth Jeans Houghton dazzling twenty or so mud-splattered individuals - one dressed in a crocodile onesie - with her quite remarkable voice and unique blend of traditional folk and softly-spoken indie. If there’s any justice in the world, she’ll be a household name in a year or two; Pulp, on the other hand, have been a household name for nearly twenty years, but one that was barely spoken for over ten, until Cocker and co did the admirable thing and found each other again. Sensibly, they trot out a greatest hits set, opening with a beautiful Do You Remember The First Time? and finishing on a glorious, celebratory, rip-roaring Common People. Unfortunately for Pulp, the section in-between, with the exception of a cathartic Sorted and a bootylicious Disco 2000, falls a little flat… although through no fault of Pulp’s. This certainly isn’t for lack of trying - Cocker is an instantly likable, extremely engaging frontman, telling stories, cracking jokes, handing out sweets and wiping his arse with the last ever edition of the News of the World, but sadly, this simply isn’t Pulp’s crowd. These rabid, rock-starved individuals are here for the Foo Fighters and this hour of terribly twee indie seems out of place on a day characterised by the heavier end of the guitar based spectrum.
Alas, no matter. Pulp are delightful anyway, and Dave Grohl and his band of merry men certainly surpass everyone’s expectations, delivering an appropriately apocalyptic two hour set to accompany the torrential downpour that resumes in full force. The show is essentially a downscale version of their Milton Keynes Bowl extravaganza, but the Scots love every whirlwind, rip-roaring moment… probably as much as the hundred or so devotees who make up the T-Break Stage audience for Kilmarnock’s finest Fatherson, singing every last word back at the three-piece, a shockingly young bunch to be peddling such obvious talent. Thankfully, the band respond in kind, blowing the roof off with their Manchester Orchestra-esque alt rock stylings and proceeding to experience, in their own words (or thereabouts) “the best thirty minutes they’ve ever played”.
There’s a similar situation taking place over at the Red Bull Stage, where the tent is packed to the rafters for Noah and the Whale, indie kids, pop freaks and alt-leaning chin-strokers alike uniting under a common, heartfelt love of the band’s really quite lovely new record. These are the kind of singalongs that beget headline slots; indeed, it’s arguable that these guys should’ve occupied that hallowed position on the bill this evening based purely on numbers alone. However, although less people seem interested, that honour deservedly belongs to Eels who tonight, play a 16 track, 50s-inspired rock-soul-and-roll bonanza, each band member dressed up to the nines in waistcoat, tie and suit pants, the brass section swinging into overdrive and E on uncharacteristically jovial form, barking bizarre adjectives at his audience and telling us all that he’s glad to be “fighting Foo”. Every track is shot through with an extra layer of urgency and a healthy dose of fun, Flyswatter developing a whole new lease of life with extra guitars, I Like Birds sounding like it’s on crack and Fresh Blood quite literally scaring the bejeesus out of everyone. For all the Foos got the numbers, Eels gave us the surprises, delivering one of those sets that you just WISH you’d been at. It’s a fitting end to a rich three days, demonstrating that more often than not, you just have to look a little harder to find the real magic. More T next year, vicar? Don’t mind if we do.
Showing posts with label t in the park 2011. Show all posts
Showing posts with label t in the park 2011. Show all posts
Friday, 29 July 2011
Live review: T in the Park Festival 2011, Day 2 (09/07/11)
And so to Day 2 at T, where an abundance of suitably banal pop outfits litter the bill, the Main Stage line-up looking more akin to the soulless Party in the Park than Scotland’s Glastonbury. N-Dubz, Ke$ha, Beyonce, The fucking Script… they’re all here to satiate the masses before Chris Martin’s gigantic, two hour egofest, the event organizers perhaps hoping that a dose of populist chart razzmatazz might fare better with the Mondeo drivers and familial types that typically make up 97% of Coldplay’s audience.
They’re probably right, to be fair, but we don’t care enough to find out, preferring instead to sample some of the less well advertised delights on offer, stopping only to catch Slash play the opening 30 seconds of Sweet Child ‘o’ Mine, dampened somewhat by the onset of a torrential downpour, and the Manic Street Preachers go through the motions in a fairly unremarkable 40 minutes, Nicky Wire less animated than usual, reserved behind unnecessary sunglasses and James Dean Bradfield struggling with a rather hoarse voice. The set’s passable, sure, and all the relevant hits are present, but given that this is the group who were banned from this festival twelve years ago for going batshit crazy during an invigoratingly aggressive headline show, smashing everything to pieces and calling Billy Bragg and Kelly Jones every name under the sun, it feels a little disappointing.
Still, there’s plenty of merit if you look hard enough; case in point, Glasgow’s bloody excellent indie folksters Three Blind Wolves, who draw an impressive crowd to their lunchtime BBC Introducing set, wooing everyone with their luscious vocals and huge choruses. Over in the cavernous King Tut’s Wah Wah Tent - later the site of Ocean Colour Scene’s largest crowd since Britpop collapsed on its arse, all thanks to the rain - Everything Everything finally make their wonderfully intricate, blissfully unique sound translate within an environment larger than the back room of your local, Photoshop Handsome and MY KZ YR BF becoming the indie pop anthems they were always destined to be. And then there’s local heroes Woodenbox whose gritty folk punk stylings are reminiscent of early Against Me!, and the bustling T-Break audience love it.
For ultra victorious, potentially career-changing moments, however, look no further than The Xcerts’ BBC Introducing slot, which sees a visibly stunned Murray, Jordan and Tom drawing quite probably the stage’s largest, most vocal and downright bonkers crowd of the entire weekend. In twenty-five all too short minutes, the Aberdeenians unleash a thrillingly loud, cataclysmically erratic ball of unrelenting, white-hot energy on a dazed, confused and downright delirious crowd, Murray’s primal, gutteral vocals making filthy, aggressive, DANGEROUS love to Jordan and Tom’s distorted guitars and crashing drums. Crowdsurfers fly this way and that, Murray gets in amongst it, Crisis In The Slow Lane elicits a heartfelt singalong… and then the plug’s pulled, the misers backstage complaining that the band have overran, cutting an astonishing set in its prime and eliciting a chorus of embittered boos from a disgruntled, yet probably spent, audience. It’s terrible judgment, although there’s still no doubt in anyone’s minds that they’ve just borne witness to the performance of the weekend.
Thankfully, no such fate befalls New Yorkers The Head and the Heart during their T in the Park debut. They are permitted to deliver their deliciously textured alt-folk-country-indie-whatever amalgam in its entirety and it sounds epic, even within the limited confines of the T-Break Stage. Closer Rivers and Roads is particularly magical and elicits a rapturous response from a crowd notably unfamiliar with their material. Jimmy Eat World, on the other hand, find themselves faced with several thousand devotees during their hour long NME Stage showcase, boisterous singalongs accompanying the hit-heavy set as it careers along at breakneck speed, powering through Bleed American and A Praise Chorus, pummeling seven shades of shit out of Pain, Futures and Big Casino and prompting body-slamming and human pyramids during the gigantic closing salvo of The Middle and Sweetness. Expertly crafted and perfectly pitched, this is the work of a band at the very top of their game, absolute masters of their craft. And 23 sounds bloody heartbreaking in the early evening sun.
Heartbreaking is very much the name of the game over on the Red Bull Stage, meanwhile, as Villagers set about making the hundred or so ardent fans and drunken stragglers cry into each other’s drinks with a set heavy on the crushing introspection of Becoming a Jackal. Sadly, they’re pitted against The Strokes and Beyonce and as a result, don’t attract anywhere near the numbers that they deserve but the few who are in attendance are well aware that their choice is undoubtedly the right one, even if the ridiculous decision to pitch the tent next to the Dance Stage results in a thumping beat constantly intruding on the delicacy of the band’s sound. Fortunately, an amping up of the instrumentation by the rest of the band sees them through, and by the end, those present are buzzing with excitement, reminded of exactly why Villagers were the band on everyone’s lips around this time last year.
And so, finally, it’s down to Bright Eyes to round off the day for us, the execrable Swedish House Mafia, dull-as-dishwater Coldplay and frankly past it Primal Scream paling in comparison. From the moment Conor Oberst strolls nonchalantly onto the stage, dressed in wellies and rain-mack, swigging from a bottle of wine and sporting delightfully painted nails (“they’re the same colour as Beyonce’s!”, he notes), it’s apparent that we’re in for something of a treat. Oberst is in fine spirits, lively and talkative, witty and invective. He throws shapes, gets down in the front row, ‘enacts’ his lyrics and fires barbs at his rivals, adding an out-of-tune, sarcastic snippet of Sex on Fire to a sprawling, electrifying Road to Joy because Beyonce did it earlier and dedicating a tremendous Lover I Don’t Have to Love to “the time Chris Martin tried to suck my dick”, all the while remarking that he’s scoring “double points” for this evening’s performance… and he’s not wrong. As headline shows go, this is an absolute blinder, sounding massive and intimate in equal measure and far surpassing anything any of the other stage closers could even dream of. And yes, that definitely does include Coldplay covering Travis. Obviously.
They’re probably right, to be fair, but we don’t care enough to find out, preferring instead to sample some of the less well advertised delights on offer, stopping only to catch Slash play the opening 30 seconds of Sweet Child ‘o’ Mine, dampened somewhat by the onset of a torrential downpour, and the Manic Street Preachers go through the motions in a fairly unremarkable 40 minutes, Nicky Wire less animated than usual, reserved behind unnecessary sunglasses and James Dean Bradfield struggling with a rather hoarse voice. The set’s passable, sure, and all the relevant hits are present, but given that this is the group who were banned from this festival twelve years ago for going batshit crazy during an invigoratingly aggressive headline show, smashing everything to pieces and calling Billy Bragg and Kelly Jones every name under the sun, it feels a little disappointing.
Still, there’s plenty of merit if you look hard enough; case in point, Glasgow’s bloody excellent indie folksters Three Blind Wolves, who draw an impressive crowd to their lunchtime BBC Introducing set, wooing everyone with their luscious vocals and huge choruses. Over in the cavernous King Tut’s Wah Wah Tent - later the site of Ocean Colour Scene’s largest crowd since Britpop collapsed on its arse, all thanks to the rain - Everything Everything finally make their wonderfully intricate, blissfully unique sound translate within an environment larger than the back room of your local, Photoshop Handsome and MY KZ YR BF becoming the indie pop anthems they were always destined to be. And then there’s local heroes Woodenbox whose gritty folk punk stylings are reminiscent of early Against Me!, and the bustling T-Break audience love it.
For ultra victorious, potentially career-changing moments, however, look no further than The Xcerts’ BBC Introducing slot, which sees a visibly stunned Murray, Jordan and Tom drawing quite probably the stage’s largest, most vocal and downright bonkers crowd of the entire weekend. In twenty-five all too short minutes, the Aberdeenians unleash a thrillingly loud, cataclysmically erratic ball of unrelenting, white-hot energy on a dazed, confused and downright delirious crowd, Murray’s primal, gutteral vocals making filthy, aggressive, DANGEROUS love to Jordan and Tom’s distorted guitars and crashing drums. Crowdsurfers fly this way and that, Murray gets in amongst it, Crisis In The Slow Lane elicits a heartfelt singalong… and then the plug’s pulled, the misers backstage complaining that the band have overran, cutting an astonishing set in its prime and eliciting a chorus of embittered boos from a disgruntled, yet probably spent, audience. It’s terrible judgment, although there’s still no doubt in anyone’s minds that they’ve just borne witness to the performance of the weekend.
Thankfully, no such fate befalls New Yorkers The Head and the Heart during their T in the Park debut. They are permitted to deliver their deliciously textured alt-folk-country-indie-whatever amalgam in its entirety and it sounds epic, even within the limited confines of the T-Break Stage. Closer Rivers and Roads is particularly magical and elicits a rapturous response from a crowd notably unfamiliar with their material. Jimmy Eat World, on the other hand, find themselves faced with several thousand devotees during their hour long NME Stage showcase, boisterous singalongs accompanying the hit-heavy set as it careers along at breakneck speed, powering through Bleed American and A Praise Chorus, pummeling seven shades of shit out of Pain, Futures and Big Casino and prompting body-slamming and human pyramids during the gigantic closing salvo of The Middle and Sweetness. Expertly crafted and perfectly pitched, this is the work of a band at the very top of their game, absolute masters of their craft. And 23 sounds bloody heartbreaking in the early evening sun.
Heartbreaking is very much the name of the game over on the Red Bull Stage, meanwhile, as Villagers set about making the hundred or so ardent fans and drunken stragglers cry into each other’s drinks with a set heavy on the crushing introspection of Becoming a Jackal. Sadly, they’re pitted against The Strokes and Beyonce and as a result, don’t attract anywhere near the numbers that they deserve but the few who are in attendance are well aware that their choice is undoubtedly the right one, even if the ridiculous decision to pitch the tent next to the Dance Stage results in a thumping beat constantly intruding on the delicacy of the band’s sound. Fortunately, an amping up of the instrumentation by the rest of the band sees them through, and by the end, those present are buzzing with excitement, reminded of exactly why Villagers were the band on everyone’s lips around this time last year.
And so, finally, it’s down to Bright Eyes to round off the day for us, the execrable Swedish House Mafia, dull-as-dishwater Coldplay and frankly past it Primal Scream paling in comparison. From the moment Conor Oberst strolls nonchalantly onto the stage, dressed in wellies and rain-mack, swigging from a bottle of wine and sporting delightfully painted nails (“they’re the same colour as Beyonce’s!”, he notes), it’s apparent that we’re in for something of a treat. Oberst is in fine spirits, lively and talkative, witty and invective. He throws shapes, gets down in the front row, ‘enacts’ his lyrics and fires barbs at his rivals, adding an out-of-tune, sarcastic snippet of Sex on Fire to a sprawling, electrifying Road to Joy because Beyonce did it earlier and dedicating a tremendous Lover I Don’t Have to Love to “the time Chris Martin tried to suck my dick”, all the while remarking that he’s scoring “double points” for this evening’s performance… and he’s not wrong. As headline shows go, this is an absolute blinder, sounding massive and intimate in equal measure and far surpassing anything any of the other stage closers could even dream of. And yes, that definitely does include Coldplay covering Travis. Obviously.
Monday, 25 July 2011
Live review: T in the Park Festival 2011, Day 1 (08/07/11)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that nothing, and we mean absolutely nothing, will ever dampen a Scotsman’s spirit. Regardless of how heavily the rain falls, how thick the mud is that he has to trawl through, or how fascistic the security that dogs his every move (retaining your ticket for the entire weekend, and having it scanned three times a day, as well as having a wristband, seems a LITTLE excessive, T), the Scottish reveller will always, and we mean always, make the most of his circumstances and have a doggarn good time. This determination, this passion, fire and spirit is what gives T in the Park its edge; the people make the event, and these folk are stark raving mad.
You need evidence? Check the hastily formed moshpit that confronts post-hardcore wannabes Autumn in Disguise within thirty seconds of their opening Red Bull Stage set. Seemingly oblivious to the depressingly formulaic nature of the music - quiet, loud, scream, sing, repeat ad nauseum - and the irritatingly choreographed nature of the performance - a star jump here, a “COME ON YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!” there - Kinross goes characteristically mental, sending bodies flying everywhere and faces into the dirt. Sadly, the much more deserving Floods manage only a handful of nut-cases, their invigorating brand of post-apocalyptic, thrashy hardcore having not yet reached the lips and blogs of the cool kids. The Londoners try their damnedest, and the few interested parties certainly make the most of the space, but it’s hard to avoid the feeling that all the effort is ultimately rather pointless.
No such troubles for Los Angelenos The Airborne Toxic Event, however, whose ever-growing audience across the other side of the festival on the admittedly rather daunting NME (read: second) Stage is undoubtedly a mini-triumph. While Sometime Around Midnight inevitably receives the warmest reception, T also falls in love with the lesser known material from the band’s new LP, particularly the eight-minute, politically-charged behemoth that is The Kids Are Ready To Die/Welcome to Your Wedding Day, apparently too controversial for the more conservative American listener but going down a storm over here. And once the sharply-dressed Yanks have high-tailed it from the stage, it’s time for something more homegrown to enthrall the masses.
Initially, the mass exodus that accompanies the end of Airborne’s set threatens to turn Twin Atlantic’s most high-profile show to date into something of a damp squib. Thankfully, it transpires that their fans were just off to get themselves a few pints in preparation for the 40 minute headfuck to follow. When Sam McTrusty walks out on stage, clearly dumbfounded by the sea of faces before him, and strums the opening chords of a thunderous Edit Me, you just know this is going to be something special. And as the number of bodies increases with each successive blast of rock ‘n’ roll brilliance, and Scotland sings EVERY word back at him, it becomes apparent that this could be the band’s turning point, their crossover moment… the thrust they need to break the barriers of toilet circuit venues and achieve more mainstream recognition. A spine-tingling Crashland is particularly indicative of this, Sam actually taking cues from the Rock Cliche Handbook and letting the crowd sing the chorus.
Around an hour later, something similar, although slightly less high profile, greets Sucioperro as they prepare to tear the T-Break Stage a new one, although we put up with half an hour of White Lies’ occasionally brilliant, often lifeless, indie miserabilia first (that second album really doesn’t need any more airtime, guys…) Sounding positively gargantuan with the addition of an extra guitarist and a keyboardist/megalomaniac who takes the occasional break from bolstering the Perrio sound to stagedive and participate in the many and plentiful pits, their Heart String heavy set simply oozes energy, the band seemingly reenergised, smothering everything in a palpable sense of urgency. Good to see the iconic Pain Agency armbands back too… although, in terms of crowd-pleasing visual gimmicks, it’s no match for what British Sea Power concoct for all and sundry this evening. For all they dress rather stoically - besuited, no less - the unveiling of two life-size robots made out of tinfoil, paper plates and Tennants cans, who proceed to fight each other for the duration of the band’s final songs (and throw the remnants into the crowd), provides a grin-inducing talking point for the rest of the festival. Oh, and they play a blinder too.
And so to the headliners. Preferring not to endure 90 minutes of an elephant vomiting up its insides, we decide to eschew Pendulum and head over to the Main Stage where Arctic Monkeys are looking suave as fuck, Alex Turner sporting the coolest haircut and leather jacket in the country right now, and nonchalantly blasting through the really bloody massive rock monsters from new album Suck It and See. Problem is, this nonchalance quickly turns into indifference, the Monkeys lacking any semblance of stage presence; their attempt to fill the silence between songs with a ‘happy birthday’ singalong only makes the lack of rapport all too obvious. Without the ability to engage with the audience, you really need to pack your set as tightly as possible with classics and sadly, Turner and co play silly buggers, unleashing only two tracks within the first half of the set from Favourite Worst Nightmare and not a one from that multi-million selling, hugely popular debut. Fourteen songs in, we finally get Dancefloor and things pick up, but it’s quickly followed by some Humbug or Suck It bollocks and we, along with many others, give up trying and head out in search of something better instead.
Imelda May’s funky Tainted Love cover is initially a promising prospect, although it quickly becomes apparent that she has no other tunes, so we pay the T-Break Stage another visit, where Glaswegians Otherpeople are dazzling fifty or so rabid devotees with their angular indie punk theatrics. It’s a far better experience than The Alex Turner Pisstake and even provides the festival with its unofficial anthem, a delightfully catchy little ditty called Acoustic Guitars about the proliferation of MOR dadrock. It’d probably have more potency tomorrow, when Coldplay are covering Travis, but we get the picture. A fitting end, then, and a perfect reminder that more often than not, the real treats are the ones you have to work a little harder to find.
You need evidence? Check the hastily formed moshpit that confronts post-hardcore wannabes Autumn in Disguise within thirty seconds of their opening Red Bull Stage set. Seemingly oblivious to the depressingly formulaic nature of the music - quiet, loud, scream, sing, repeat ad nauseum - and the irritatingly choreographed nature of the performance - a star jump here, a “COME ON YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!” there - Kinross goes characteristically mental, sending bodies flying everywhere and faces into the dirt. Sadly, the much more deserving Floods manage only a handful of nut-cases, their invigorating brand of post-apocalyptic, thrashy hardcore having not yet reached the lips and blogs of the cool kids. The Londoners try their damnedest, and the few interested parties certainly make the most of the space, but it’s hard to avoid the feeling that all the effort is ultimately rather pointless.
No such troubles for Los Angelenos The Airborne Toxic Event, however, whose ever-growing audience across the other side of the festival on the admittedly rather daunting NME (read: second) Stage is undoubtedly a mini-triumph. While Sometime Around Midnight inevitably receives the warmest reception, T also falls in love with the lesser known material from the band’s new LP, particularly the eight-minute, politically-charged behemoth that is The Kids Are Ready To Die/Welcome to Your Wedding Day, apparently too controversial for the more conservative American listener but going down a storm over here. And once the sharply-dressed Yanks have high-tailed it from the stage, it’s time for something more homegrown to enthrall the masses.
Initially, the mass exodus that accompanies the end of Airborne’s set threatens to turn Twin Atlantic’s most high-profile show to date into something of a damp squib. Thankfully, it transpires that their fans were just off to get themselves a few pints in preparation for the 40 minute headfuck to follow. When Sam McTrusty walks out on stage, clearly dumbfounded by the sea of faces before him, and strums the opening chords of a thunderous Edit Me, you just know this is going to be something special. And as the number of bodies increases with each successive blast of rock ‘n’ roll brilliance, and Scotland sings EVERY word back at him, it becomes apparent that this could be the band’s turning point, their crossover moment… the thrust they need to break the barriers of toilet circuit venues and achieve more mainstream recognition. A spine-tingling Crashland is particularly indicative of this, Sam actually taking cues from the Rock Cliche Handbook and letting the crowd sing the chorus.
Around an hour later, something similar, although slightly less high profile, greets Sucioperro as they prepare to tear the T-Break Stage a new one, although we put up with half an hour of White Lies’ occasionally brilliant, often lifeless, indie miserabilia first (that second album really doesn’t need any more airtime, guys…) Sounding positively gargantuan with the addition of an extra guitarist and a keyboardist/megalomaniac who takes the occasional break from bolstering the Perrio sound to stagedive and participate in the many and plentiful pits, their Heart String heavy set simply oozes energy, the band seemingly reenergised, smothering everything in a palpable sense of urgency. Good to see the iconic Pain Agency armbands back too… although, in terms of crowd-pleasing visual gimmicks, it’s no match for what British Sea Power concoct for all and sundry this evening. For all they dress rather stoically - besuited, no less - the unveiling of two life-size robots made out of tinfoil, paper plates and Tennants cans, who proceed to fight each other for the duration of the band’s final songs (and throw the remnants into the crowd), provides a grin-inducing talking point for the rest of the festival. Oh, and they play a blinder too.
And so to the headliners. Preferring not to endure 90 minutes of an elephant vomiting up its insides, we decide to eschew Pendulum and head over to the Main Stage where Arctic Monkeys are looking suave as fuck, Alex Turner sporting the coolest haircut and leather jacket in the country right now, and nonchalantly blasting through the really bloody massive rock monsters from new album Suck It and See. Problem is, this nonchalance quickly turns into indifference, the Monkeys lacking any semblance of stage presence; their attempt to fill the silence between songs with a ‘happy birthday’ singalong only makes the lack of rapport all too obvious. Without the ability to engage with the audience, you really need to pack your set as tightly as possible with classics and sadly, Turner and co play silly buggers, unleashing only two tracks within the first half of the set from Favourite Worst Nightmare and not a one from that multi-million selling, hugely popular debut. Fourteen songs in, we finally get Dancefloor and things pick up, but it’s quickly followed by some Humbug or Suck It bollocks and we, along with many others, give up trying and head out in search of something better instead.
Imelda May’s funky Tainted Love cover is initially a promising prospect, although it quickly becomes apparent that she has no other tunes, so we pay the T-Break Stage another visit, where Glaswegians Otherpeople are dazzling fifty or so rabid devotees with their angular indie punk theatrics. It’s a far better experience than The Alex Turner Pisstake and even provides the festival with its unofficial anthem, a delightfully catchy little ditty called Acoustic Guitars about the proliferation of MOR dadrock. It’d probably have more potency tomorrow, when Coldplay are covering Travis, but we get the picture. A fitting end, then, and a perfect reminder that more often than not, the real treats are the ones you have to work a little harder to find.
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