Joy

>TRUCKFEST 2005
DAY TWO - 24.06.05
BLACK NIELSON, iFORWARD RUSSIA!, DO ME BAD THINGS, JULIET, PINEY GIR, LUX LUTHER, BRAKES, THE CRANES, THE OPEN MOUTHS, C-JAGS, CHRIS T-T, MARTIN GRECH, SARA HAWLEY, COLONY, THE HALF RABBITS

A bright and early start (the first band's on at 10:10) to allow for an early finish so that people can still catch the train home at the end, and I wake up bleary eyed, but thankful that my tent, against all odds, has managed to survive the night's downpour without so much as a drip getting through. As I poke my head through the opening, it's still raining - hardly a Glasto style deluge, but enough to make things that little bit more uncomfortable. Being the practically-minded type, I unwrap my giant silver pack-a-mak and head out into the showers, only for it to be inflated by a gust of wind, and tangled in the adjacent hedgerow, ripping to shreds as I attempt vainly to retrieve it.

Pack-a-mak binned and well and truly soaked, I sniffle towards the Trailerpark tent with a nice cup of tea to catch my first band of the day, The Half Rabbits. This lot had sent their cd in for review recently, and it had shown enough promise that I was quite looking to seeing them in the flesh. Fortunately, they don't disappoint, fusing frenetic guitars and post punk rhythms with Michael Weatherburn's distinctive vocal to create a sound that falls somewhere around

The Pixies and Sonic Youth's more accessible moments. There is something missing here though - between each song a silence falls as the band retune their instruments, fiddle with pedals, then launch into their next number. Barely a word is exchanged with the crowd throughout, and there's not much more going on during the

songs either, barring a couple of moments of exuberance from Michael during his guitar solos, and their bassist's chirpily summery expression. Whether its nerves, hangovers, or something else, it's something that'll need to be resolved if they are to truly inspire passion in their crowds.

Today's line-up is a little thinner on established talent than yesterday, which gives us the opportunity to check out some completely new bands, with only the sentence or two about them in the festival programme (free to all festival goers - take note Reading, Glasto, et al) to guide us. The first such band today are Colony, who apparently are 'garage rock' - don't see it myself, their sound is closer to the likes of Muse and the Manics, but without the epic scope, and with a singe whose voice just grates with me.

Back to the Rotary Club tent for a bacon roll and more tea, then another step into the unknown - Sara Hawley is apparently Gordon Rafael (the man who discovered The Strokes)'s latest protege. She doesn't quite look comfortable in her ripped denims, and her music is unremarkable to the extent that writing

this review only a few days after the festival, I am unable to recall a single thing about it.

Dabblings in the unknown having proven fruitless thus far, I pay my first visit to an overcrowded acoustic tent just

in time to catch the start of Martin Grech's set. In truth, I don't know much about Martin, other than that he once had a song on an upmarket car advert. From my position at the back of the tent, I can only make out occasional glimpses of the stage through the gaps between people's heads, not that it matters, it's the music that we're here for, and in some ways the ethereal sound that emanates from Martin's larynx and acoustic guitar are enhanced by not being able to see the slightly bedraggled man sitting on a stool in front of us. It allows us to close our eyes and make up our own visuals - images of spectral whisps, deserted villages, and sole flowers pushing their way through the earth of otherwise barren landscapes flash through my mind; inspired by the delicate

rhythms and soaring, melancholic vocals. Martin, it appears, is not the most organised of musicians here this weekend, admitting that he has no idea what he's going to play, dropping notes, forgetting words, and on a number of occasions stopping halfway through songs and giving up on them completely. Fortunately he has a

disarming honesty and charm about him, that allows us to simply laugh off these mistakes, and to simply enjoy what we get.

Chris T-T is next on the acoustic stage, weather beaten and suffering from a nasty headache - Chris has been a staple of the Truckfest menu for a few years now, either solo or with his full band (who appeared yesterday in their other guise as Stuffy & the Fuses), and is always one of the highlights of the festival. Today is no different.

Chris has always had a political edge to his music, but with his forthcoming release '9 Red Songs' he's pushed this element to the forefront, and it's these songs, rather than the more jocular likes of 'Drink Beer' that grasp the spotlight today. There's plenty of scope for the more politically minded amongst us to protest about at the moment, and Chris tackles a wide range of issues from the war in Iraq, to fox hunting, his song about the Countryside Alliance being the outstanding moment in a fantastic set.

Chris manages to get his points across with humour and passion without being preachy, and most importantly of all, manages to construct truly affecting songs around the message - too many protest songs are all protest and

no song, but Chris T-T brings us both in equal measure.

Fortunately by now the rain seemed to be clearing, so for the first time I braved the main stage for London scamps C-Jags. They play recent single 'Paradise Park', which is a real stomper of a song, but unfortunately there's nothing else in their set of comparable quality, and not even the jaunty angle of their camp drummer's hat can keep me entertained enough to last the whole of an underwhelming set.

So it's off for my first visit to the Lounge tent, and another new band, the screamingly camp The Open Mouths - they make for pretty good theatre in an obvious kind of way, even if they are obviously out for shock value. The tunes aren't bad and the singer is sufficiently gobby, but when your one trick is to shock, you end up having to go to further and further lengths to do so, until you end up singing, as they do in a whiny Molko-ish voice, about wanting your grandparents to die so that you can inherit their house, and start to look more than a little silly.

Time for something a little more sedate, so it's back to the Acoustic tent for The Cranes and their gothic tinged atmospherics. When I was living in Portsmouth, it was a running joke that they were the only band of note that the

city had ever produced, so it was nice to finally have a chance to experience them first hand.

Singer Alison Shaw has an unusual stage presence, coming across like Katy-Jane Garside's timid older sister, and her voice has a bizarre little girl lost quality to it, that complements the faintly spooky sounds that surround her. It's not the kind of thing that I think I'd enjoy listening to for long periods of time, but it makes for a surreal and welcome diversion from the three chord wonders I'd seen beforehand.

Next up were one of the most hotly anticipated bands of the weekend. Being made up of members of existing Truck favourites British Sea Power, Electric Soft Parade and Absentee, and with a fair deal of positive press behind them, Brakes were onto a winner even before the first chord was struck. The Trailerpark tent was heaving, and exploded as the band launched into a set of short but sweet thrashy indie punk anthems. Seemingly taking

inspiration from Guided By Voices method of throwing in just about every idea you have, regardless of how short (some songs don't even make it to the minute mark), most of the time it works, and when it doesn't, usually when Eamon puts on a bizarre comedy voice that sounds like a fraggle, you don't have to wait long for it to be over. In

some ways Brakes are ideal for this kind of event - they provide short, sharp bursts of adrenaline that you don't need to have heard in advance to jump around to, while holding up the indie cred side of things with obscure cover versions and their connections with other bands; and they go down a treat today.

Back to the voyage of discovery, and it throws up its most compelling act thus far in the form of the ivory-tinkling indie rock of Lux Luther. To steal a comparison from Loraine, they sound like Keane, only not boring - a difficult mental picture, I know, and a comparison that judging by their write-up in the programme they're already doing all they can to avoid. However, as long as they continue to produce tunes as toe-tappingly effective as these without slipping into syrupy faux-emotional schlop, or self indulgent pap, Lux Luther will continue to come out on the winning side of any such comparison.

The sun's finally shining on Truck, and (fingers crossed) the rain seems to be

gone for good, and the first to benefit from the sunshine is the exquisite Piney Gir. Taking to the stage dressed in safari gear, complete with binoculars, and flanked by A Scholar & a Physician, who had earlier played the lounge tent, Piney proceeds to wow the ever increasing audience through a series of costume changes (I

counted three in the space of less than half an hour), special guests, novelty instruments, stage props (including huge versions of the words to one of the songs for a karaoke singalong), and her twisted, mischievous pop songs.

Taking in both her solo work, and her Piney Gir Country Roadshow (complete with accordion and slide guitar), Piney is an absolute star, and blows away all of the other main stage acts from the weekend (including her other band The Schla La Las) both for spectacle and substance.

By now, the sun is burning down so hard that I'm even considering breaking out the sun tan lotion, but no matter as we're back inside the Trailerpark tent now watching Juliet tart it up to a backing of fairly average housey beats.

There's no denying that she's a great, and slightly unsettling performer, fixing the audience with a steely stare, the merest hint of a smile at the corner of her lips, with her hair glued and scraped across the top of her head and the

world's smallest mini-skirt barley covering her midriff as she performs dance moves that look like a cross between an air hostess and a Soviet military parade; but the songs and her one paced, breathy delivery just don't hold muster. Don't be surprised if she makes it huge, but Ladytron do this kind of thing 100 times better.

We're nearing the final lap now, despite it still being broad daylight, and we find ourselves back at the main stage for today's second headliners Do Me Bad Things. I'm looking forward to an exuberent, glitter splattered show more than the songs themselves, though Chantal Brown has a fine set of lungs on her.

It takes a while for things to really get going - and much of the first song is spent trying to work out how on earth a band like this every got together. On the surface, there seem to be few common threads - one guitarist looks like a reject from Limp Bizkit, the other appears to have fallen face first into his makeup box, the bassist could easily be in Interpol, the backing singers may well be as old as my Mum, and the drummer appears to have escaped from a run of the mill indie band. Add to that three main vocalists - soul diva Chantal, Mark Woods - a gruff and hairy rock growler, and drama queen supreme Nicolai (who manages to top even Piney Gir for costume changes), and you

have a recipe for musical chaos. As you might expect, it tends to be a bit hit and miss, and the quality of the songs does seem to tie in with who's singing them - The Woods songs are decent but dull uninspiring rock stompers, and the antithesis of what a band like this should be; The Chantal songs are power soul, and probably

pretty good if you like that sort of thing; but the best moments, such as recent singles 'What's Hideous', and the storming, lipstick smeared anthem 'Time For Deliverance' come when Chantal and Nicolai trade lyrics. You can almost see the energy sparking between them and powering the band on to further heights.

Current scene darlings The Magic Numbers are up next on the main stage, but rather more enticing than their bland radio friendly sound is the promise of Leeds noise deviants iForward Russia! in the Trailerpark tent. Taking a similarly direct route to 65 Days of Static's earlier cacophonous assault, but add to it a manic vocal from frontman Tom, who spends much of the gig twitching and writhing across the stage, contorting both his body and his larynx to match the fuzzy maelstrom being created around him with fractured shards of guitar and rattling, cymbal heavy drum beats. It's a glorious sound to behold, and with a little more time, and a bit more variety, iForward Russia! could create something special.

And after iForward Russia!'s tumultuous storm, comes the soothing calm of Black Nielson, the very last band of this year's Truckfest. Another band who are no strangers to the event (the first year I came here I interviewed

along with a man who appeared to be stalking them), Black Nielson offer the perfect come down after the exertions of the weekend - their lilting country tinged lo-fi washes over me, refreshing my tired limbs, and preparing me perfectly for the long and arduous journey home (particularly arduous in this case, taking in bad directions, missed buses, friendly cab drivers, lost wallets, band members beating the crap out of each other on train platforms, and local chavs being arrested).

Until next year.

Review & Photos by Paul Madden

www.truckfestival.org

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