Dot
to Dot Festival 2007
With
Nottingham cold and wet, and the line-up shinning less bright
than previous years, hopes for the third Dot to Dot Festival are,
pardon the pun, somewhat dampened.
Local
lads I Was A Cub Scout’s
lack lustre performance, kicking off proceedings in Rock City’s
main hall, doesn’t do much to lift the mood. The emo-pop
duo look so bored that, at any minute, they might fall into a
deep sleep, at least their on nice and early so they can finish
and get off to bed! IWACS have succumbed to the myth that banging
some ill-conceived electronics over whatever guitar-driven normality
you peddle, adds depth to the music you make – boy are they
wrong. Most of the aforementioned ‘electronics’ sound
like Peruvian panpipes and the rest like someone has left a Gameboy
spacking-out in the corner. No wonder the vocalist/guitarist Todd
looks so scared every time he goes near his synth, and no matter
how many times I ask no one can tell me why he keeps smelling
his hand, which is a shame because this is the only thing I am
interested in.
Standing
in Lee Rosy’s Tea Room I can see this is a bad place to
put on instru-MENTAL behemoths You
Slut! The quaint café is full to bursting
with people anticipating the swathes of noise to come and, despite
the poor sound, they are not disappointed. You Slut! are relentless,
assaulting the senses with an array of neuron-crushing riffs woven
into a rich math-rock tapestry. Where other acts of this ilk beat
you with repetitive pounding of sound, You Slut! buckle you in
for a genre-hopping journey into new territories. Played with
a kinetic energy that make you move you feet, this is the post-rock-near-prog-indie-metal-math-pop
highlight of the day.
Totally immense.
Talibam!
sound like nothing else…ever. This could be a good thing
if their mass of disjointed sounds and unrelenting, purposeless
free-style noise wasn’t the aural equivalent of a mass-murder.
It don’t look pretty, it don’t sound pretty and given
the choice you wouldn’t want to be in attendance.
By
rights Candi Payne
should be amazing. Her recorded output comes over with the trippy
ambience of Portishead, infused with soul and given a pop makeover…her
performance promises so much. The crushing disappointment of being
presented with bucket-load of pop-rock, MOR dullness makes her
set sound like the death of all my optimism. Where her recorded
sound is undoubtedly sixties retro but nicely contemporary, today
everything exciting is stripped away to leave music that is rotting
well past its sell-by-date. She has a nice voice though, and I
am told the top half of her face is attractive – which I
suppose is something.
Architecture
in Helsinki are musical sunshine! The Australian
art-pop collective’s musical mish-mash creates an impossible
round in a game of ‘spot the influence’. Members skip
and skirt between different instruments (which include many of
those included in the Miscellaneous section of ‘The Musos
Companion’ – xylophone, woodblocks, cow-bells and
other weird sound producers) with the crashing energy of five-year-olds
pumped with e-numbers. Despite being drowned by the size of the
venue AIH are the perfect, funky-pop antidote to the drizzle and
dullness of the day.
Broken
Family Band say they are ‘surprised to be
on the bill.’ So am I, because I can’t see why anyone
would book them…dull, dull, dull!
The
Good Books, aren’t that good! Nor are they
books, I’m considering complaining to Trade Descriptions.
Stealing
isn’t always bad. Take as an example We
Are The Physics’ pillaging of the early-eighties
post-punk song-book. Angular rhythms, fuzzy guitar bursts and
funky bass played with a vibrant, youthful energy that drags the
music above the blatantly obvious influences. Here are a great
new rock-band, sounding like a great old rock-band and getting
away with it in style – hats off!
In
the same vein Sub-Pop signings The
Thermals are all the classic indie-rock/grunge
bands rolled into one and stripped down into three-minute punky,
pop blasts. This is nostalgic stuff which sounds brilliantly up-to-date,
which might be why they get the best crowd reaction I’ve
seen all day. ‘How We Know’ gets my head bopping uncontrollably,
which I like.
I
also like Bearsuit,
a lot. At a time when most music sounds like something else, Bearsuit
sound like nothing else. Tonight the Trent Bar is led into frenzy
by a demented brass band with Spasmodic dysphonia playing a sugary-sweet
blend of stop-start, post-punk, classical, art-pop, indie, children’s
TV theme-tunes. The band don’t just dodge pigeon-holes they
happily skip round them adorned with a knowing smile.
Their twee sound and innocent stage-style makes even their most
off-kilter creations highly accessible and enjoyable – even
when they are screaming like crazed banshees over glitchy electronics.
Bearsuit drag the day’s satisfaction levels sky-ward, and
as an additional point they have a keytar which for my money could
make any performance amazing.
Much
else happened at Dot to Dot 2007 following Bearsuit but to be
frank your guess is as good as mine.
By
Emery Buord
