Truck
Nine
Saturday July 22 2006
Each year I return from Truck Festival only to subject people
to reports filled with rampant hyperbole. Maybe it’s all
so boring, maybe I should change the over-congratulatory record
or maybe I should simply enjoy the fact that many people feel
the same about this glorious shindig on a farm in Oxfordshire.
Nine
years in and Truck is bigger than ever and its popularity has
shot through the roof. It is still a festival of choice for those
in the ‘know’ it’s just that with every passing
year the word spreads and the number of people in the ‘know’
has expanded to mean the event sells out in days rather than weeks.
It
is with this amount of anticipation that being trapped in my tent
as Oxford is hit by a brief monsoon after only just arriving,
that I start to feel that this year it might all go wrong and
I will leave Truck having anything but a good time.
Finally,
the rain slows and in the Trailer Tent I witness a storm of a
different kind. The Walkoff are the
musical equivalent of a hurricane, their manic, sleazy electro-rock
assault is described by the band as ‘Pop Will Eat Itself
being [insert violently amorous act here] by Squarepusher’.
The Walkoff make a messed-up noise not that dissimilar to Atari
Teenage Riot without the revolutionary political edge and their
hyperactive on-stage persona features an over-weight, sweaty front-man
screaming and a dancing bear.
Brakes
bring the sun out – hooray. This super-group of sorts (featuring
an ex-member of British Sea Power, two of Electric Soft Parade
and a guy from Tenderfoot) are perfect afternoon festival-fodder.
Banging through a set largely made up of tracks from their amazing
debut album Give Blood, the band play punk music with a country
twist.
Throwing in some new tunes like the banging, dirty-rock stomper
‘Cease and Desist’, written on a trip to Nashville,
today’s performance indicates that Brakes can get only get
better and their hilarious onstage attitude forces the crowd to
will them on – they are having a good time and it rubs off.
On a more serious note the band handle politics, but in a truly
irreverent manner – the ten-second long ode to Dick Cheney
says it all –‘Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney.. stop
being such a dick.’
Brakes are effortlessly cool; they even manage to cover Camper
Van Beethoven without losing face – now that really is an
achievement.
‘Cool’
is a relative word – I’m told the annoyingly named
:( (that’s colon_open_bracket
I think) are ‘cool’ which may mean I’m missing
something. True, seeing a young-girl playing a computer keyboard
strapped to her like a guitar is kinda ‘cool’, but
from the past-it electronic sounds she produces I draw the conclusion
that she needs to upgrade from a Commodore 64 – it is 2006
after all.
Emo played through a Gameboy is an interesting concept in theory,
but in practice it just doesn’t work.
The
barn is in the midst of something special – Warp signed
avant-super-group Battles (featuring
members of Helmet, Tomahawk and Don Cabellero) are warping the
concept of what progressive music can sound like and in turn are
warping people’s minds. Ex-Helmet drummer John Stainer is
the heart-beat of their expansive mellee of sound, providing intricate
drum-patterns of ever changing style and tempo.
The
music incorporates rock, jazz, drum and bass and hip-hop with
angular, minimal guitar layers, effects and electronic experimental
techniques all the time taking in an avant-garde transcendence.
Music this captivating and emotive comes along infrequently and
in the live arena is truly mesmerising.
‘I’m
on in there, right now, come along,’ shouts a man wearing
a pair of flowery pants and evil clown make-up pointing at the
small Performance stage. The intrigue factor has drawn a large
crowd for the cringe-worthingly brilliant Doktor
CocaColaMcdonalds.
Panting,
after all his running around outside the tent, he informs the
crowd he can’t begin until he is announced and will fill
the time with a ‘saxophone’ (of the Casio variety)
solo – which is immensely bizarre.
Armed with a laptop, a Casio mt-80 and an electro-guitar the good
Doktor runs through his irreverent views of the world with simplistic
electro-pop ditties that are so bad they go full circle to be
amazing – he has to be seen to be believed. Tracks like
‘Don’t join the army unless you want to kill people’
make people laugh nervously out loud.
He has a Gene Hackman fetish, ends ‘songs’ abruptly
with ‘Oh, you get the idea’, his equipment doesn’t
work and he runs around like a surrealist Mr Humphries.
What more could you possibly want from a performance?
Because
of this I only see the last three tracks from Forward
Russia who are undoubtedly on top form and have won over
the Truck crowd.
Hundred
Reasons?
I need only one – they’re boring. That is the ‘reason’
I don’t like them.
The
Futureheads
are a grand booking for Truck. For a brief moment before the hype
took hold, these north eastern lads were a truly exciting prospect
with their energetic, stop-start, post-punk and ‘Hounds
of Love’ was a brilliant re-working of a classic.
Tonight’s set however is evidence enough that they have
lost their bite, the new material (of which their set mainly comprises)
is built on improved musicianship and an enhanced pop sensibility
that unfortunately produces nothing more than mediocrity.
The majority of the set is nondescript enough to seem like one
song. ‘Hounds of Love’ does a little to save the day,
but with many people leaving after it is played it just shows
how little entertainment they have provided.
It’s never nice to see the potentially mighty fall, but
tonight The Futureheads have taken one massive dive.
by
James Thornhill
