Affection and Swearwords, Banjos and Ukuleles

Neil Jones on The Bobby McGee's, The School, Their Hearts Were Full of Spring and Bobby Conn at the inaugural Swn festival

November 9th - 11th, 2007 (Venues across Cardiff)

Day 1

The reddening of the trees, the deepening of the sky, the erection of a giant Christmas tree on Queen Street. It's Autumn in Cardiff, and the weekend of the inaugural, Huw Stevens-conceived Swn festival. It's 7pm as we make our way out on the opening Friday night, and the streets are quiet for now. Clwb Ifor Bach is still locked in preparation, and back on Castle Street Bar Europa, the small independent cafe that's also involved has not yet opened. It gives us a chance to speculate a little, and confirm that the line-up is good, the premise is noble, and, hopefully, the people will come out.

Clwb Ifor Bach opens its doors at 8pm and Jimmy from The Bobby McGees stalks the floor in a loony Russian hat. Downstairs at Clwb has no stage, just a platform enclosed with a wooden rail. As a result it's a more intricate venue than upstairs, and as Winston Echo open up with some wistful indiepop dreaming the fifteen or so of us in attendance are hooked. The Wellingborough trio are a gift from the higher end of Tweedom, singer Chris East full of witty allusions and quirky stories, his female friend sitting next to him infusing the sound with smily rhythms and handclaps, and the opening of the festival is in this way a lot like getting up to your favourite morning cartoon.

We're standing there at the bar reading Winstone Echo's surreal fanzine afterwards when Crayola Lecturn rouse us with some cascading piano and guitar play as arch as the castle innards, before the lovely Mertle draws us in back into cartoon land with a set of startling acoustic songs, one and two-minute beauties that float out with a blindingly shy charm. The crowd are starting to seep in now, and Larry Pickleman (the self proclaimed "dog's dick of anti-folk"), takes the stage next like the Tasmanian Devil. Pickleman's mini-guitar screeches; his microphone tries to escape, a background laptop throws out all sorts of quaint melodies, and the extraordinary effect is a bit like opening a musical box and getting a foul-mouthed serenade.

We know we're in the minority here, worshipping at the alter of Brighton anti-folk when most others are worshipping at the alter of some fully-blown Balkan magic going on over at Cardiff Bay, and we work out that we can get over there and back without losing too much time. We hotwheel it across in a roaring taxi to find the place heaving, and by a minor miracle we manage to get in, the melodies of Beirut immediately coating us with an amazing Eastern European wonder.

The songs get heavier and more festive as Beirut get more and more into it, Zach Condon fuelling his band with an air of wilful virtuosity. The majesty of Beirut lights up the old church like a blazing comet, and as we have to leave just before the end it's like we're doing something quite perverse. Condon himself was apparently on Queen Street busking this afternoon, and I think even I in my current financial austerity would have put 50p in his hat.

It's back down to Clwb Ifor Bach, where Everett True (aka The Legend!) is morphing from event organiser/DJ into musical performer (the morphing consists of making three small steps onto the stage platform), and the place, now three-quarters full, takes a collective breath. A dramatic falsetto takes us back and blows my friend towards the bar in alarm, but I kind of like it. For anyone who doesn't know, True is most well-known as a crusading underground music journalist, but isn't it only natural and noble that he tries his hand at creating music as well?

True on stage is awkward and charming, and I find myself really rooting for him. He's like a dignified uncle up there, trying desperately to give himself up to the devil of music but finding Apollo's whispers hard to overcome. The Legend's musical accompaniment works off his robust yet soulful voice with spontaneous shards of horns and guitar, and it works, it really does, as something more than a karaoke tribute to the underground. Day 1 of Swn ends with True the DJ's retro-pop disco, the slightly more manicured Beirut throng having joined our anti-folk haven from outside, and really, it's been quite a fantastical night.

Day 2

Saturday and day 2 of the inaugural Swn festival dawns with myriad promises. Edwyn Collins plays the Chapter Arts Centre tonight, but the prospect of a whole day of new music at Tommy's Bar excites me just as much. We saunter down towards Tommy's at dinnertime in the hope of maybe seeing Zach Condon spending a second day busking on the streets of Cardiff, but there's only really the local legend (not Everett True) that sings My Way through a Fisher Price microphone.

Tommy's Bar is busy even at this afternoon hour, Cardiff's indie faithful having turned out early for The Voluntary Butler Scheme, one guy that plays classically-tinged pop ballads that remind us that the lineage of T-Rex and The Beatles needn't be that bad after all. The Voluntary Butler Scheme provides a grand, melodic and uplifting half hour, which the next band, Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring, build on with an air of utter magnificence. THWFOS emanate romance like a summer rose, their shaven-haired, white-jacketed, Morrisey-esque front-man singing from behind his flower-strewn microphone with glorious languor.

Handclaps, violin lines and tambourines shake, the whole Hearts sound ebbs with a blinding orchestral grace, and one particular track has a three-part vocal harmony to absolutely die for. Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring are the real package, and this fact is more than enough reason to spell their name out in full one last time.

It's mid-afternoon when The School take the stage, a variegated bunch of instrumentalists gathering behind lead-singer Liz with quiet intent. A drum rhythm joins a humble piano line, and they leap into a twee subversion of Apples in Stereo's Can You Feel It? that reigns melodic cheer. The School have been signed to respected indie label Elefant since the last time I saw them in Cardiff's small O'Neill's, and today they sound a little more robust without losing the intricacy that makes them such a pleasure.
Camera Obscura comparisons have reigned a little freely and lazily (yours truly being a prime culprit), and while one epic new track does steer into Razzle Dazzle Rose-like territory, it's in tracks like Valentine and Let it Slip where they brilliantly find their own feet, the latter in particular bounding along with a quite irresistible shimmer and beautiful sense of Pop heartbreak.

So far so very, very nice, so when a charge of "what the foook are you looking at?" comes from the stage to the general audience, it makes for quite a contrast. There's been a little bearded Scotsman stalking Cardiff since last night in a Russian hat, and at last he's got his hour in the limelight. The Bobby McGee's are the twee'est riot in the history of twee riots, and Jimmy demands our attention with a cheery snarl. A friend has already been duped by Jimmy's story that he's currently working on a project of "68 Love Songs", and now here he is on stage, introducing himself and girlfriend El as "you know, that band that isn't absolutely shite..." and treating her with a little bit of that charming Groucho-esque bite, which of coarse she loves him for. The Bobby McGee's are where dreams meet on stage with decorum terrorism, where a man in a sailor uniform exchanges sweet nothings and harsh quips with his true love whilst a giant of a man wields his double bass like... a bass. It's affection and swearwords, banjos and ukuleles, belligerent anti-folk with an irresistible tinge of romance, and when Jimmy at the end promises to play a set out in the beer garden in the middle of the following bands, we make our plans to join him.

Monkey Swallows the Universe have no chance of competing with Jimmy on the barbed romantic level, but their songs are undeniably lovely things, shimmering with a countrified sadness that brings us all down to earth a little, and that's just fine. The band have an unassuming presence, relaxed and effortless as they take us through a quirky set of charming Pop pillaging that ends in a fantastic version of Jonathan Richman's Ice Cream Man. Outside in the beer garden soon after we go from 'Ice Cream Man' to '69 Ways to Make My Girlfriend Cum' in a matter of seconds (including the cunnilingus solo). The Bobby McGees of course are not playing during bands but between them, serenading us in the open air like troubadours from a lost age, and seducing us one by one into buying them drinks. I stand around for a while, before realising it might be my turn to go to the bar, so I slink back inside just in time to see Kelley Stoltz, who to my surprise are not in any way indiepop or folk but more a robust, hairy psychedelic rock band, who's music broadly shimmers in a manner that varies brilliantly with the fare thus far.

It's dark now and it's a shame to have to sneak out as Emmy the Great plays a genuinely beguiling set of ghostly folk gems, but the other side of Cardiff is calling. As always, I'm reluctant to leave the present excitement of Tommy's Bar for an encounter with the past, especially as The Clientele are on next, but there's something inside compelling me to do so, and I shouldn't have trusted it... I'm a huge fan of Orange Juice, but this isn't Orange Juice in any shape or form. The venue, an immaculate, if somewhat soulless "studio" based outside the Chapter Arts Centre itself, is full of curiosity of the type that doesn't sit well with me. There are a few of the people that had spent most of the day down with us in Tommy's Bar, and they're okay, but the rest are kind of museum gapers, looking on with that gormless gaze that says they wouldn't give the time of day to Orange Juice if they appeared on the underground as it is now.

Collins himself is fantastic of course, ploughing on with one side of his body paralysed after two cerebral haemorrhages in 2005, which is so touching. His voice is soulful and quite stunning, but a part of him must be hurting inside at what the two musicians by his side are doing with his music. The sharp Orange Juice hooks are elongated into a muso's wet dream, and the combination of this and the curiosity of parts of the crowd, and the venue itself, makes time hang heavy, and I just have to get out. It's been a fantastic day of new music at Tommy's Bar, and we should really have spent the end of it in the company of The Clientele and the kids.

Day 3

Shaking off the slight nausea of the night before, Sunday's somewhat truncated line-up provides a few things to look forward to. You never quite know what to expect from Chicago's Bobby Conn (the last time I saw him it was Bowie-esque psychedelic tunes all the way, Conn resplendent in a bright red tracksuit top unzipped to reveal a quaint medallion), and Soft Hearted Scientists are a local curiosity I've been dying to check out.

A walk down to the Glo-Bar venue at the bottom of Queen Street is fruitless, as there's an hour's delay to the music there, damn it, and after another hour's delay up at Chapter Arts Soft Hearted Scientists at last provide the day's first sounds. The crowd is strewn sullenly around the floor after a heavy weekend, but the sounds of the A470 Song soon rouse it from slumber. It's a rambling poetic piece that builds the bridge from what seems to be an older prog rock sound into something sparkly and new.

The songs from Soft Hearted Scientists new Whirling World LP seem to be on a different plane to the old stuff. Where the old tracks boom along in a linear fashion, guitar, drums, keyboard and voice filing in one moribund line, tracks like Eyes and I Wanted You jump out like blazing stars from old constellations. SHS singer Nathan Hall says he's struggling a little too after a heavy evening yesterday, and though he sounds like he can't quite fully commit to the Pop optimism of these tracks they're still fantastic, lunar lyrical nuggets that send us away smiling.

We set off like the Marx Brothers down Canton after towards Buffalo Bar in an attempt to catch Hush the Many, but alas we arrive to the desolate sounds of them packing up. It's worth hanging around though, as the next band, Brooklyn's Yeasayer are really something, a strange concoction of huge vocals emanating from the singer (who remains tantalising out of site around the notorious Buffalo Bar "bend"), subtle Latino rhythms and giddy psychedelia. The place is packed, and it's enough to do to stop oneself dropping out of the door and rolling down the stairs.

Time to make our way up to Clwb Ifor Bach now, and as we step in through the door there's a whole lot of shaking going on, riot grrl style. Only The Duloks at closer inspection are not really riot grrls but more humorous electronic tweepop cabaret. Front-lady Mira Dulok is quite a presence, free with her tongue and sharp-witted as a Bobby McGee, every bit the leader of her shorts and knee-socked all-girl threesome. The Duloks' songs bounce out between Mira's monologues with an irresistible youthful ebullience, and at the end of their set I have Mar Dulok's furious toy drum lines etched in my brain, and huge, brash melodies chasing me up the stairs.

After the abrasiveness of The Duloks, the music of Slow Club is like entering a different reality, but two songs in something just happens... Slow Club are immediately nice and mellifluous, but after standing there a while they start sounding humbly spectacular, something like an indiepop version of The White Stripes, rhythmic, festive, and oh so sensitive and poignant. Co-singer and percussionist Rebecca Club has a way with a microphone like I've never seen, knowing just the right moment to pull away and let her voice pour out the sides, and the music keeps coming and coming in shimmering waves. Slow Club are a total delight, and it'll take a while to climb back down to earth.

In fact it's debatable if this ever happens, because downstairs Bobby Conn is prancing about in striped circus trousers that look like they've been pulled off a deckchair, like nothing you've seen, and, oh yes, this time he's supported by a violinist, and not just any violinist... Conn's accompaniment here tonight plays along with his peculiar brand of psychedelia like it's Bach, strumming elegant lines through his elongated riffs with the serenity of an angel. Conn seems himself to be on truly perverse form, climbing up on a triangular speaker and falling flat on his face, getting up, shaking himself down, and insisting that it'll take more than that to keep him down.

But where is his stand-out song Never Get Ahead, a glitterball Pop epic that serenades the dancefloor like nothing else, and why aren't there more where that came from? It's only that we'd need, and we'd be talking David Bowie without looking over our shoulders. After already falling over once, it's maybe not Conn's night, as the person he chooses to join him on stage for a one-on-one serenade at the end is Mira Dulok from The Duloks, and where she was expected to well up in embarrassment at Conn's pseudo-romantic treatment, she ends up similating oral sex on him. Fantastic.

The inaugural Swn festival is hurtling full throttle to its end, and upstairs at Clwb Black Lips are rocking out with stylish abandon. It's getting late though, and we wouldn't be in our right minds if we didn't stop off at the Secret Garden Soundsystem Barn Dance at Callaghans for one last drink. Here the party crawls on and people try to keep their feet as best they can on sawdust floors, inebriated like you wouldn't believe. It's an outre end to a fantastic weekend.

Swn has done well to put the festival in the hands of the Cardiff people for whom this is a way of life, and thus we don't even have to wait till next year to do it again. It's a little rest, and then, quite simply, as Roy Smeck said, on with the dance.

© 2007 Neil Jones

Originally published at MusicOMH.com

© Miwsig