The Green Man Festival

The first in Miwsig's Summer festival series looks at Brecon's burgeoning Green Man.

In the midst of directionless, pre-summer, inner-city meandering, 20,000 acres of peaceful parkland in the Sugar Loaf mountains sounds like a worthy retreat whatever the company. But throw in a bunch of music handpicked without need of a Westminster round-table by a small number of people who actually give a shit, and the resulting punters they’ll no doubt attract, and it’s yet more of a mouth-watering prospect.

The festival has been going since 2003, when the boy/girl duo from pastoral tunesmiths It’s Joe and Danny decided they’d had enough of what Glastonbury was crawling slowly but steadily towards and what Reading/Leeds and especially V blatantly were, and shacked up with a few pals in a castle in Brecon for a one-day, commerce-free jamboree. Since then it’s snowballed, but all sane reports pertain to it having kept to its “roots”.

Looking back through the press cuttings over the years since ‘03, and you see reports getting ever more enthusiastic, like a diagonal line going up from left to right in a graph. 2004 saw the event expanded to two days, attracting the likes of then upstarts The Earlies and Joanna Newsome, who forged a working relationship with the Brecon countryside strong enough to return again nearly every year since, and this year to headline on the back of her sultry and deservedly-acclaimed YS set.

2005 meanwhile saw the event support the likes of Josephine Foster, pre her 2006 nugget Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You, and the expansion to the three day format saw it become a fully-fledged major in all but spirit. Amidst its preserved musical nous, Green Man these days boasts a wide-array of cultural treats including cinema and literature tents, and the laudable attempts of other festivals at procuring local foods and spirits can be traced back to the original Green Man template. “Delicious local food” from a stall run by the local Cwmdu school along with fresh seafood curries and smoked delicacies from the on-site smokery will this year vie for our attention with global cuisines, reminding me that there’ll be no need to come home from this particular event one stone lighter than I already am through lack of wholesome offerings.

Back to the music, and the early-forecast line-up boasts the return of fondly remembered 80s folk-popsters Lilac Time, while Robert Plant, still active in the field of loin-throbbing rock, but now veering slightly further towards suitably pastoral roots, will ensure any parents you choose to take along will be suitably attended. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks meanwhile are a tremendous coup, promising those dyed-in-the-wool summertime Pavement classics to make us smile in our shandies while his new stuff makes us throb that little bit more, and Gruff Rhys, with his increasingly magic solo presence, should be a grand thing in anyone’s book.

By a quirk of new-solo-Welsh-troubadour fate, following Gruff’s trail to Green Man is Gorky’s Euros Childs, while Newsome’s current muse Bill Callahan will treat us to more low-down soulful, dusty gems from his life as the heroic Smog and beyond. Indeed, going through the early line-up makes you realise the profuseness of genuinely-fascinating singer/songwriters we now have compared to recent years. Richmond Fontaine joins Gruff, Euros, Malkmus et al to take us further into individually-wrought realms, while pristine folk pioneers The Men-an-tol Project and the sublime, melody-laden crew of Monkey Swallows the Universe lead the early show of newer talent.

The San Francisco retinue Vetiver have close links with the horribly-monikered "freak-folk" Leader Banhart, and the luxurious West-Coast country sounds of their recent To Find Me Gone LP should provide a grand fascination to the such inclined, while the Super Furries’ endorsed Dead Meadow promise more otherworldly US thrills in the shape of epic stoner-rock.

Texas/Northern England psychedelics The Earlies meanwhile return to reclaim land they conquered in both '04 and '05, and London folktronic retinue Tunng will provide succulent come-down melodies, should you of course need them. With a host of acts new and old to be picked from similar kinds of trees, all signs point to Green Man again being a sound yet exciting haven of summer weekend bliss.

© 2007 Neil Jones

The Green Man Festival takes place in Brecon from Friday August 17th to Sunday the 19th.
Site open from Thursday till Monday, tickets priced at £98 for the weekend (including camping).
Eleven-year-olds and under gain free access.


www.thegreenmanfestival.co.uk

© Miwsig