The Modern Lovers

Neil Jones on the inaugural Indietracks festival at the Midlands Railway Centre, Butterley, Derbyshire

  Day 1, Saturday July 28th, 2007

The Poetry

It's the nature of Pop to turn against things that lesser movements embrace. Refusing to crystallise in trends, it's the shimmer and the smile and the tear of the moment. A movement into melody from discord. Like a story of Hesse, set among the engines in Butterley, Derbyshire, a Utopian idyll was made for a single weekend, and the steam train depot was given the kiss of life by the living museum.

The Story

The sun comes out and the old museum sits basking. Cardiff and Pop’s The Loves have been waiting for enough people to float into the converted locomotive shed for them to get started, and now that twenty or thirty people have done so, begin with a certain shy restraint. The Loves are a festive band for festive occasions, usually at night, a shy crew of Pop dreamers not accustomed to the revealing light of day, and there's a slight holdback before Simon and Jenna’s voices begin to overcome their fears and join the shimmering paths of their music. It begins to build now, and three songs in Liz’s keyboard lines join the quaint Gallic whispers and increasingly striding voices of the lead duo to evoke 60s romance like a pristine time capsule, and the crowd reels a little at the realisation that the festival has drifted into life.

The Loves as an opener are poignant and profound, but where their lineage reaches back through annuls of time, The Hermit Crabs come direct from the modern school of Uncool, their best songs speaking in that quintessential outsider poetry of Belle and Sebastian and Camera Obscura. The Crabs, like The Loves, are never going to overplay the situation, and their unassuming stage presence gives a natural birth to their songs, songs that strike notes of profundity with tears, hope and wisdom. The Crabs’ signature tune ‘Feel Good Factor’ emerges out of the old shed like a summer breeze or Rimbaud poem, beautifully-formed like a gift from Mozart to the counter-culture age, and as their set comes to an end I wonder where the last half hour has got to.

The second steam train has already pulled off armed with the music of The Lovely Eggs (ex of Angelica) before we could get to the station, so the more static and quiet bar carriage outside provides the weekend’s first liquids; a Shiraz red wine giving the vital allusion of sophistication that Gresham Flyers soon assault in the shed like gods of noise. The Flyers are one of the Indietracks bands I hadn’t come across before, at their frenzied best suggesting Dexys played in the crazy cartoon tempos of Fraggle Rock. It’s off-kilter Pop in its most thrilling incarnation, bouncing off walls and bubbling underneath the ground before hiding for a while in a more serene sound that doesn’t quite fit so well. The Flyers are best when the music compliments their attention-magnet keyboardist "Sister" Sharon Leach, who bounces ebulliently through fast and slow numbers alike in her kaleidoscope dress until, completely played out, she fades into the ether.

Taking a break is hard at the festival, and I wish we had camped right up on the site so I wouldn’t have missed the apparently ace Strange Idols. Pete Green too would have been good to catch again after a great set at Nottingham Rescue Rooms on the Friday night, where he premiered an ace track about the evil Dr Beeching, enemy of the railways, penned especially for Indietracks, and I’d heard so much about The Felt Tips, The San Marinos, The Chemistry Experiment, Arthur and Martha and Roy Moller. Hell, it’s impossible to catch them all, but I wish I could have.

We arrive back at the site just in time to sneak in to The Bobby McGees set on the second stage, a wondrous railwaymens’ church that’s packed to the rafters. Thankfully leading man Jimmy’s in the thrall of the song and doesn’t have time to sacrifice us as latecomers. 'Albert Camus / Audrey Tautou' has never sounded so good as it does now, and the hushes between the duo's lines have never been filled with so much wonder. The McGees today are on fire, their theatre burning with absolute outsider might. ‘Ivor Cutler is Dead’ is from the gods, Jimmy swears and berates and speaks of Kate Nash with a charm of disparagement that you'll rarely see, and we laugh, frown and empathise with them till eyes well up. How would he say, "foooking fantastic", and... "now foook off!"

Cats on Fire were also ace on the Friday night at the nearby Rescue Rooms, bubbling with Morrisey-esque shimmer and ambiguity and tunes shot through the gun of modern Scandinavian wonder. Judging by the end of their set back at the locomotive shed they were the same today. Shame we couldn’t catch it all, but Norwich-core heroes Bearsuit next up make us forget we even had a past let alone harbour any regrets about it. Melodies coil up in small clusters before springing out into the shed in an all-out assault on the senses, and it continues till we're absolutely slaked half an hour later. Individual Bearsuit songs kind of pale here into one worthy whole, the kind of which KaitO and maybe Life Without Buildings pioneered back in the day, yet ringing with fun, ebbulience and mischief. It's frenzied Pop with the ability to slow itself down into the most profound forms, and today Bearsuit are regally, racuously immaculate.

Rose McDowall at the church has been and gone in the following haze, another one I’ll regret not being able to catch, but The Orchids as headliners are just so good, the larger ethos of indiepop brought to life before our eyes in a blinding fashion. I have to admit I’d never even heard an Orchids track before, just read Alistair Fitchett’s brilliant biog and kind of abstractly consumed their sound from a distance, so it’s testament to them and him that as they play their set I sway to the music like it's soundtracked my dreams for the past year. Someone says they look like they’ve just wandered in from unblocking drains, but their music has arrived on angels’ wings. ‘Something for the Longing’ will drift in my memory for years to come, dripping with an underplayed wonder that is the perfect Pop riposte to the bombastic postures of musical careerists the world over. The Orchids are legends with innocence in their eyes, a weighty reminder of Pop poignancy that'll sing us to a sleep of beatific dreams. But first it’s How Does it Feel to be Loved, and the new art of indie disco will find its perfect home at Indietracks.

Day 2, Sunday July 29th, 2007

The Poetry

It's the nature of Pop to turn against things that lesser movements embrace. Refusing to crystallise in trends, it's the shimmer and the smile and the tear of the moment. A movement into melody from discord. Like a story of Hesse, set among the engines in Butterley, Derbyshire, a Utopian idyll was made for a single weekend, and the steam train depot was given the kiss of life by the living museum.

The Story

A Smile and a Ribbon are the band of the moment, and as they open the Sunday in the cool morning air of the locomotive shed, the Indietracks slogan that runs across the back of the stage area becomes a kind of legend in its own time. We’re attending something special indeed, and this is our first taste of the essential Swedish input.

There’s so much magic Pop coming out of Scandinavia today, standing on the shoulder of noble giants like Sarah and Postcard. The large smattering of Scandinavian kids here seem to me to be such an authentic representation of what modern indie really is, playing it with a nod to their heroes that’s profoundly affecting. A Smile and a Ribbon wonder if Darren Hayman has arrived in time to hear their song about him, a nugget of poetic lustre and broken-hearted humour entitled ‘A Nice Walk in the Park’. “Why does Darren Hayman have to be so dirty”, Rebbecca pleads, before taking us through a story of tender isolation that makes me feel like all the brilliance of what I’ve recognised as Pop over the last few years has drifted into a shed in Butterley on the wind. A Smile and a Ribbon have more songs like this, each better than the last in its own little way, swaying with brilliant lyrical twists and melodies that seem to hold all the beauty and emotion of the world in their slender frames, and as the band walk back out into the sun you wonder how on earth it could get better than that.

I drift off for a while into a space that sees me miss another host of bands I was really looking forward to. Friends of the Brides, The Indelicates, Pete Green again on the train, Robert Church and the Holy Community in, erm, the church, Horowitz and Chiara Ls, but I come back for revolution number two shortly after, Sunday July the 29th, 2007, the day Cardiff spawned its own Camera Obscura?

Of coarse many have got close to achieving a kind of sound that puts tears in eyes behind smiles, but to reach it consistently and with such a personal flourish is rare. The School are a motley bunch that reside behind the immense charm of front-lady Liz, plucking away neatly on keyboards, guitars, bass, drums and more guitars as she pours lyrical magic on their sounds with vocals that reach heights of smiling poignancy. These are songs that we should hold dear for a while to come, humble capsules of tenderness and beauty that rise, fall and resonate with such a distinctive shimmer. The School for many will be a highlight of the Indietracks weekend, the demand for new discovery satiated in a style we’d never imagined.

Cardiff has a healthy representation here with The Loves, The School, The Jerks and Victorian English Gentlemens Club, a surprising booking who are albeit brilliant back at the church. The place is packed at first, and it takes a while to edge ourselves in, but when we do we witness scenes of scuzzy virtuosity to make hairs stand on end. The Club’s lead singer/guitarist Adam is apparently the first to command the church’s pulpit like the rock‘n’roll devil incarnate, but his partner Louise, who seems to have more of an input in the newer songs, holds the attention with an amazing display of instrumental and vocal passion. Louise seems to breath with every line and nuance of her bass, eyes burning and staring into the ether in a manner that goes beyond pretension, into sheer absorption. The Victorian English Gentlemens Club have a kind of Gothic ambition that’s increasingly finding fulfilment, and their haunting sounds fill the the church with alternately sultry, blasphemic and thrilling images of passion.

Another jaunt is called for to fetch CDs for the disco later, and in this time I manage to miss the final steam train rides which featured the apparently impressive Rowena Dugdale from Santa Dog, and Pocketbooks, who created the brilliant Indietracks poster, the one with the train flashing through the green and blue background. Pocketbooks are said to have handed out instruments and song-sheets and led a festive march through ‘My Wandering Days are Over’, but surely this didn’t happen? I’ll convince myself so anyway.

Back in the real world The Electric Pop Group are beginning the Sunday night fare, and the sounds of their album are brought alive in a straight-ahead manner that sees the brilliant lyrical lines of co-vocalists Martin and Eric shine like beacons. ‘Popgirly’ is absolutely immense, its story of shy and unlikely love on the internet coming across like the modern Bonnie and Clyde that it surely is, while the other tracks drift and drift some more with a consistent shimmer to die for. Guitarist Gustaf plays music on the wing like Chris Waddle once did on a football pitch, weaving extra golden threads of counterpoint to gently help along the shivers already floating down the spine, and half an hour later I feel like I’m floating away in a poetic fashion towards the stars. Ah, the magic of music. The magic of Pop. The magic of The Electric Pop Group.

Persil provide outlandishness and inspired performance with their upside-down electronica and that brilliant track I remember from Peel, before the seas part and God takes his rightful seat on the indiepop throne. It’s nine o’clock by now, and the Indietracks banner is glowing with increased profundity. A pair of braces have replaced the usual polo shirt, and Darren Hayman is on fire. Tracks rain down from various points in a career that never actually became a career, ‘Pull Yourself Together’ reaching out into pleading frenzy, ‘The Greedy Ugly People’ swaying with lyrical gold, ‘Good Fruit’ piquing hallowed memories and ‘Hello Kitten’ lighting us up in blazing flames. The hymns for the cigarettes and alcohol are played as slowed-down anthems while we drink the slow magic, and then God has to leave before he turns into a stray dog carer on the stroke of midnight. We’re all quite speechless and reflective, before Indietracks settles into another celebration of all it has stood for, and dances into the night.

Pop on a large scale like our generation have never seen, this was a weekend of character, creativity, heritage and modern magic to savour for a very long time. If only it could have gone on longer.

© 2007 Neil Jones

Images:

"Kids On Rails"

Ian - http://www.howdoesitfeel.co.uk/hdiflabel.html

"The Black & White Frock"

Obo-Bobo - http://www.flickr.com/photos/obo-bobolina/

"The School"

Lostmusic - http://www.lostmusic.co.uk

© Miwsig