More Tales From The Steam Railway

Neil Jones on Indietracks '08

Indietracks Festival 2008. July 26th & 27th, Butterley Steam Railway, Derbyshire

Day 1

It’s quiet in Butterley’s Golden Valley Caravan and Camping Park on a blue-skied Saturday morning. The silence as we wake in tents is slowly broken by humming birds, crickets, and the sound of a cooked breakfast being fried from afar, and a fat man’s belly rumbling. Wind rises from a tent opposite us like a bong from The Planets (Darren Hayman, you know who you are), and it’s up, off, and away into the land of summer dreams that is Indietracks 2008.

The Indietracks site in Butterley, near the old town of Ripley in the Derbyshire countryside, is beautifully spaced-out. The Golden Valley site, where the majority of Indietracks people are camping for the two nights of the festival, featuring duck ponds and gardens with a variety of blossoming bushes, a picturesque, winding country road leading out of it directly into the steam railway station thats quaint charm hits us straight away as we go in. It’s like a different world in here: everyday tourists walk around looking at the old trains that gather beyond the smiling face of Oswald, the talking engine; and signs of a music festival appear one by one… a black T-shirted technician ties his hair back into the universal techies’ bun, and the younger crowd begins to seep in, library-chic beautiful girls leading a fleet of indie boys who’ve already fallen in love, and it’s not yet 12pm.

It’s a glorious day too, and the music begins in earnest when Silence at Sea’s delicate folk-pop is enhanced by the visual treat of a man in a giant cat suit walking earnestly across the main locomotive shed stage with his acoustic guitar. It’s, fittingly, an Alice in Wonderland moment to begin with, but the rhythm the giant cat injects into his band is of more earthly beauty. Silence at Sea are where Talulah Gosh meets Rimbaud, a band of slow folk grace with the magic of Pop playing at its lips. Accordion floats over the sweetest melodica melodies, and the lyrical bent reaches its height when singer Laura sings the beautiful line “the greatest thing that the singer sings is that love lost lingers between her fingers”. I’ve seen the band before, and always at this point, hairs stand on end and blood fills the head like a balloon… It’s quintessential, beautiful Pop moments that Silence at Sea excel in. The opening lines of ‘DeadCowboyTown’, “young lovers like gun runners”, which for me captures a Jean-Luc Godard / Bonnie and Clyde-esque romanticism; the typewriter rhythms of ‘Typewriter Song’; the radio-waves that run alongside Laura’s plaintive vocals at her not-quite rhyming cue of “my signal in the noise / you told me / I had a choice”; and the canned laughter that pops up alongside the slapstick ‘Banjo Song’ lyric “did she have nice teeth? / did she have nice eyes? / ‘cause I bet she’s ugly and I hope she dies”. Silence at Sea are a band to treasure. It’s the intelligence of the poet and the writer preserved in pure Pop wonder, and it makes the heart miss beats.

Silence at Sea were such a show-stopping thing so early on at the festival that it’s a little hard to look ahead at where to go next. The sun is now baking outside, so, after a short deliberation, it’s a walk around; a browse through the retro sweets included at the hot dog stall (top marks for the pure-sugar Alphabet sweets that make my sunhat rise a foot over my head and hover there for five minutes); a first ale of the day at the stationary rail carriage bar that sits nearby (there’s a marvellous choice of beers that will revolve as the weekend goes on); and then to the outdoor stage, where a country-inflected noise hovers like nectar.

Slow Down Tallahassee here are a sultry Southern dream in the sun, fronted by two immaculately pouting ladies, one with guitar, the other with keyboards, their lipstick running in a straight line through them and on through the Derbyshire countryside, and even if it's just too hot to lie here and listen with maximum attention, the surface noise that emanates from Tallahassee is enough to suggest there's more to be found beneath the beatific sun-drenched caresses of now.

Tallahassee end and the technicians take over music for a while, harshly treating us to Jack Johnston before we get up like escaping convicts doing the death-run from Alcatraz, hot-footing it back over into the locomotive shed where the shelter and shade soothe sore heads and ears for a while. Then Shrag take to the stage looking like indie heroes wired to the stars, and the peace is over for now… This is not a fleeting, general impression of Shrag either, as they sound like this as well - indie heroes wired to stars - a pulsing, cut-glass cool sound shimmering from them and reverberating around the shed to a backdrop of drooling and erections from the indie faithful. Shrag really are a stylish and good-looking band, and tracks like ‘Pregnancy Scene’, an ode to not becoming part of it, are glamorous and just irresistible.

Outside, the Butterley station sprawls in the sun like a hazy dream, a Thomas the Tank Engine cartoon in real time, but a recommendation to see the “Belle and Sebastian with balls” sees us scurrying through it and over to the site’s prized stage for the first time (via the first stop at a red light I’ve ever experienced at a music festival…the gates come across at the crossing for a train to come past, delaying us somewhat). The railwaymens’ church is a stunning little thing, shining a pristine dark purple in the sun, enhancing the psychedelic dream tenfold, and The Just Joans, playing inside, are indeed something like “Belle and Sebastian with balls”, their ginger female singer singing with balls aplenty, belting out fulsome, wistful, dreamy and witty lines and asides between her male co-singer’s comical outsider-dreamer verses. It’s an absolute treat, and the crowd in the church are hooked on their every lyrical and musical ebb. At times The Just Joans are like a 60s girl group (with boys) busking on the streets of Glasgow, cute, sharp as tacks, and musically fantastic. Beautiful songs and evocative lines just keep coming (“Dolly Mixture home-made T-shirt / Woody Allen six-disk box-set / Marks and Spencers V-neck jumper / Any chance I can get your number?”…”NHS prescription glasses / Glasgow art school evening classes / Murakami first edition / Any chance we could do some kissing?” from ‘Hey Boy, You’re Oh So Sensitive’ being particular favourites), and ‘Walk Home On Your Own’, the track that they end with after winning our hearts, is a million indie crushes, daydreams, and heartbreaks squeezed into the sweetest of Pop songs. The Just Joans are perfect.

There’s no let up in the weather, we’re having spurts of super-hotness amidst the general sun, and it’s is so warm it’s burnt a techie’s bald patch. It hasn’t stopped him from ploughing on with his techie’s disco though, and it isn’t pretty. But if the sun goes down momentarily in our hearts to the unexpected sounds of Jack Black’s shagging song, it comes back out again as Red Pony Clock treat us to a set of skewed summer bliss. There’s a tinge of The Beach Boys to Red Pony Clock, hints of New Orleans jazz too (brilliantly), and as their songs roll out with more and more festivity, the big truck they’re playing atop that comprises the outside stage begins to resemble a Mexican beach hut. Red Pony Clock really are a jazz-pop dream in the sun, encapsulating all the magic and festivity of two fantastic genres, and it’ll take the clap of thunder from a techie’s arse that is ‘Highway to Hell’ to wake us from our happy reverie.

We escape the imminent techies’ disco for the railwaymens’ church again, to be met by the most terrible of surprises… Darren Hayman, undisputed king of indiepop and Indietracks (it’s been long agreed), is on now, and he should be on in an hour’s time… It’s a bit of a dilemma to say the least. Strains of ‘Caravan Song’ float out from the holy church, but holy fuck, it dawns on us, there’s not much chance of us getting in there, it’s packed out… We wait though, with the patience of Aurobindo disciples, and eventually get our reward, a side door opening like a miracle to let us into the pew to see the second half of the set. Hayman’s dog sleeps fast behind him on stage, and the wait to get in is more than worth it. Hayman as always brims with romantic lyrical magic, and he treats us effortlessly to songs old and new that hang our hearts from chandeliers,  ‘Painting and Kissing’ with its rolling guitar crescendo and quintessentially lustful Hayman poetry, has the whole place euphorically dancing, as does classic Hefner ballad ‘Good Fruit, and it’s agreed that God, no doubt, would hang a “genius at work” sign on his own door, were he not out buying Coldplay records in Ripley Sainsbury.   

After the revelation of Hayman, it’s back out to the outside stage for The Kabeedies, who look a little like they’re about to sound when they walk onto stage, a feisty concoction of all the sharp indie hooks in the book. Lead Kabeedie Katie has a feline quality about her, and her boyfriends are sharp as tacks. Then it kicks off, and we drool in the fashion of Darren Hayman’s dog. Katie’s Kabeedies stage-manner reminds me a little of Life Without Buildings’ Sue Tompkins, it’s like she’s plugged in electronically to the band’s sound, and honestly, these Kabeedies tracks are so stylish, compelling and intelligent that they’ll drive you crazy, whirling indie nuggets that set us alight. Guitar lines fly in a dual assault from left and right stage, Katie sings and dances with a brilliant absorption, and as the band depart I half expect to see burn marks left where they’ve been standing. 

A short while after The Wedding Present slay a huge crowd in the locomotive shed, and some people have their own genuine religious experiences there, we can tell by the euphoria etched on many faces on the way out, but for us today has belonged to Hayman, The Kabeedies, Red Pony Clock, The Just Joans, Shrag and Silence at Sea. It’s not a bad count at all of brilliant Pop experiences for one day at a music festival, and Indietracks has begun with a bang.

Indietracks ’08, Day 2

Day two of Indietracks begins again with the chirping of crickets, the cooing of woodpigeons and the pecking of ickle woodypeckers, and, in the name of anti-twee, I’m tempted for a moment to pick one off with a pea-shooter. But The Just Joans are camping next to us and have been treating us to live music since six in the morning, so I think I’ll take some anger out on them, but when I go across with my baseball bat, they’re so nice that I end up buying a CD for ｣3. I give up. It’s the magic of Indietracks.

Late last night here at the campsite we were treated to an exclusive Jimmy (Bobby McGee’s) gig, which is always something, and songs like ‘Love Song for Kylie’, ‘A Dog at All Things’ (five dogs go walking in the Welsh hills, four meet ghastly fates and only one comes home) and ’69 Ways to Make My Girlfriend Cum’, replete with cunnilingus solo, happily float about our heads and make the walk up the country road to Indietracks site that much more amusing.

My friend almost ran over Darren Hayman and his dog on this stretch of road on Friday night. They jumped into some bushes just in time, and this occupies conversation too. The friend in question is already banned from Indietracks this year (or his band are anyway, after a voting scandal), and it’s fair to say that Kafka couldn’t have wrote the script better if any lasting damage was done to the king and his beast…

At the end of the country road, the Butterley station is just coming to life, and the first band on at the locomotive shed, The Colliding Lemons, are a morning delight for sure. There’s something charming about the Lemon’s lead singer beyond her sultry looks (she’s a sight for sore eyes at this early hour, a lithe, brunette stunner in a pink dress), and also something charming about their music, which is a sweetly quaint ‘80s indie confection. We stand here absent-mindedly picking off Alphabets for a bit, and while we secretly long for the kick that’s going to make us fall in love, when we come round, half an hour seems to have drifted by like nothing. A touch of corrosiveness here, a chip on the shoulder there, and an Indelicates record or two in the pocket, and next year The Lemons could be capturing hearts.

The outdoor stage basks again in glorious sun, The Foster Kids are on next, and beyond their lead-guitarist’s maniacal self-put-downs, they have a touch of glamour and otherness that captures the imagination. The Foster Kids’ female vocalist has a touch of noir about her, a touch of the femme fatale, a bit like a less-wasted, indie Amy Winehouse if you like, and her voice is really something; relaxed, laconic, and natural over lyrics that are sometimes a bit awkward, a bit verbose. At their best though The Foster Kids evoke a kind of indiepop Black Box Recorder, and that, of course, is some fantastic thing.

The dreaded techies’ disco follows this for twenty minutes as we conjure up various ways to stop them in their tracks, the nastiest suggestion being to send someone atop their techie booth to hang down and slit their throats one by one, or snip their pony-tails off one by one and pin them to the Indietracks llama, but Scott suggests we get a fleet of Bob Backlunds to get each one in a cross faced chicken wing until they submit, and we agree with that one the most. It’d be the entertainment equivalent of two Darren Hayman gigs.

Kate Goes provide relief from these bitter thoughts back at the locomotive shed, dressed as jungle animals (take your pick of pandas or… orthodox bears), and having a harder edge than the last time I saw them in Cardiff. The Kate Goes twee-ometer is relatively low today, there are no cartoon characters on Kate’s shirt that speak instead of her between songs for instance, as there were in Cardiff, and the band are so much better for it. Kate’s Kimya Dawson-esque wordsmithery combines with avant garde-ish melodies to make our heads spin in summer madness, and it’s a grandly surreal thing.

We’re armed with balloons with anti-techie slogans on as we head back towards the techies’ disco on the outside stage, thinking “so much for twee”, but The Smittons are a happy distraction to our intentions, spreading a whole lot of informed indiepop happiness and magic. It all starts with a scuba-diving twirl from the giant, baritone-voiced keyboardist at their helm, then the melodies come in stunning summery rays. The Smittons are an all-action band that play their starry indiepop with bundles of emotion and affection, and a dollop of outsider poetry, and by the end of their whirlwind set we’re all part of the same brilliant adrenalin rush.

There’s been a mix up in times after a delay to the start of today’s affairs on the outside stage, but a hot tip takes us next into the acoustic tent by the outside stage, where Little My throw a party gig that shimmers with smiles and melodies. Kazoos, melodicas and handclaps go off with easy festivity, the dual vocals of lead singer Nicola and Silence at Sea’s Laura play about the top of it in crazily sweet harmony, while Silence at Sea’s Gareth (sans cat suit) injects a now-trademark brilliant spurt of rhythm guitar to propel it beyond the merely twee. There’s a satisfying compositional edge (if you’re sad, like me), that makes Little My the fascination they are, and they send us back out into the sun with a further skip in the step.

It’s a short walk to the outside stage, and the crowd here buzzes in anticipation for Dave Tattersall’s Wave Pictures. Even Darren Hayman’s dog is here, waiting with the patience and curiosity of Krishnamurti. Then it starts, and The Wave Pictures take us to painterly indie moons. Tattersall’s lyrics are brilliantly evocative and satisfyingly literary, and his guitar playing is something else, starry, emotional and wonderful. There’s hints of Jonathan Richman, hints of Darren Hayman and Hefner of course, hints of Ritchie Valens’ rock’n’roll, and huge, huge Pictures’ anthems ‘I Love You Like a Madman’, ‘Kiss Me’ and ‘Leave the Scene Behind’ leave us pumped with poetry and shimmering, shimmering music. It’s robust, subtle, sensitive and brilliant all at once, and we even get Hayman joining in joyously on rhythm guitar at the end.

The techies are back on the scene, they’re showing good stamina at the outdoor stage, but this could be fun… The look on one of their faces as The Deirdres walk onstage with an ironing board is one to behold, and the next half hour is split between here and Esiotrot in the railwaymens’ church. The Deirdres are the smiliest band on the planet, and I don’t even want to kill them, playing songs with a sheer DiY Pop mischief and ingenuity you just have to love. A big hometown crowd has gathered for them, and a real party atmosphere prevails, while at the church Esiotrot play a set of shambling poetic indie brilliance reminiscent of Hefner with a horn section.

A train is leaving the Indietracks station for the final time this year, and we still haven’t been on one to see what it’s like, there’s just been too much going on on-site to commit to leaving for an hour, and you know what it’s like, if we get on one we’d just be pulling off as someone good starts playing a secret gig on the platform. Outside the railwaymens’ church a Scottish man in Uncle Jesse from The Dukes of Hazzard’s dungarees prowls the grass area with glitter in his beard, and it can only mean one thing, it’s soon to be time for The Bobby McGee’s… Seats are taken inside the church, we draw a plaited samurai-bearded head on a balloon and set it free, and then it all goes off.

Jimmy McGee has changed quickly into an immaculate, elaborate, shiny joker’s outfit, El his immaculate accomplice in quaint ‘60s jumble sale chic, and they play off each other like a barbed romantic dream. The church is full to the brim, and the McGee’s are on top form. The Bobby McGee’s draw on the most tender tensions of the best love story you’ve ever seen in songs that shut you in and lock the doors, blinding banjo, ukulele, sax and bass nuggets that ooze indie romance, archly contrasted by the torrents of crowd abuse and mock-bravado that make up the Jimmy persona. ‘Albert Camus/Audrey Tattou’, with its references to outsider love and French cinema, is just beautiful and immense, ‘Bambi Eyes’ outlandishly lyrical and affectionate. Jimmy pours cold water over a lovely solo song by El by announcing “fag break over” immediately after it ends, and they go at each other in ‘Morrisey Says to Tori’ (with its joint refrain of “kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself NOW!”), with disturbing lustre. It’s religious experience number two, or sacrilegious experience number one, of the weekend in the railwaymens’ church, and we again agree, God would hang a “genius at work” sign here once more, if he wasn’t stroking his beard over at the techies’ disco.

A triumphant Jimmy and El are down at the front for Ballboy half an hour later at the outdoor stage, giving it some frenzied dancing as Darren Hayman, his dog, the techies and everyone else at Indietracks looks on. And Ballboy are on cutting form, their huge songs pulsing away with rhythmic wonder as singer Gordon McIntyre weaves his terrific narratives. The sound itself is poetry in motion, especially the way the keyboard rises so beautifully in all of the fissures, and the whole meaty combination is essence of indie heroism that makes the hairs stand on end.   

Los Campesinos! round off the festival live music at the locomotive shed with a set that catches fire with swirling anthems ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ and ‘Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks’, singer Gareth getting himself in a needless bit of bother about Darren Hayman’s melodica quip yesterday (Hayman mischievously rocked the boat by pointing out that melodicas have become quite popular lately), and then we all begin to shuffle off in various directions. For us, a ‘60s disco back at the acoustic tent is a perfect way to end it all, before an Ivor Cutler disco with a fleet of prostitutes back at the tent. For others, the Moogie Wonderland disco in the indiepop shed awaits. In a short while, Butterley station will cast its indie visitors back out into the wilderness for another year. And I swear, on leaving, I hear Oswald, the talking engine, whistling the chorus from ‘Talulah Gosh’…

© 2008 Neil Jones

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