Waking The Ghosts

Neil Jones on blue psychedelic suits, Thomas Truax, Brakes, Fanfarlo and Idlewild at Oxfordshire's Truck

22nd and 23rd of September, 2007. Hill Farm, Steventon.

There are a lot of ebullient kids here this morning, waking me early in this big field in Oxfordshire with some outlandish shouting and speaking of the bands who are kind of cool to coin at the moment, but as Johnny Cash’s 'I Got Stripes' comes spinning out of my cheap I-Pod speaker, I decide to take it in good spirit.

I’ve read something really good about this festival, saying that it’s a fiercely individualistic event, and I’m here open to all of its delights like a curious kitten. Emerging from the tent, it’s a hello to the new person camping here and a hats-off to that steward over there and ah, is that the local vicar, helping lug a giant shop sign across the grass expanse? Now that’s what I call cool…

Walking through the arena at Saturday lunch time is a cheery experience, the local Rotary Club stall sitting here modestly selling soup, a little sweet stall over there presided over by parents and children with busy gusto, a small canvass caf・ offering tea, coffee and hot chocolate, and then the darker charms, a full-on outside bar and a mysterious cow shed looming on the horizon, just waiting to explode with sounds. But for the moment it’s the Trailer Park tent, and behold, Leo Lightning and the Dynamic Two, a kind of fashionista Half Man Half Biscuit.

Rakish suits and sensible hats prevail, and one song called 'Green Cross Code' leads the way in a humorous manner, Leo L singing wistfully of knocking down his girlfriend in his car before his band interject with the Formula One TV theme tune, the three chaps in the band whipping up a happy atmosphere for the healthy early afternoon crowd, before I sneak out to the early strains of Floyd’s 'The Wall' to explore pastures new.

It’s now up the field towards the Main Stage, which comprises of three trucks parked sideways to give a luxurious spaciousness, and what a band London’s The Cut Outs are, clad in uniform black and being danced to voraciously by a group of spiky-haired relics. I edge my way closer, weary of getting too embroiled in the dancing, but drawn in by a sound that has all the colours of the rainbow, and a bassist/co-vocalist who has the look of a million indie vixens all at once, sultry and sophisticated like Stories-era PJ Harvey, with a special way with her bass. This is downright punk only in appearance, and The Cut Outs suggest worlds way beyond the three-chord museum, raucous, shimmering and contrarily brilliant.

A cluster of three stages are closely grouped with the many stores at the central festival space, and there’s some magic stuff happening in The Lounge, which sits opposite the Trailer Park, the hardcore kids of Restlesslist evoking a little of The Slits in the way they incorporate reggae-type rhythms into a loose and propulsive sound. The people floating down from The Cut Outs at the Main Stage are promptly transported to an alternate haven of strangely shaped Pop collage, and somehow it all feels so right.

Restlesslist lean more towards post-rock and electronica than anything else, but their sound is quintessentially art-punk in its most noble sense, striving for creativity with a genuine compulsion and coming up with brilliant rhythmic amalgams. I’m disappointed I only catch the final tracks, but what I do hear is enough to send me away charged.

When Restlesslist grind to a halt, I’m lured back into the Trailer by a glimpse of the light blue psychedelic suit of the Jim Protector drummer. It’s a good thing too, because the rest of his band are pretty handy in sketching post-rock soundscapes that match his sartorial wit with an air of the melodically unhinged. I step further in to see what’s going on, and the Jim Protector singer/guitarist is leaping between his axe and keyboard like a man possessed, all the while etching hooks to wake the gods from slumber. The sound is whirling, propulsive, evocative, atmospheric and everything else you get from good post-rock, and the singer keeps building up more and more of a head of steam, finally striding the drumkit to etch out the final track in a certain frenzy, and leaping off at the end with a touch of rock clich・ that's more funny than pretentious. Jim Protector have emotion and sensuality running through their sounds like gold dust, and don’t need any kind of cool posturing to hold them upright,

The Main Stage is the next destination, and the sounds of Monkey Swallows the Universe drift out over the small gathering of people at the front with humble folk ingenuity and a shy kind of soul. Nat Johnson’s voice is really something, a wondrous mixture of Sophie Ellis Bextor (oh yes) and any number of pure-voiced country chanteuses, winding around the teeming pastoral orchestration of violin, keyboards, drums, mandolin and guitar with an easy shimmer, and suddenly, half way in, it all gets that little bit cooler and surreal. The drummer swaps his humble sticks for the subtle mechanics of the accordion, accounting for possibly the only case of this I’ve ever seen, Johnson dedicates a track about tragic lovers killed in a car crash to Ronnie Corbett (announcing that he’d met the same fate last night), and they play an exquisite version of Jonathan Richman’s ace 'Ice Cream Van', which is an absolutely perfect moment in the afternoon sun.

Monkey Swallows the Universe were humble, outlandish, charming and poignant in equal measures, and now it’s back off to the smaller tents and the shade for one of the bands I’d been particularly looking forward to. I’m admittedly relieved to see that sound problems have put a halt to proceedings at the Trailer Park tent for the moment, as I’m ten minutes late for Fanfarlo. It’s soon all fixed though, and the wildly evocative 'Fire Escape' floats out over us in beatific waves.

This is the second time this year I’ve seen the Sweden/London retinue, and as I stand there and the songs keep coming in shimmering grandeur, I recognise they’re a truly special band. 'We Live By The Lake' sounds like it’s been sent to capture my heart and lock it away for the next hundred years, ebbing and swaying with an unnamed sadness, and the general orchestration with Fanfarlo is something to behold. Violin riffs here, trumpet lines there, simmering keyboards floating over the top, and singer Simon’s aching and unique voice, it all combines to make a shimmering spectacle of Pop poignancy and pathos that leaves me feeling like jelly, and it’s with a fair awe that I stumble out again into the sun.

Having nearly missed Fanfarlo, I now recoil in horror at having done exactly that with Josh T. Pierson and Emma Pollock, ex of The Delgados, at the nearby Barn, and also Rachael Dadd, a young Bristol folk artist I wanted to see at The Market Stage, which is back across by the tent area, but a short break for a bowl of pasta (the healthy option) and a cider (for balance), restores a little worth, and it’s back to the Trailer Park for Blood Red Shoes.

I’ll always be suspicious of bands who introduce a song by saying “this is our new single”, but Blood Red Shoes are still so much better today than they were the last time I saw them at Cardiff’s Coal Exchange in an NME-sponsored charade. There’s no long and cocky song pre-ambles from the drummer/co-vocalist that had made me disinterested then, and the music prevails. The tent is full to bursting point, signature tune 'You Bring Me Down' is received with rapture, sounding barbed and fantastic, and the Shoes generally kick like a mule, bouncing out like-sounding three-minute nuggets one after another in ruthless, rhythmic abandon.

I roll out of the Trailer Park tent, shake off the remnants of adrenalin, and make my way down to the Main Stage, where Buck 65, the self-proclaimed squire of “Nowheresville” is steadily corrupting all of the values of modern hip hop, gregarious and funny. I only catch two tracks, one a promiscuous bit of work entitled 'I’m Gonna Do You', an amorous piece of comedy with an earthy chorus, and a final track called 'Spead ‘Em', which he dedicates to film noir (“I don’t know much about it, but hey”), and they’re more than enough to put him in my J Saul Kane box of modern hip hop wonders.

We wander away from Buck 65 in great spirits, and, after seeing them in Cardiff earlier in the year, I look forward to catching Foals once more up at the Trailer Park. The tent however is heaving in anticipation, even more so than with Blood Red Shoes, and with more people gathered outside and pushing to get in, it’s deemed a health hazard and the gig is re-scheduled for the larger Barn stage later on tonight.

I make our way out into the cooler evening air, and file back down to the Main Stage for Brakes, where I join a huge crowd about to be set alight. A guitar screeches, singer Eamon Hamilton screams something incomprehensible into his mic, and its off we go into the indie wild west. Brakes for me are the foremost raucous wonders of the modern Pop world, breaking down boundaries and defying rock convention with a sharpness that makes the hairs stand on end. Thirty second blasts of obtuse lyrical fury roar past at breakneck speed, more developed tracks pulsate with a finely-honed melodic fury and alternate Beach Boys like grace, and a cover of Jackson floats out into the night with such contrary profundity as to make me gasp for air. Brakes are just so right, today or on any day, as I’ve learnt, but today in particular, a beatific beast of the absolutely wildest melodic sentiments, blazing profound trails into the Oxfordshire night.

I haven’t checked the Market Stage out yet, so merely by way of cooling down after Brakes I head back through the cluster of stalls and past the trio of arenas, through the winding gravel path and out the other end, where I find The Epstein playing country with a pristine air, slide guitar drifting, guitars swaying, and the vocals like calls from pastoral ghosts, distant and profound. I don’t think I ever want to leave, but this is only a brief stop, and I’m soon drifting away back across the path to catch today’s unexpected headliners in the Barn.

The central hub of the festival is virtually empty for the first time, and I soon see where everyone has gone. A huge concrete expanse welcomes me as I file in through the Barn’s opening, and, ushered round a corner, I find the party – virtually the whole festival having gathered in anticipation of local darlings Foals.

Drums fly, a guitar line slowly loops in an elaborate rhythmic action, and we have a show on our hands… The Barn erupts like the cows will never see, and Foals go at it like demon cherubs, conjuring an indie-dance party of Dionysian proportions. 'Mathletics' erupts in concise, furious guitar licks and distant yhelps, spawning happy images of New Rave being cut to pieces and stuck back together in gleaming new shards, while signature tune 'Hummer' raises the temperature to boiling-point, its call and response coolness setting limbs aflame wherever you look. The hometown heroes have returned, their gift to Truck an opening night climax that burns, burns, burns till tomorrow’s an unrecognisable light.

Day 2 

Well last night was a blast, so, pulling Foals’ remaining upside-down riffs from my ears, I rise and look forward to the day ahead. The line-up is sprinkled with excitement big and small, Thomas Truax, The Schla La Las, Metrenomy, Idlewild, and a body-painting exhibition I’d like to catch, so long as it doesn’t clash with anything, so it’s on with the festival garb and away across the gravel path into the arena hub.

It’s a little colder today and The Lounge is a sea of animal-headed hats from a nearby hat stall as we watch The Pony Collaboration ploughing quaint and pastoral furrows. The Collaboration’s singer is a tall fellow, and has repeated trouble with the bar that crosses the stage at head height. Numerous times it clonks him when he least expects it, but still the set abounds with a relaxed kind of charm, TPC purveying an earnest, emotional and downplayed range of original and stunning folk.

Thomas Truax is next at the Market Stage, tuning up his notorious, self-made instrument the Hornicator, a large horn with inbuilt microphone, reverb and strings, and preparing his elaborate homemade drum machine, Sister Spinster, for action. It croaks into life at what I think is a vocal order, like a aurally-sensitive clock, and it’s off into Truax’s inside-out world of quirky lyricism and genius perception.

Truax is a brilliant performer, naturally ebullient, gregarious, and full of wonder at being able to stand before a couple of hundred people and do his thing. His gadgets are a joy to behold, products of a vivid creative imagination that help him etch a tremendously personal sound. He plays around with the Hornicator a bit, experimenting with the echo of his own voice in a comical manner, before picking up a guitar, unplugging it in the middle of a surreal acoustic number, and doing a tour of the immediate vicinity, walking through the crowd, out through the back of the tent, milling about outside a bit and walking around the back, appearing back on the stage to a huge cheer.

Then out comes a gadget called the Stringaling, a magical and flexible wind instrument from which something resembling a vacuum cleaner pipe falls. Truax plays about for a few minutes, releasing a string from the Stringaling and handing it to a member of the audience, before reeling it in and plucking it a little at various lengths, and then playing a couple of brilliantly humorous numbers called 'Inside the Internet' and 'Why Dogs Bark at the Moon'. For half an hour the people in the packed Market tent don’t stop smiling, and when Truax leaves us with another surreally poignant number, the cheers resound.

Time to sober up a little, and Chris T-T back at the Main Stage is the perfect proposition. A large fellow with a beard and guitar, he populates the stage with a relaxed air, and his acoustic songs are terrifically sharp and funny. He wistfully mourns the lack of decent modern protest songs with Billy Bragg putting down his guitar for the fishing rod, and apologises in advance for one track which “might go on a bit”, a ten minute number about a bear and a bee which is a humble delight. Chris T-T today also throws up the most un-rock’n’roll moment ever, when he throws sweets out into the audience only to have them blown back immediately in his direction by the wind. This comes after a ten-minute song about a hedgehog.

It’s a fascinating, funny and sometimes touching half hour, and now it’s back up to the Trailer Park to catch The Schla La Las, who had jumped out of the programme at me by dint of the line “they match the pop swagger of early Hedcoatees to the fuzzed-out surf sounds of the Girls From The Garage compilations”. Wow.

After ten minutes of hanging around at the Trailer though, I ask the soundman where they are, and apparently they’ve been moved, to where, and to what time he doesn’t know, so I wander out the door and spot them on the Main Stage, four polka-dot dressed ladies and one Manic Cough-shaped drummer hammering away.

The Schla La Las are five smarter than smart girls who’s stage banter is as fantastic and open as their songs, the bassist stage right telling us how she’d been dumped by text message the night before, so we’d better just dance to this song to cheer her up. The Schla La Las are led by country gal Piney Gir with a special sort of Pop-theatre shimmer, their tracks sultry cabaret bullets that explode like glittery atom bombs on the Oxfordshire countryside.

I’d seen a trio of kids in Rock of Travolta T-shirts earlier, and after The Schla La Las had ridden off into the afternoon, I notice the “Rock of T” slogan on the big placard outside The Barn, so trickle in to investigate, the male members of the band emerging soon after in the same black “Rock of T” shirts as the kids, looking pretty menacing, along with a girl in a similarly styled dress, who takes her place behind a cello.

The aural assault is profound, and the gentle cello adds subtle flavours to the ear-busting noise of the male trio. It’s the loudest thing I’ve heard since The Archie Bronson Outfit, and similarly stylish, but the highlight of it all is possibly seeing the aforementioned Rock of Travolta kids lingering at the back of the stage behind the band, taking account of every robust ebb. Expect some time in the future to encounter a sprightly troupe of Travolta fledglings, and make sure to cover your ears…

Twilight falls and the first act of the night are Disco Drive at the Trailer Park, three skinny indie kids playing high-pitched post-rock that veers a little too far towards new wave posturing for my liking, so lured out by number of fall-outs from the earlier Youth in Movement body-painting session who float past outside (reminding me that I‘ve missed it, damn it, it clashed with Truax) it’s off next door to The Lounge, where Leicestershire youngsters Kyte drip with the kind of ambition that’s just waiting to be turned into gold. Kyle’s kind of psychedelica ranges from the meandering to the sky-scraping and dramatic, and the higher it goes the better it gets, their singer’s voice becoming more pleading, plaintive and soulful as the set goes on, epic backing music edging him on in his lusty pursuit.

I roll out more than impressed to see that the charity arm of the festival is now in full flow, and as well as contributing to the fund that currently sees festival secretary Hamu currently up on the Main Stage having his copious hair and beard shaved off, no-one begrudges giving some spare change towards Truck’s own cause after the costs incurred by the last-minute cancellation of the original festival earlier in the summer.

The Electric Soft Parade play their well-mannered orchestral indie set as the hairdressing goes on on the Main Stage, and possibly the best line of the festival falls to their singer, who, in the between-song hush, asks the sound people for less beard trimmer in his monitor.

Dark has totally fallen and a huge crowd slowly gathers in anticipation of Main Stage headliners Idlewild. I’d become a little disinterested in the band after the most recent album (admittedly more due to an interview I’d seen with the band on its release date, in which one of the members made the faux pas of saying that Roddy Woomble had got the folk stuff “out of his system” with his solo album than anything actually on the LP), and I even make a mental note to shout “play some country” later on, as a kind of protest. Whatever, after a long, long wait, they come on to etch out 'No Emotion', and all is forgotten as they proceed to put on the best show of literate rock I’ve ever seen.

Woomble himself floats in and out of the limelight, relaxedly appearing centre stage for his vocal parts, and drifting back off to stage left as his band take over with the instrumental dynamics. Woomble’s voice is an underestimated thing, and his delivery of some of the best lyrics in modern rock is eloquent and passionate. The old songs are strewn between the newer stuff with laid-back ease, Roseability, with that brilliant call and response chorus, 'Actually it’s Darkness', 'Little Discourage' and 'Satan’s Polaroid', dripping with art-punk nous and twisting guitar soul, 'American English' and 'Love Steals Us From Loneliness', melodic, pastoral, and absolutely breathtaking, and 'Mistake Pageant', aching with a million blinding sentiments. The new songs even sound quite good, even if they don’t really match up on all levels, Ghost in the Arcade particularly evocative of the early spark.

I said recently that I’d be lucky to ever see a better headliner than Jens Lekman from this year’s End of the Road, but though it won’t make me too many cool new friends, Idlewild go a long way towards being it. They end with the beautifully elegiac Remote Part, and that blinding poem from Edwin Morgan, and it’s just perfect.

We turn away in a happy daze to embrace the rest of the night, which first takes in a great show with a nice sub-context at The Lounge, The Tamborines’ guitarist/vocalist Henrique and keyboardist Lulu Grave etching out a shimmering set of indie while the inebriated frontman from The Lea Shores bounds around the stage in a rock‘n’roll stupor, repeatedly proclaiming them the best band in the world and playing the tambourine like a brick, and then the closing ho-down up at the Market Stage, where Donny and the Champions of the World, all twelve of them, are in grand form, spinning country wonder deep into the night, and welcoming Saturday headliners, the legendary folk duo Garth and Maud, up for a final song that might just still be going on now.

It’s the end for me though, and the festival’s been fantastic. The colourful, the rugged, the humorous and the poetic, it’s all been here by the lorry-load, and here’s to next year going off without a hitch or a single thunderstorm.

© 2007 Neil Jones

© Miwsig