Sunday
Sunday morning finds me surprisingly spry after a relatively good night’s sleep. The children’s parade starts at twelve and there is free tea and cake in the playgroup tent (thank you, Southwold’s local church group) and everything is good with the world. It always seems a shame that by the time everyone really gets into the festival spirit, it ends, but the small mercy is that by now everyone is in the zone. Even the parents – the littluns have been there since day one.
The parade is a chaotic triumph of noise, colour and abandoned inhibitions – the epitome of the festival ethos but in microcosm. Isaac waves a flag over my head without trying to put it in my eye too much and we shout with abandon. Great fun, but before chaos descends into anarchy (huge amount of people trying to get into the Children’s Area) we hightail it to the main arena for Fields.
Good thing we did rush because their set is remarkably short – three songs only, including the well-known one( ‘If You Fail We All Fail’). They don’t seem to care and are in good spirits, laughing amongst themselves and cocking up the songs. Eventually, they cull the backline and carry on. “This is what happens when you do your rehearsal live,” chuckles Nick Peill. Still, if they can pull it together, the album should be a blinder, and if they keep this chirpy, going to see them will be a wheeze, regardless of set length.
The Twilight Sad are a bit of a surprise, not because of their sound but their location. Their dark, melancholic sleet of noise is usually the stuff of small dark spaces, but here they are in the sunshine on the main stage. Singer James Graham is blinking in the light, more surprised than me. Any kind of stage fright dissipates immediately as they launch into a barrage of guitar shrapnel and James… can be heard for once. There are wobbles and the sound sways with the wind a bit, but songs like ‘And She Would Darken The Memory’ are as punchy and intimate as if they were being played in a tiny club. With luck, on their next tour the club’s won’t be so tiny.
Though I have been let down by These New Puritans in the past, I am willing to give them another go, being in a magnanimous mood. As it happens, they are… okay. Bass, keyboards and vocals, sounding like a modern day Duran Duran but with less catchy hits. A bit cursory and forgettable on a day like this, but not an unpleasant sound by any means.
Nada Surf bring about my first uncomfortable parent moment of the weekend. Mentioned in some circles with the same reverence as the Pixies, they sound more approachable, more polite – the kind of indie band you could take home to meet your parents. They jump around a bit, stroll around a bit more, sound a bit like Soul Asylum and get the audience to join in with the chorus of ‘Fuck It’. Yep, you guessed it, that is the chorus. Fortunately, no copying ensued and the Nada’s completed their Eels lite-ish set with cheerful aplomb whilst I breathed a sigh of relief.
“They call this math,” says my disgruntled muso friend, “all their stuff is thirds and fourths – and that’s a pentatonic scale.” He pauses for a moment. “Their drummer’s not bad at all though.” Regardless of whether they are ‘true math’ or not, the mob has spoken and foals are l’arome du moins. They’re young, bouncy, their guitars go ‘pink-ticky-tink-tink-tinky tink’ and the crowd go wild for it. ‘Cassius’ comes out fighting and despite the hyperbole they put on a good show. Just don’t mention Battles: I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.
I miss the Breeders, so unfortunately I can’t tell you how good/disappointing they are, but when ‘Cannonball’ comes rolling over the hills, I am 21 again – ah, memories! Taking full advantage of this feeling of nostalgia, I return to the fray to see another bunch of men growing old disgracefully, Grinderman. From the off, I take back any misgivings I had about them. Nick Cave, Warren Ellis and Martyn Casey look like three preachers gone terribly bad – flared suits, shirts open to navel, long unkempt hair and beards (apart from Martyn) – and ‘Depth Charge Ethel’ is like a sexed up sermon, preached from a pulpit of electric guitars and keyboards. Cave is in his element throughout, flirting with the crowd, regardless of sex – ‘it’s so difficult to tell these days,’ he drawls laconically – and songs fire out with 70’s Stooges force on their destiny to become classics (‘Get It On’ and ‘No Pussy Blues’ are already there), but it is the hulking presence of Ellis that is so damn compelling. Looking like he could kill any moment, he wields maracas like maces, handles a guitar like it had sharp edges – hell, he even makes a keyboard look dangerous with that glare. I am oblivious to the rain, sharing a blanket with three other new found fans and by the time they hit the climax of ‘No Pussy Blues,’ I too am howling like a wolf on heat. The kind of band that makes you want to drop to your knees and thank god you’re a man. Or a woman.
Interpol – After seeing them at Leeds last year, I am not sure they can pull off a headline, but when Paul Banks is backlit by sombre digital oil wheels looking like the bastard son of Frank Sinatra, I am ready to concede. When ‘Pioneer To The Falls’ rolls out, I crumble. Tonight is a reaffirmation of their last album, ‘Our Love To Admire,’ but it is done with such restrained emotion and charisma that you cannot hepl but be impressed. ‘Mammoth’ is… mammoth, ‘No I In Threesome’ is desperate and even lyrical clunker ‘Heimlich Maneuver’ has some grace. But it is ‘The Lighthouse’ that steals the show for me, the sound of mist and shapes emerging and fading, a melancholy seascape, fitting for a setting so close to the sea.
We round off the evening in the cider tent, listening to one of my sister’s friend’s do an improptu DJ set. It’s been a good festival, close to being a Glastonbury beater if it keeps its size down and expands the comedy tent. I will be back and, who knows, next time I might venture to some of the other stages…
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