ALL TOMORROWS PARTIES, SATURDAY;

Another bracing start to the day is in order when we wander down to the pub to catch an impromptu set by the cumbersomely named Youth Movie Soundtrack Strategies. And hot damn, they’re not bad. Definitely one of the better up-and-coming British rock bands I’ve seen recently. A tendency toward somewhat lumpen vocals and irritating sub-Godspeed earnestness hampers them slightly, but such deficiencies are more than compensated for by some seriously choppy math-rockin’ action, tight-as-fuck dynamics and, best of all, loads of that irresistible ‘crashing airliner’ screechy guitar noise we all know and love. Well done chaps – you officially rock.

Buck 65 seems to have gotten a lot more serious since the last time I caught him on stage. No long, rambling stories about going to the dentist or incessant shouts of “SON OF A WHORE!” this time around, I’m sad to report. His trademark hobo-noir hip hop seems a lot darker and more introspective these days – less of the De La Soul humping Tom Waits parodies, more of the dense personal poetics and earnest outlaw romanticism. This is far from a bad thing though – he’s still as honest and captivating a performer as you’ll ever see, in great voice with great moves and a head full of dazzling, off-beat, evocative rhyming that stands alongside indie-hop’s finest. The chugging rock band backing tracks he seems to go in for these days don’t really do it for me, but he’s a unique talent and wherever he feels like pointing his wagon towards is fine by me.

Olivia Tremor Control start half an hour late, following a perfectionist soundchecking session which the soundman will be reliving in his nightmares for years to come (“ok, trombone? … Clarinet? .. Singing Saw? .. Banjo? .. hello, hello? Who’s mic is that?”). But what an entrance! Emerging from a side door, they parade straight through the centre of the audience in marching band formation, led by a bearded dude playing a gigantic tuba (or is it a euphonium or something? Well the biggest fucking horn you’ve seen in your life anyways..). There’s an American guy standing in front of me who says he’s come to the festival purely to see this band. “I mean, I can’t go see the Beatles or Pink Floyd anymore, so these guys are the last truly great band..” he explains to a passing stranger. Pretty eyebrow raising comment for a cult neo-psychedelic group playing fourth on the bill at All Tomorrows Parties, but by the time their set hits the halfway point, I know exactly what he means. As the central focus of the Athens, Georgia ‘Elephant 6’ collective whose members produced some of my favourite weird records of the late ‘90s (as Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples in Stereo, Elf Power etc.), I knew I was gonna enjoy Olivia Tremor Control, but I had no inkling of the glorious sonic ambition to be found in their live incarnation. If the above mentioned groups are notable for pulling sky-scraping romantic dreams out of a lo-fi, trash-can aesthetic, then seeing OTC’s nine piece expanded band is like hitting the motherlode – the full-scale, stadium-conquering realisation of all of Elephant 6’s multi-faceted psychedelic whimsies. As the American dude hinted, this is overpowering, uncompromising, visionary rock glory. For the uninitiated, imagine what might have happened if Syd Barrett had stayed in charge of Pink Floyd as they went on to become mega-stars, and if he’d invited some of his brass band shredding hippy pals to join in along the way. Devotees of a very special kind of perfection, Olivia Tremor Control stand guard over the eternal moment where a mid-‘60s top 40 countdown dissembles itself forward into a big, formless acid-hazed stare into the holy sun, and backwards into a lost utopia where geometry-defying buildings rise and fall at will, and where the Paris surrealists made history by flying to the moon on a giant clockwork albatross, but where the gentle, wide-eyed guitar-strumming residents are still subject to the ache of melancholy and girl trouble that makes the pop world turn.

Due to some mysterious kind of time-lag effect, I find myself sufficiently recovered from all that to return to the upstairs hall in time to catch most of a set by John Foxx. Possessed of an extraordinary mug that makes him look like a calculating, silver-haired self-help guru, and a pedigree as a founding member of Ultravox, more than one item of gentle ridicule had previously passed my lips regarding Mr. Foxx. Shame on me as it turns out, because he’s a blast. Standing stone-faced and immovable behind his bank of synths, he plays, like, the most ludicrously obvious and brilliant Kraftwerk-worshipping electro-pop imaginable. Concepts of irony remain utterly alien to the mind of the fantastic Mr Foxx as he bangs out stupidly irresistible robot-dancing keyboard hooks and delivers seemingly endless songs about car crashes, plate-glass windows and faded European glamour in a formidable deadpan croon. And he has lasers too – oh yes. Taken somewhat by surprise, the increasingly large crowd act like the showroom dummies they are and get into the teutonic groove.

Now, PJ Harvey;
PJ Harvey plays three barre chords, shifts them slowly, and rocks like fucking Slayer. PJ Harvey’s voice hits almost physically, makes hairs on the back of your legs rise, confuses the blood in your veins as it shoots around knowing it should be going somewhere, but nobody’s told it exactly where. Regardless of what you make of her records, or the company she keeps, PJ Harvey is one of the best fucking performers on the planet – that’s just plain fact. This is, she says, the first unaccompanied solo show she’s done for 12 years. Thus, by my reckoning, this is the best PJ Harvey show for 12 years. No disrespect to her band, but 4 Track Demos is my favourite PJ album, and this is the way I like her music best – totally wild-eyed and raw, just the voice, the heavy, no-bullshit guitar riffing and an occasional stomp on the distortion pedal. Electrifying like ten rides on a rollercoaster. Music this primal doesn’t need a band backing it up any more than Robert Johnson did. Finishing with a rendition of ‘Rid of Me’ that nearly makes my innards melt, what seems like a full ten minutes of applause passes before she reluctantly graces us with a single song encore. So fuck the Mercury Music Prize and fuck Jools Holland - I hope none of us are taking Polly for granted these days, cos if she goes we’re sure as hell gonna miss her.

By Sunday morning the consensus seems to be that Suicide’s headlining set was – to paraphrase one sign spotted at the al-fresco indie record market – “a load of disappointing nonsense”. Well, fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke, I thought Suicide were great. Now you’ll have to bear with me here, but let’s look at it this way – everybody knows the legend of Suicide back in the ‘70s – their total originality, almost anti-musical primitivism, their declaration of open war against hostile audiences precipitating riots, beating and nationwide revulsion, their refusal to take shit from anybody, their existence as an uncompromising ‘fuck you’ to everything rock music stood for at that point in time. As I say, all this is legend. So I ask you, what are these increasingly gnarly looking middle-aged iconoclasts supposed to do when finally confronted with a huge, adoring crowd yelling song requests rather than abuse, and waiting to be hit by the magic of this now rehabilitated ‘classic’ and ‘influential’ band? Are they gonna kick through precise versions of their songs, growl at us through a haze of alienated urban cool and soak up the applause? Are they fuck! What they’re gonna do instead is stay true to their original mission statement the best they can by slouching on and off stage, muttering incoherently (Alan Vega) or shamefully goofing around, grinning like idiots and pulling off ludicrous disco moves when convention dictates they should be playing music (Martin Rev – he’s so funny). And thus Suicide, clad in exactly the same retro-street gang outfits sported on the back cover of their ’77 debut album, once again succeed in pissing off anyone and everyone. They half-heartedly toss off their classic ‘Ghost Rider’ with slurred, half-remembered lyrics and cheesy disco beats, and dare us to object. The best moment comes though when they decide to close their set with ‘Frankie Teardrop’. You know how it goes – that crushing ‘da-dur-dur, da-dur-dur’ rhythm grinds into action, Alan steps up the mic and delivers his first few “Frankie, Frankie”s. Then Martin, looking bored, hits a switch and turns the whole thing into some kind of ridiculous up-beat Casio bossa-nova! Alan looks completely bemused; “Well… slight change of plan.. looks like Frankie’s alive and well..”. Fantastic! They get Peaches on stage for the encore and have another bash at Frankie, the three of them chucking the one working mic to each other, gurning through the wrong lyrics in the wrong order to the wrong backing track, utterly defiling their own greatest musical moment and hilariously trying to out-do each other in clichéd punk posing. What a hoot! For kicking back against those who’d turn their early music into a sanctified, canonical cult-rock museum piece, Suicide should be saluted, even if it means destroying themselves in the process.

EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES II;

Back at the chalet, I swear I saw some stuff on Vincent Gallo TV which will stay with me to my dying days. OK, I caught a hard-boiled indie exploitation movie called ‘Thief’ which was pretty cool, and that ‘60s motorbike racing documentary on Sunday morning was totally sweet, but did anyone else happen to catch ‘La Beste’ (The Beast) late on Saturday night? Oh. My. God. Let us never speak of it again.
To my great discomfort, I also caught a few minutes of the screening of Gallo’s ‘The Brown Bunny’, and can confirm that, yes, the whole thing seemed like a colossal bad joke, taking all the worst clichés of arty American indie movies to unwatchably egotistical extremes. If I’d made it, I’d probably break down in tears at film festivals too.