ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES WEEKEND ONE

Friday May 12th > MUDHONEY DAY

Only half an hour in Camber and I’m already dancing in the dark to the sweetly refined rock n’ roll of Holly Golightly and her band. As her voice - mixing subtlety and guts like all the best female vocalists – rides over the sounds of vintage hollow-body guitars, Charlie Watts drumming and ‘House of the Rising Sun’ organ, Holly takes us straight to the smoky dancefloor of London’s hippest back street nightclub circa 1964. Tough, vicious, tender, swoonsome, swinging, timeless and deadly serious - why am I not already intimately familiar with this lady’s recorded works?

It’s been over 20 years since Australia’s The Scientists took the first few notes of the riff to ‘Have Love Will Travel’, moved them up the neck a few frets, hit the Big Muff and recorded the classic ‘We Had Love’, sparking dark imaginings in the minds of frustrated suburban punks the world over, the future members of Mudhoney foremost amongst them. There’s been much strychnine under the bridge since then for all concerned, and whilst the reformed Scientists may no longer look like they’re about to stab you for cigarette money outside a goth club, their trademark sound remains gloriously intact. Expanding the remit of feral punk rock to take in the slow-building menace of Suicide and distorted weight of Blue Cheer, theirs is still a unique take on swaggering, sunglasses-after-dark violence. Kim Salmon remains an electrifying front-man in the Alan Vega / Iggy mould, and Tony Thewlis’ wrecked lead guitar still defines the spirit of the swamp, whilst drummer Leanne Cowie beats out her tribal death rhythms whilst looking for all world like Sadako out of Ring.

To leave a set by such a fine band halfway through is a shame, but needs must when Comets on Fire are setting up downstairs. As a long-time listener, first-time caller to this definitive modern psyche band, I probably don’t have much to add to the reports of past veterans of their live shows, but suffice so say, believe the hype; Comets are as sweet a blast as I could possibly have hoped for. Even more so than on record, the group’s tight-rope walk between acid-punk chaos and majestic rock order is truly hair-raising. For all their feedback, space echo, free jazz aspirations and wanton pedal abuse, even the hoariest rock classicists would be forced to admit the Comets chemistry is shit hot; bass n’ drums thud, pound and cascade just like they should, fusing into a heavy, lysergic groove over which the guitarists set the sky alight. Although they’re still present and correct, Noel Harmonson’s echoplex/FX wormholes are less prominent than on record, lessening the band’s tendency to dissolve into a single overwhelming chaos onslaught and allowing the players’ individual contributions to shine through. It’s immediately evident that Ethan Miller is the all-out feeling-over-technique blaster, alternating frantic chord thrash with flailing bouts of sweaty, Aylerised, angel-carving skree, whilst Ben Chasny.. well.. I don’t need to tell fans of Six Organs what an unspeakable dude Chasny is when it comes to formulating fluid, melodic guitar joy, and he funnels it all into the Comets assault, leaping around the stage like a star-crossed teenager, circling Miller’s bull-in-a-china-shop central presence with sweet, unashamed “check THIS one out!” licks of a noble vintage. And whilst the psychedelic guitar geek part of my being frolics through meadows of Arcadian fuzz-toned slendour, let us also not forget that Comets have some serious Big Fucking Songs to fall back on too, not least the Floydian organ crescendos of “Pussyfoot the Duke” or the dive-bombing drama of “Whisky River”, both provoking much wooping and fist-pounding here tonight. A band so good I could have dreamed them into being, I ideally wanna see Comets on Fire play way louder and longer than a festival slot will allow, but still, one of the highlights of the weekend.

Comets on Fire

The Flesheaters are an aging LA punk super-group of sorts, featuring John Doe and DJ Bonebroke of X on bass and marimba respectively and other personnel drawn – so I’m informed – from the likes of Los Lobos and The Blasters. Together they favour a sax-driven brand of lounge-punk which isn’t bad by any means – at a push comparisons might be made to The Saints or Morphine – but it’s also easy to see why these guys have never really considered it worth giving up the day job for, and it lacks the certain something needed to keep this tired boy on his feet.

And so, Mudhoney. Despite an applaudable creative resurgence and widening of horizons over recent years, Mudhoney is still Mudhoney and, to an ATP crowd raised on the memories of grunge and it’s aftermath, there’s something of a triumph-through-familiarity vibe to be felt as the band plough through a no bullshit ‘hits-and-new-material’ set-list like the festival veterans they are. It’s astonishing to realise that I actually know all the words to every song they play tonight, and it’s great to relive the simple joys of awkwardly shaking on the spot, head-banging and hopping around to them after a few beers whilst silently shouting the choruses. I guess in all honesty the band are probably pretty sloppy, getting by on their good-times garage energy, but then, they’re Mudhoney – they’ve always been like that! So they idly toss off classics like “You Got it” and the inevitable “Touch Me I’m Sick” in record time before throwing a bit more force behind recent career highlights like “Hard On for War” and “Sonic Infusion”. Then they grin, crack some jokes, down some beers, thank the other bands, thank the organisers, thank the punters, grin some more and shuffle off for scarcely 30 seconds before coming back to send the mosh-pit to another other level of sweaty heaven with a blazing encore of “In n’ Out of Grace” and – yeah! – “Hate the Police”. It’s fuckin’ A alright. You know, for some reason it occurs to me at this moment that Mudhoney really ought to be Australian – and, in rock n’ roll terms at least, you’d better believe that’s a compliment.