Indietracks 2010:
Sunday.

Somehow or other, it’s been killing me trying to finish the second half of this Indietracks review, but here it is – torn straight from the metaphorical typewriter, waved under the nose of the non-existent editor, and hitting the virtual presses, no second draft. Hey ho, let’s go…

Photo respectfully stolen from Underexposed.

Sunday I get up early (camping, y’know), and go to look for coffee.

I probably moaned about this to everyone I spoke to at the festival at some point, but get this: there is a specialist coffee stand/van at Indietracks. I know it is one, because it says “COFFEE HUT” or something in big letters on the front. Not to sound too ungrateful, but seeing as how they are apparently making a living selling coffee at outdoor events, I can’t help but offer them some advice. Specifically: d’you think it might be a good idea to open before midday? Who knows, maybe you could sell croissants and shit too? Go nuts guys - the whole ‘breakfast’ concept can make for a rewarding business model when upwards of a thousand people are waking up and wandering around in the middle of the countryside.

Resigned to not getting any proper coffee for a while, I retreat to the top right hand corner of the railway centre, where the door to ‘Johnson’s Buffet’ swings forbodingly. So utterly, wonderfully terrible, Johnson’s Buffet is like the culinary equivalent of a haunted house – a humbling reminder of what the denizens of this country used to do on a hungover Sunday morning, before uppity swines like me and Egon Ronay started going around demanding proper stuff to eat. I ask the teenage girl behind the till what the vegetarian breakfast consists of. She doesn’t know yet, but she’s prepared to cook it for me anyway. God bless her! The thrill of the unknown was worth every penny. While I’m there, a lady brings her mug of instant coffee back to the counter and asks if she can get another spoonful of nescafe in it. Spurred on by such bravery, I do the same. I wonder whether they encounter such insubordination on non-Indietracks weekends?

I’m probably sounding like a bit of an asshole in this post thus far. If I was reading this in the Guardian or wherever, I probably would have thrown it aside in disgust by now. Is it possible to write negative food reviews without sounding like a whining, pompous dick? Maybe Michael Winner’s not such a bad guy after all? (Clarification: no, I’ve checked, and actually I’m fairly certain he is a bad guy – the evidence re: everything he has ever done is pretty overwhelming.)

Well if you do think I’m being an asshole, things are going to get worse before they get better I’m afraid, but at least we’ll be getting all the bad vibes out of the way in one go. After killing time with a nice walk through the orderly forest (I listened to ‘Master of Reality’ and ‘Ramones Leave Home’ for grounding and decompression purposes) and helping out in the merch tent for a bit (I enjoyed it), ‘COFFEE HUT’ has finally emerged from it’s slumber, and I’m stuck deep in the queue when MJ Hibbett & The Validators open up proceedings on the outdoor stage.

Now certain things in the past have maybe forced me to turn a blind eye to how terrible this guy is. For one thing, a lot of people whose opinions I appreciate seem to derive a certain degree of enjoyment from his work. I remember seeing some fliers for one of his gigs years ago in Leicester library that I thought were very charming (each of them was *hand drawn* - not photocopied – with smiling stick people playing instruments etc). I once met the violin player from his band in a pub, and he seemed like a really lovely guy. In short, there is such a Teflon coating of modest, low key friendliness around this Hibbett character that writing bad things about him feels a bit like kicking a three-legged puppy. And no one would want to do a thing like that, right?

But y’know, maybe one day that three-legged puppy might end up with a plate in its head after an unfortunate traffic accident, and it might not be able to breath properly, and it might stagger about drooling and can’t control its bowels anymore. It might start randomly trying to bite people because it no longer knows what the hell is going on, and a time comes when someone has to stand up and say ENOUGH, and the poor beast must be taken to the vets and put to sleep.

So, MJ Hibbett. His constant stream of carefully pre-planned, morbidly unamusing self-deprecating banter; his sappy one joke strumalongs, whose façade of modesty fails to entirely disguise their genesis as smug, self-righteous diatribes; his painful attempts at observational humour, harnessed to standard issue blokey open mic night strummery, somewhat like the desiccated shell of Half Man Half Biscuit, entirely drained of all the wit and artistry and invention and anger that makes them worth listening to. He’s like a Johnson’s Buffet breakfast without the charm – cringeworthy English crap-ness writ large. In short, I wish he’d stop. Just stop, please - stop now and stop forever.

I hope he doesn’t google this up and read it, as I’m sure he’s a nice chap and I wouldn’t want to piss him off or upset him, but sometimes these things just need to be said. He can at least take comfort in the fact that an awful lot of people here seem to greatly appreciate what he does. And that’s fine. Me, I’ve got my coffee by this point, and I’m running, running, to hide in an alcove where the sound won’t leak in and plot with others who share my point of view. I believe burning him at the stake was suggested at one point, but was deemed out of keeping with the spirit of camaraderie upon which this festival is based.

And, fantasies of violent death aside, it is that spirit that I hope to return you to as I write about the rest of this fine day.

Boy, The Specific Heats are an amazing band! I was pretty blown away when I caught them on their visit to the UK last summer, and this time, if anything, I like them even better. They’ve survived a couple of line-up changes since then, and the presence Eric on bass rather undermines my previous assumption that Matt Patalano had deliberately built himself an ultimate rock n’ roll band of pretty ladies to help him bring his songs to the world, but that aside the new recruits fit in seamlessly. The whole deal is still essentially Matt’s baby after all, and he’s on exuberant form at Indietracks, leaping around like a kid at a birthday party, wringing lunatic stuntman solos from his groovy Ventures guitar. Keira Flynn-Carson still gives the impression of being the happiest drummer on the planet, and the band’s high spirits are pretty contagious as they rip through a good dozen of their more upbeat numbers without a bummer to be seen.

Frenziedly pulling influences from all over the shelf marked “the last 50 years of pop-infused rock n’ roll”, the ‘Heats combination of ‘60s pop-sike baroque, breathless Sloan/Weezer-style power-pop, surf-rock dynamics and good-natured Nuggets goofery is an exultant expression of high wire walking musical synthesis, and their new LP “Cursed!” is a veritable belter. And if “Baby I’m An Existentialist” ends up sounding almost exactly like “Down & Out” by Camper Van Beethoven, and “All I Want” is The Modern Lovers’ “Someone I Care About” rewritten via The Seeds’ “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine”… well how can this possibly be anything other than a good thing? Originality is overrated.

The term ‘psychedelic pop’ gets thrown around so often these days it’s almost become offputting, usually just boiling down to the work of bedroom bore with too much gear who once heard an Olivia Tremor Control record. As such, it’s fucking great to hear such a strong, funny, talented band stepping up to the plate and just plain OWNING that once noble descriptor. See ‘em, hear ‘em, however you’re able.

It’s fair to say I think that The Specific Heats go down a storm, attracting one of the most enthusiastic crowds of the festival, but sadly their Indietracks set seems not to have made it onto youtube, a predicament thankfully not shared by The Loves, whom the festival programme informs me I went to see play next, so I’ll give you two videos of them to make up for it.



Ah, The Loves. I thought they were a triumph. I mean, I always think they’re a triumph. A triumph of ease over effort, of the obvious over the abstract.

The Loves are the kind of band who’d probably hire a manager just because it seems like the kind of thing a rock n’ roll band should do, and then said manager would sit around and get drunk, because who needs a ‘manager’ in this day and age? There’s a kind of genius at work in everything they do, I think. An understanding of the way pop greatness walks hand in hand with absurdity; a finely developed sense of Fowleyan tongue in cheek egotism.

All Simon Love wants to do is play old fashioned bubblegum rock n’ roll, to assume the moves appropriate to a purveyor of such, to make people dance and laugh. It’s not a hard concept to grasp, but people seem to have such trouble with it. I just don’t get people sometimes.

I don’t know if half the people who are even IN The Loves these days really appreciate the idea. It’s… it’s playtime, y’know? It’s FUN. It’s big, dainty glam-rock chords, and easy singalongs, and songs that sound quite a lot like other people’s songs. It’s like The Gentrys, y’know, or The Archies, Venus & The Razorblades, The Pooh Sticks. Rock n’ roll as a really great cartoon – but don’t cartoons just make the underlying qualities of things brighter, more obvious?

And this time, The Loves take the stage to the theme from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’! Simon wears a top hat, theatrical cape, shades and a rather misguided moustache! They have go-go dancers who do specially rehearsed interpretive routines to selected songs! They throw footballs into (more like ‘at’) the crowd (“like a cut price Flaming Lips”)! They play a thundering great version of The Velvets’ “Guess I’m Falling In Love”, amongst other things! Original Loves singer Liz, latterly of The School, comes back for a one time only appearance! They even do this kinda bizarre concept album story-song that involves that Bobby McGee bloke dressed in a white robe playing Jesus, delivering in-jokey pre-scripted dialogue, and I’m not driven to immediately flee the area – that’s how much I like The Loves.



Turned around after they’d finished, ready to exchange some “boy, that was great” type bonhomie, and it looked like the whole festival had temporarily buggered off. I just don’t get people sometimes.

The next thing I remember is seeing The Bettys again, playing an impromptu (kinda) acoustic set in the merch tent – perfect recreations of their hits on just a couple of borrowed guitars and a tambourine, with the tightly packed crowd helping the sound travel further by joining in and clapping along where needed. As with so many moments this weekend, the whole scene is just a uniquely happy and affirmative happenstance, cementing the festival beyond doubt as a triumph of the good & right. And hey, looks like this one made it to Youtube…



Next it’s back outside to where a dedicated cadre of true believers gather before the still largely deserted main stage to bear witness to The Cannanes, over on a rare visit from Australia, quickening the pulse rate of those loyal few who hold the band’s scattered and commercially unheralded discography in such reverence you’d think they pressed their records onto solid gold (or so I’m assuming).

I’ll admit, my Cannanes knowledge is as sparse as the crowd watching them; I have a few tracks by them on comps, which are all excellent, but the main weight of my liking for them currently rests upon the fact that whenever my flatmate Pete is spinning something wondrous-sounding and unidentified in the living room and I ask “what’s this”, the answer is often The Cannanes.

And indeed, The Cannanes – comprised here solely of core members Annabel Bleach and Stephen O’ Neil – sound wondrous. Hard to put into words quite how and why, but their music is of a quite different order to most of the groups I enjoyed at Indietracks. These songs are sparser, rawer, more serious of intent, although never earnest or lacking wit. Just a strummy guitar, a clear, ballsy singing voice, and songs that hurt and fascinate and question and chuckle darkly, like some kinda Richard & Linda Thompson raised on The Velvets and Beat Happening.

Can’t think of much more I can say without wider reference to their discography, but this was a strong, sharp and affecting performance of some brilliant songs, and I’m very glad I saw it.

Some blokes from Sarandon joined them to bulk up the sound for the last few songs, but with no disrespect to those guys, I liked the songs they did as a duo better.



Inevitably, there were some good bands I managed to miss during the course of Sunday. I’m sad I didn’t get to see frat party garage funsters The Millipedes play what was apparently their last ever show (I’ve had a half-finished review of their big box o’ singles sitting on my desktop for months, sorry Trev), and that I failed to catch The Blanche Hudson Weekend (I saw them at a warm up gig earlier the same week though, thought they were excellent).

Other bands I ended up just kinda half-seeing. I was walking back to the campsite for a shower and a bite to eat when Standard Fare came on on the outdoor stage, but no matter, they were mixed so loud I could hear ‘em perfectly most of the way. I may have found myself unable thus far to really connect with their album (“it’s good, but it’s not the one”, as the guy used to say on ‘Catchphrase), but they’re an excellent band, no question, and sound completely in their element on a big festival stage.

My biggest misstep of the day though was missing The Pooh Sticks. How did I manage that? I mean, I love The Pooh Sticks. Their Swansea-based (non)existence, and their album ‘The Great White Wonder’, hold a definite place in my personal mythology. This was “their” first public appearance in, like, nearly twenty years or something. It’s not like I was doing anything, y’know, important while they were playing. I was hanging around in the train-bar, barely feet away from the stage, drinking beer. I was having a nice time, sure, but when I saw happy faces emerge from the hanger, bearing placards reading “E=MC5”, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. These things happen at festivals, I know, but… I’m sad it worked out this way.

Here’s what I missed;



I could weep.

When The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart close the festival, I’m standing at the top of the slope overlooking the main stage, surveying the scene, sharing some whisky with a couple of friends. Now The Pains aren’t, like, my favourite band in the world or anything, far from it, but it’s going to be difficult writing about how beautiful their set here was. When I got carried away writing about their album last year, vis a vis my last few paragraphs, this was EXACTLY the vision I was seeing in my head.

The sun has set, and the moon is rising. There’s some cloud in the sky, but it’s still a perfect, mild summer’s evening. The air is still over the miles of fields and fences and neatly cultivated clumps of forest that stretch in every direction. It’s the midlands, flat and wide, and empty, and in the middle of it, there’s bright white and blue light (exactly the colours I mentally associate with this band, weirdly enough), there’s a gigantic PA, and…. well it could be any number of bands playing to be honest, any number of variations of noisy rock n’ roll, but this time it’s The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, and that’s just fine. They’re happy to be here, and they’re discovering maybe for the first time, that their band is a flat-out perfect festival headlining act, and they're just fucking killing it, sending blissful, electrifying distortion echoing for miles across the empty English countryside. Not a corporate logo in sight, or a security guard, or any reason to need one – this whole edifice built on DIY culture, enthusiasm and mutual friendship. Opening song: ‘This Love Is Fucking Right’. Halfway through their set I’m almost crying. This is what it’s all about, surely? The reason why we all do this stuff that we do? Standing in the middle of nowhere, hearing that noise hit those empty spaces.

People down by the stage are dancing and hugging, and it’s the festival’s big finale, but me, I’m just dumbstruck.



That’s ya big kiss-off moment of course, but the night is far from over. Down at one of the marquees, Birmingham DJ Attagirl is playing the flat out perfect DJ set for myself and my assorted friends to bond over. Girl-centric cult ‘90s indie? Oh, go on then. There’s still probably someone somewhere waking up screaming at night, having witnessed my reactions to hearing “Nightlife” by Kenickie and “Kandy Pop” by Bis.

At some point after that, we have a running race. There is a great spirit of camaraderie on the last tractor-land-train thing back to the campsite, stragglers leaping onto the runningboard and being pulled on-board. It probably would have been easier to walk, but it’s a lot of fun. Back at camp, conceptually unsavoury London night Crimes Against Pop is holding sway at the disco, so we hang out outside instead, banging steel picnic tables, making our own songs.

For me, the real end of the festival comes sometime between 3 and 4am, when The Sock Puppets and their retinue play a ‘secret gig’ in the tent of a guy with an acoustic guitar who invited everyone back to his tent and promptly fell asleep. They’re belting out their hits at the top of their lungs, and it’s sounding brilliant, when, inevitably, men with torches are banging on the tent, telling us to pack it in.

“Now, now” says the man from the campsite, “you girls have got lovely voices and everything, but it’s pretty late, y’know, and we’ve got a lot of families trying to sleep up in the top field, so if you could just keep it down to a manageable level…” – once again, I am almost moved to tears by the sheer NICENESS of this reaction to our heinous, drunken noise pollution.

Stumbling back toward our own encampment, we see a grumpy looking man sitting awake outside his tent. “Was it you lot singing those songs?”, he asks. Yeah, sorry, we reply. “No, it was good, I really enjoyed it, thanks” he says, and wishes us goodnight.

Goodnight to you too, Indietracks – hands down the best festival I’ve ever attended.

Labels: Betty And The Werewolves, festivals, Indietracks, live reviews, MJ Hibbett, Standard Fare, The Cannanes, The Loves, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, The Pooh Sticks, The Specific Heats

THE FIFTY BEST RECORDS OF 2009: Part #4


35. The Loves – Three (Fortuna Pop)

Ah hell, what can one say about The Loves? They were here a few years ago, recording wonderful sessions for Peel as a gaggle of bubblegum pop crazed Welsh teenagers, and they’re still here a million line-up changes and the best part of a decade later as a gaggle of ‘adults’ doing more or less the same thing, and it’s still fucking brilliant. Basically, if you’re in a band, and your set-list doesn’t look like this..

…better find out what the problem is, and FIX IT. Ask The Loves, they can probably advise.

Mp3> Ode To Coca-Cola

34. Peaking Lights – Imaginary Falcons (Night People)

Peaking Lights is Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis (she used to sing and bang drums in Numbers, if you remember them; I don’t know what he used to do). It’s difficult to really explain the appeal of their first proper album, but I do know I’ve played it incessantly – far more than a lot of the other albums on this list, if iTunes is to be believed. And I’m confident that if you have a copy, you’ve probably played it incessantly too. It’s hard not to. Anchored by cheap, comforting drum machine and electronic burblings, phased out wordless vocals and beautifully enticing guitar and keyboard textures, I’d say Peaking Lights essentially resemble, oh, I dunno – a version of Harmonia raised in the ‘00s tape-trading underground, making soothing sounds for a very weird baby..? Try that out for size. I keep biting my tongue, because I don’t want to say that this album is pleasant; that’s the worst back-handed compliment there is, and it wouldn’t speak for the frequent invasions of hissy, metallic scuzz or warped echo labyrinths into this music, the stuff that’s constantly jumping out, demanding your attention. But Peaking Lights manage to pull off something here that has eluded most makers of long-form psyche/drone/whatever music through most of the decade – namely, they make music which is welcoming, harmonious, non-snobbish and, well, happy, but that also never cops out and fades into ambient boredom or druggy new age drek. Layers of instrument/noise are built up carefully and deliberately over the central metronomic pulse, so that they complement each other perfectly, fusing into songs (they do occasionally resemble songs) that are just lovely, lovely patchworks of sound, drifting off and around and taking you places and coming back again and smiling and gurgling at you and letting you know you’re safe, like crazy electronic lullabies from a warm, caring place. It makes me happy before I go to bed on weekdays, like hot chocolate – I’m gonna go put it on again.

Mp3> Wedding Song

33. Boston Spaceships – Zero to 99 / The Planets are Blasted (GBV)

The period immediately following the final dissolution of Guided By Voices in 2005 will likely be remembered by devotees as Bad Times In The Church Of Bob (a song title I hope Mr. Pollard will get around to one day). Verily, it did hurt to see our hero, his energies now free to dedicate wholly to his solo projects, knock out album after album (six a year? one every two months? – I dunno, I lost count), each more dispiriting than the last, each trying vainly to stretch fragments of the kind of inspiration he was blowing his nose with and discarding fifteen years ago across twenty or thirty tiresome stabs at tunes… or else twelve four-minute plus trad-rock groaners. Was ANYONE other than the reviewers still listening? Well, you may have noticed I’m speaking in the past tense, which is perhaps a tad premature, but I’m crossing my fingers here as I say, rejoice ye faithful: these two discs from Bob’s new trio Boston Spaceships are pretty damn good. Not quite up to the level of a turn of the century GBV album, needless to say, but our man seems to have brought a renewed sense of energy and, most importantly, some killer tunes to these sessions. Maybe not many for the greatest hits (unless your greatest hits is pushing beyond the seven disc mark), but we’re talking at least a 60-80% hit-rate here, and that’s good enough for me. Generally speaking, ‘Planets Are Blasted’ seems to concentrate more on the bittersweet, mid-western janglepop end of the Pollardverse, with ‘Dorothy’s A Planet’ and ‘Queen of Stormy Weather’ hitting all the buttons that used to make critics reach for the erroneous R.E.M. comparisons, whilst ‘Zero to 99’ instead revs up some of the ol’ windmilling, British invasion thrash and Sydian quirk, and I mean, who the HELL would imagine he’d still be getting mileage out of all that after all these years? If the answer’s not you, just take a listen and tell me keepers like ‘Exploding Anthills’ and ‘How Wrong You Are’ lie. I know I’ve largely spoken in numbers and percentages in this write-up, rather than my more characteristic impressionistic blathering, but Pollard’s borderline autistic comings and goings have long given his fans reason to learn to speak in the most heartfelt and emotional numbers and percentages known to man, and it’s good to have him back on-message.

Mp3>
Dorothy’s a Planet (from ‘Planets are Blasted’)
Let It Rest For A Little While (from ‘Zero to 99’)

32. Micachu & The Shapes – Jewellery (Rough Trade)

As you may have gathered by now, this blog is not a big advocate of chasing ‘originality’ in music for its own sake, but that’s not to say that we don’t like it when something genuinely new-sounding marches in of its own volition. As such, let us welcome the arrival of Micachu & The Shapes with a superb album that stands out as one of the best slices of experimental pop since people started casually throwing the phrase ‘experimental pop’ around. Much of Micachu’s palette of sound seems to stem from East London ‘urban’/club music and the early ‘00s ideal of commercial/avant pop, with throbbing, distorted bass pulses and menacing, chopped up drum programming thundering around all over the place, but these elements are mixed roughly with a sharp strain of art school DIY pop, as characterised by the weird, otherly tuned plunkings of Mica’s home-modified acoustic guitars, random looped racket from vacuum cleaners and kitchenware and a sense of oblique, emotionally raw lyricism that sits at the heart of just about all these songs. There’s something Beefheartian about the way Micachu puts her songs together – attempting to derail that ‘ol’ mother heartbeat’ with a mix that pushes harsh frequencies, jolting discords and maximum clatter. Also like The Captain, she manages to marshal a collection of sounds and techniques that would be absolutely insufferable in the hands of any other musician, but her surety of purpose helps steer the whole strangely articulate mess to a more than satisfactory conclusion, with her songs throwing out stinging vignettes of distrust, infidelity, disappointment and all the rest expressed through weird, brute simple modern day imagery (titles like “Guts”, “Golden Phone”, “Calculator”, “Curley Teeth” and “Worst Bastard” tell their own story), leaving you unexpectedly moved and involved with these semi-abstract tales, just as surely as Beefheart’s batshit ramblings always, somehow, manage to hit the heart of the matter when you least expect it. To write off the astonishing creative energy behind ‘Jewellery’ simply as the product of “talent” would scarcely do justice to the possibilities Mica and her pals are bringing to the table here.

Mp3> Vulture

31. Chain & The Gang – Down With Liberty… Up With Chains! (K)

Observing the unsavoury developments of the past decade, Ian Svenonious and his comrades have clearly taken some time out to reconsider their strategy and develop a whole new concept in “the responsible use of rock n’ roll”, the musical/aesthetic results proving as didactic, lateral, inscrutable and inspired as ever. In whoe name, Svenonious seems to be asking, have the corporate and governmental atrocities of the twenty-first century been committed? In the name of freedom, of course. And what is it that has stopped us, the citizenry, from rising up against the prevailing system of exploitation and brutality? The freedoms that the system has provided us with of course; the ones we’re loath to lose by biting the hand that feeds us. Thus, the only remaining route to change: ‘Down With Liberty… Up With Chains!’ Befitting this new austerity, Chain & The Gang have traded in the queasy, anything-goes funk/glam/psyche stew of Weird War, and retreated back to the DIY pop bosom of K Records in the cold North-West, recording an album with seemingly little more on hand than a drum kit, Calvin Johnson at the controls, some bass or acoustic guitar (rarely both at once), and the girls from Finally Punk dropping in for some backing vocals. The results, it must be said, are a mixed bag. Some tracks come off as hokey, undercooked jams, begging for a few more instruments or a more developed melody to render them worthwhile, but hearing Svenonious taking advantage of his new ensemble’s open spaces to let rip on some stream of consciousness jive is an absolute joy - “What Is a Dollar?” and “Interview With The Chain Gang” are cool as fuck, and album centrepiece “Deathbed Confession” is just about the best song he’s ever written. And when Svenonious is on form, the rest of the band seem to follow suit, throwing together some riotous, threadbare soul and ‘60s-influenced pop on the best tracks, fusing inevitably into the same flaming, declamatory fun-fests that have helped keep us hooked on Svenonious’ output over the years. As ever, those who like their party music and political statements to be clearly sign-posted and delineated will be infuriated beyond words by Chain & The Gang’s glorious jumble of sounds n’ symbols, but as the man himself says; “What’s my stance? Y'know I like to dance… and smash things up when I get a chance”.

Mp3> Deathbed Confession

Labels: best of 2009, Boston Spaceships, Chain and the Gang, Guided By Voices, Ian Svenonious, Micachu, Peaking Lights, The Loves