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Truck Nine – Saturday: The Futureheads / The Black Madonnas / Anat Ben David / Darren Hayman / Chris T-T / Alva / Brakes / Dusty’s Sound System / The Madeleines / Louie
Steventon, Oxfordshire
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Article
written by Ged M
Jul 31, 2006.
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It’s encouraging that Truck endures – the ‘small is beautiful’ ethos, the community involvement and the target charities make it the worthiest of festivals. Glastonbury, for its claimed good works, is a horrible portent of a fascist future and the increase in the number of human scale festivals suggests that only stupid fuckers will get involved with human battery farms next to the Tor in future, or be marched into Hyde Park for some exploitation-is-good-for-you indoctrination.
It starts at noon. Louie are the Clash without the politics and a chunk of Fugazi, with the unusual sight of two frontmen bouncing off each other. Punky-pop songs like ‘I Take Pills’ and ‘Deadman’ aren’t new but they are pogoingly effective. The Madeleines’ neat main-stage power-pop is washed away by the first thunderstorms, sending everyone under cover. This throws up a few sights, including a saturated Frankie Teardrop from the Brian Jonestown Massacre kicking a football to some kid through muddy pools in driving rain.
The tents, fortunately, give respite from the rain: Dusty’s Sound System start serious with traditional ‘Sweethearts of the Rodeo’-sounding country music for their (anti-)war and (pro-)Martin Luther King songs, before they kick out with rocking party anthems like ‘It Takes No Talent To Party’. Then it’s back to a sunnier main stage for an amazing set by Brakes. Intense, fresh and frantic, they’re like a young and fit Pixies and blow everyone away with ‘Heard About Your Band’ and ‘All Night Disco Party’. They’d be the perfect Saturday night headliners next year.
Alva are part of the early music network, playing folk and traditional music from a range of sources and singing in a number of languages, including Scots Gaelic and Occitan. Vivian Ellis has the most beautiful, engaging voice while the most intriguing song is 750 years old and accompanied on a mediaeval fiddle. Roll over King Henry and tell Thomas a Becket the news! Good Shoes’ ‘Small Town Girl’ is a classic single in the mould of ‘Teenage Kicks’, a genius debut that they’re struggling to surpass. It comes early in the set and overshadows the other angular pop numbers which still owe too obvious a debt to the Futureheads. In fact, as they warm up for their penultimate song, the tent starts chanting the “oh-eh-oh” riff from ‘Hounds of Love’.
Chris T-T should know how to work a Truck crowd after five visits and he pitches it perfectly with his impassioned pro-human, pro-animal welfare, anti-war, anti-religion, anti-Blair blasts that mix scathing commentary with rousing choruses. ‘Preaching to the Converted’ shows that he’s aware of the inherent contradictions but his Woody Guthrie populism carries him through. Props to him for sticking around the site so visibly all weekend. It’s now early evening and the organic ale is taking its toll. Darren Hayman rightly chooses the ‘rock’ option for his setlist (he had a ‘quiet’ alternative as well) and reenergises me and everyone in the tent with the best set I’ve seen him play in a long time. Hearing him backed by his bluegrass sidekicks makes you realise the versatility of the banjo (played by Dave Watkins) within a ‘standard’ rock set up: the way it can stand out, add cunning fills or just drive on the rhythm. With songs from early Hefner (‘Breaking God’s Heart) to late Hayman (‘8 Bit World’), they move both hearts and feet. Anat Ben David has got real stage presence for her Weimar cabaret performance, taking in industrial music and hip hop: a bit like Sally Bowles fronting Laibach. She certainly draws attention to herself…
Then there’s a gap. Unusually for Truck there are gaps when nothing appeals, partly due to the disproportionate number of dull emo/screamo bands on the bill. Some people, like Russell of the Research are playing badminton in the mud, some seek refuge in the pub and others hang around and endure things like Suitable Case for Treatment. It’s like a rural death metal, the merciless throb and groaning vocals the equivalent of spraying musical silage over the crowd. Next, the programme has threatened “the possibility of serious damage in the lounge tent” when the Black Madonnas play. How prescient: three songs in and they blow all the power when riffing away of one of their dirty blues numbers. It’s a shame, as it sounded ace with this new lineup, the sort of thing that would set Wolfmother trembling. The fact that they’re all blasphemously wearing clerical clobber makes you suspect divine sabotage but it gives us the chance to see headliners the Futureheads close the day’s performance and they’re…OK. They’ve got a big light show and great stage presence, and the songs from the second album are enough to convince me to invest in said record, but their most transcendent moment remains ‘Hounds of Love’ which they’ve made their own. One genius moment in a fairly good set. And that’s day one – good stuff in patches but the biggest surprise was the weather.
Untitled Document
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