Keep Calm and Green Man 2012

A Green Man Festival 2012 review

Right, so I've just got back from this year's Greenman Festival and have washed off the mud from my legs. Here's what it was like....

Despite to torrential rain throughout Thursday night and most of Friday and briefly on Saturday morning and Sunday morning, the weather was pretty good. Seriously. The sun came out a lot, it got too hot at times and you could sit around and enjoy the music...as long as you could find somewhere dry to sit. I've been to festivals where the conditions have been much worse than this.

Anyway, here's some of the quite/very/exceptionally good stuff I caught...

So hip it hurts, Toy played an excellent set of Krautgothrock on the Far Out stage. Hopefully being flavour of the month with the hipsters won't result in a backlash and they can become as successful as anyone melding the sound of the Horrors with early Stereolab can ever be - like all the great bands, they make two chords go a long way and it has to be said, they are infinitely better than Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong ever were.

Friday's rain stopped in time for the return of Dexys who, despite the futile shouts for Geno (this isn't some "I love the 80s" return) performed the most remarkable set of the weekend - the nearest a gig has ever come to nearly making me cry for a long time. Rewriting some of the lyrics to old songs and setting them alongside the highlights of the new album, this was more a play set to music than a gig, revolving around the mental rehabilitation of Kevin and his ability/inability to fall in love, with vocals shared by Kevin (the male lead) with Pete Williams (his best friend/father) and Madeleine Hyland (the love interest).

The Junior Boys were probably just glad to play in a tent and not outside in the torrential rain as they did last time they played at the festival. They did good.

A couple of hours before Mogwai's headlining set on Friday I had the good fortune to meet Stuart and Barry from the band in the Rough Trade shop, so I quickly went and bought the San Pedro 7" and got them to sign it like the fanboy I am. Anyway, the band did exactly what you would want from them on a festival headline slot, with songs from last year's awesome Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will sitting comfortably alongside everything else in the set with the exception of the peerless Mogwai Fear Satan, whose thunder made the valley shake. It's just a shame it wasn't raining at this point as this is probably some of the best music you can set to stormy weather.

What was missing from the festival was Post Modernism, Lover's Rock, a middle aged white man rapping and oblique lyrical references to Immanuel Kant. Fortunately, Scritti Politti were on hand to set that right. I'd always understood that Green Gartside had a real aversion to playing live, but he showed himself to be a brilliant front man - witty, charming and self effacing. Yes, a lot of people were waiting for them to play the "hits" (they obliged), but the later material is equally strong, with the one NEW new song (which he hasn't finished writing yet) being one of the highlights of the gig.

Van Morrison was 'headlining' the Mountain Stage on the Saturday night. The funny thing was, he was on at 7:15pm, with 2 bands on after him. Anyway, whatever the reasons behind this decision his music is ideal for a sunny Saturday evening rather than late at night. Not that I saw any of his set, but it sounded great from back at the tent.

Field Music played their usual quality set of mini symphonies in 7/8 time. I've raved about them in a previous blog, so I won't say any more here.

tUnE-yArDs were another highlight, mainly to see quite how Merrill Garbus can transform the multi layered vocals/instruments/effects of her albums into the live setting. And the answer is via a live band, probably a Loop Station, her charisma and a lovely orange dress. It was quite brilliant and one of those true festival Sunday-feel-good sets. Mind you, it does you no harm when people get this view of your band on stage...

Other bands worth a mention include Alt-J, Jonathan Richman, King Charles, Ghostpoet and Dark Dark Dark and that guy dressed as a spaceman with his own mini-stage.

So, yeah, it was alright really.

Green Man Festival 2011

So, I've finally motivated myself enough to put a few badly written words together about this year's festival; the sunniest one in the five years I've been going.

Despite the main stage headliners being slightly underwhelming this year, there was still plenty of excellent stuff to see/hear/do and plenty of great stuff that I missed.

Here's some of my highlights that I did catch, based on the rough notes I'd scribbled on my phone whilst watching bands.

Holy Fuck (or Holy Cow as they are known in our child-friendly house), headlining the Far Out tent on Friday night, played their usual blistering set of noise funk, whist the front two members were constantly re-patching their instruments as if they'd forgot to bring enough audio cables with them.

Y Niwl, "the Welsh Shadows", at the Green Man pub, put together a 40 minute set of 60s garage rock and surf music, which everyone from Black Francis to Quentin Tarrantino knows is arguably the coolest sound known to rock. Giving each song a number rather than a title (their set taught me the numbers from 1 to 20 in Welsh) is a nice way of avoiding over-pretentious titles for instrumentals too.

And here they are playing Undegpedwar (that's Fourteen in English)..

Laura J Martin deserves a special mention, purely for bringing Chaka Demus and Pliers back to the masses with her kooky ambient folk cover of Tease Me.

Destroyer were a strange choice to headline the Far Out tent on the Saturday night, which showed in the rather thin crowd who watched them. Nonetheless, after a shaky start, where the band seemed strangely detached from the mid paced music they were playing, a stunning version of Suicide Demo for Kara Walker saw them shift into another gear as the second half of the set took on a...err..distinctly balearic feel.

After that I caught the first few songs of Fleet Foxes' headline set on the Main Stage - now I love their albums and, yes, their harmonies are beautiful, but live they left me a bit cold. Maybe it's just that Saturday night isn't the right time for their music (they're more a mid afternoon in the sun kind of band), so I left early; as did a few others who I bumped into during another jaw-dropping set from Squarepusher, who was kicking off 4 hours of "after dark" music courtesy of Warp records. One hour of Tom Jenkinson on bass and FX pedals with a live drummer, creating sounds you can barely imagine and a set of tunes that it was impossible to dance out of time to (trust me, I tried). Nice touch with the futuristic microphone headpiece too. There's no footage of him from the festival online yet, but here's an feature and interview with him from the Culture Show in 2006...possibly the greatest living bass guitarist?

Sunday daytime was all about James Blake's mid afternoon set, played to a packed crowd on the main stage, with the loudest valley-shaking bass I've heard in a long time. Anyone unconvinced by his debut album really needs to catch him live. Seems like a lovely guy too.

To finish the weekend off in style, Suuns seem to have found a winning formula of brooding electro and dirty rock, before "national treasure" Gruff Rhys' set sent us all packing with a smile on our faces. Because that's what he can't help but do...