news 'zine e-zine  contact links home

 

The Truck Festival

Hill Farm, Steventon, Oxfordshire - 24&25/7/04

I have four awards to give out for this review.

Best Band of the Festival Award – Self explanatory really.

Crappest Band of the Festival Award – The opposite of above.

Most Surprisingly Brilliant Band of the Festival Award – Goes to the band who surprised me by being really damn good. Not necessarily the best band. Just the one I didn’t know/think would be as good.

Most Disappointing Band of the Festival Award – Goes to the band that are supposed to be good, have all the hype and expectations, and yet come crashing down.


I’m not too good at naming awards it seems.

The Truck Festival then, haven for brilliant indie artists or just where the bands not good enough to do the other festivals end up? Largely the former, thankfully…

Saturday

Vera Cruise play rather mellow indie rock, which was quite nice as an introduction to a warm summer afternoon of music. Unfortunately that’s all it was. Quite nice. It’s not going to change lives, it’s not going to conquer the world, it’s not going to win any prizes, but it might be a pleasant soundtrack to your evening if you give it a chance.
7 out of 10



Verbal Kink on the other hand are far from mellow. They play metal-tinged grunge. Or grunge tinged metal. Or something in between the two anyway. Possibly both. It’s loud, energetic, quite fast and heavy. Rather good at times but not enough to really impress and unfortunately not enough to stick in your head much after hearing it either.
6 out of 10



So, Red Star Cycle, men wearing dresses? Check. Weird make-up? Check. Songs about dildos? Check. Huge sideburns? Check. Electric fiddles? Check. Free flowers for the audience? Check. Some kind of digitised saw music? Check. Music so eclectic it’s like listening to several different bands at once? Check. Why have one gimmick when you can have all of them? This slightly over the top approach to performing does make Red Star Cycle worth seeing, but perhaps only the one time, for while all of these things may be good in moderation, here it doesn’t quite gel. The music isn’t too much to write home about either, the one really good song was the second of the set and sounded like the Violent Femmes having a hoe-down, but peaking this early didn’t help matters overall.
7 out of 10




Out on the main stage Colour of Fire, one part melodic punk outfit one part chunky riffed rock monster, were greeted by an entirely seated crowd and the scent of weed on the breeze. They didn’t let this deter them though. Riffs which would alternately stab violently at the air then snake around each other throttling everything they came near spread out from the stage in a very impressive example of how punk music should be played.
8 out of 10




Back to the barn after that to catch the end of My Awesome Compilation’s set. To me it seemed rather plain sounding emo/pop-punk with only the bands nationality (English) the thing that has made them noteworthy so far. Nothing you haven’t heard done by every Drive-Thru band ever. Perhaps they should go watch Colour of Fire.
6 out of 10





Nervous Test Pilot, the semi-novelty dance act, is an interesting proposition. On the one hand the more chilled out moments are rather good, he’s clearly a decent enough DJ and makes some interesting noises. But on the other hand he has an annoying tendency to make tuneless trance and repeatedly attempts to be ‘zany’, both of which make him hard work to watch.
5 out of 10





Her Space Holiday are a band based around singer/songwriter Marc Bianchi who play their indie sounscapes on top of drum loops (these in addition to the drums themselves) and atmospheric computer samples. This all adds up to a rather grand and very chilled out and groovy sound that is just as easy to dance to as it is to relax by. On a deeper level than this the layered music and bitter-sweet lyricism make this very rewarding music for the more attentive listener too.
8 out of 10





You can tell Jetplane Landing are about by the gathering throngs of teenage girls nearby. I find this hard to fathom personally, none of them are particularly good looking (one looks like a fish) and the music is pathetically bland post-hardcore emo at best, turgidly unlistenable at worst, so it can’t be that. It’s also quite pathetic to see a band preaching that they don’t care what people think of them (and preach they did, going on and on and on and on and on…) while at the same time taking turns to pose for the photographers. It’s quite upsetting to see a band so desperate to be loved that they’re willing to throw away what precious little credibility they still have in order to do it. In their favour they are competent musicians, and expert ‘performers’ when there’s a camera anywhere near them. Expect them to sell their souls for success some time soon.
5 out of 10 (Most Disappointing Band of the Festival Award)





The whole Jetplane Landing thing was rather depressing. So I went and bought an orange and sat down to watch Trademark. Trademark are kind of like what Kraftwerk would be like if they were mad English pop musicians. Good, clean fun music and the performance is taken from just-above-average to really-rather-good by a guest appearance from Piney Gir for the magnificent finale of Need Some Time. Cheered me up no end.
7 out of 10





Electric Soft Parade play a kind of indie guitar pop that should be much better than it is. Some of it is good, so you could say there is potential there. Unfortunately the best songs are largely their older material. So perhaps the potential has been spent already. The majority of the music though is just too forgettable and the choruses are too weak to make it stand out among the legions of other soundalikes out there.
6 out of 10





Can you imagine what the Beastie Boys would sound like if the had ADD, had eaten too many sugary sweets and watched too many cartoons with robots in? That’s a bit what anglophile rapper MC Lars is like, but not as good. Songs about Shakespeare and using lines from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven as a chorus while sampling various rock and punk bands just add to the wonderful, unadulterated fun of it all. Catchy, incredible fun, funny and still really damn good, Lars is a light-hearted genius. If you don’t love him you’re dead inside.
10 out of 10






Million Dead play the kind of universally pleasing post hardcore that Jetplane Landing could only ever dream of. Melodic, brutal and epic all at once it is music you can just as easily sing/scream along to as you can headbang like there’s a rat in your hair. They have had a lot of hype surrounding them and you do get the feeling that to some extent their image is overly important to them, but when they make music this good you can forgive them. Something very special.
9 out of 10





Buck 65 is not very bling. He is an MC with a very distinctive, gruff voice and rapping style and does some of the best scratching I’ve ever heard to boot. The subjects his music tackles are far more down to Earth than is usually associated with rap music, including a song about his dad. Just as capable of pulling off being serious and earnest as he is of being completely ridiculous (his impression of Mick Jagger dancing is something which will have you giggling for hours) he also gives the impression of just being a damn nice guy. Hard not to love.
9 out of 10





I must say that Goldrush surprised me. I hadn’t liked much of what I’d heard of their recorded material prior to seeing them so I expected to just be slightly bored and wait for the next act to come on. Maybe it was just perfect music for a cool summer evening. Maybe they’re just a great live band. Either way even songs I disliked before were transformed into glittering country-tinged guitar pop gems on the night. I’ll have to go back to the recordings and listen a bit harder next time I think.
8 out of 10





Headlining Saturday night’s festivities were The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, who are basically the twenty-first century’s answer to The Damned when you get right down to it. This isn’t a bad thing at all, there’s a lot to be said for this bass driven monster rock, it’s great fun and really does make you want to move (furious headbanging being the call of the day in my opinion), especially when combined with the band’s image too (Guy McKnight looking something like a gothic Dylan Moran). Whack To Shit is a fantastic song. It’s just not consistently great though. The heavy handed, unfriendly and unhelpful security didn’t help the atmosphere either. I’ve seen decent security, helping kids to their feet and guiding them away from the stage when they’d been crowd surfing, I’m pretty sure there’s very rarely any need to grab someone by the neck and throw them to the floor. Overall though a good end to a good day.
8 out of 10






Sunday





An early morning start then to see The E Band. They were plugged as; “One chord, endless possibilities!” It was part right at least. One chord guitar nonsense from some of the technical crew having a laugh, it was funny for about one song, which conveniently was exactly how many they played.
5 out of 10





Floating Face Downare clearly a very talented and reasonably inventive, especially for one so young, emo band. Proper emo too, emotional-hardcore. None of that weepy acoustic nonsense. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite distinctive enough to make them stand out from the crowd of similar bands that are around at the moment, but with youth, energy, musical ability, the support of the Truck Records Juniors project and low slung trousers on their side I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of them yet.
7 out of 10





Redjetson were next on, and boy were they something. They play space rock of quite a startling standard with vocals which, even if they don’t quite soar majestically, certainly glide impressively and definitely add to the experience whereas many vocalists would struggle to make an impression on top of such captivating music. Anyone who isn’t left completely spellbound by the sparkling intertwined guitar melodies or awestruck by the crashing waves of distortion needs their ears syringing and their heads looking at fast, before they miss out on something else as wonderful as this.
10 out of 10






Lucky Benny were billed as a ten piece band but only seven emerged, perhaps explaining why the sound was slightly emptier than I’d expected. Don’t get me wrong, it was still good. They played jazzy funk music with decent enough musicianship. Would be very good music for a party and dancing and the like, if you were in the mood. Which I wasn’t unfortunately. I was still slightly gob smacked from watching Redjetson.
7 out of 10





Earth The Californian Love Dream have a very long and slightly silly name. But this is aside from the point. They play big, fuzzy rock’n’roll and look like the offspring of truckers and lumberjacks. Obvious reference points for their music are Black Sabbath, Clutch and, most prominently, Queens of the Stone Age. Rather dumb but all good fun.
7 out of 10





Sunnyvale Noise Sub-Element are what you get when experimental post rock and experimental electronica are combined. The band’s name is actually quite descriptive as to what they are like in hindsight. Off-beat drum loops and atmospheric sound and voice samples play host to a variety of guitar noises (induced by using various interesting implements including a wooden spoon and a hand held electric fan). It ain’t easy listening by any standards but if you’re willing to put the effort in it is a very rewarding and rather good listen.
8 out of 10






The allure of seeing both “big band hip-hop” and “the most groomed hip-hop band…ever seen” drew me towards the Trailer Park tent to watch Captive State next. And I’m rather glad I did really. The best way I can describe them is that it is like Herbie Hancock re-mixed by DJ Shadow with a white boy MC from the ghettos of Oxford (a rather good one at that) rapping on top. Impossible not to dance to, they make some of the funkiest hip hop music I’ve heard in a long time. Even when they fucked it up they did it in style.
9 out of 10 (Most Surprisingly Brilliant Band of the Festival Award)






Brute Force & Misty’s Big Adventure then, where to start? Where to end? Where to middle? Perhaps I should point out that Brute Force is a separate artist to Misty’s Big Adventure (Misty’s dad if you must know) but they perform together occasionally, and this was one such occasion. The first half of the set though was Misty’s Big Adventure only, using “only” purely in it’s quantative sense. M'sBA sound a bit like… well, just imagine The Flaming Lips and Gong meeting head on in a train crash. Now imagine the results of this as an experimental ska-pop band. Now imagine said band was made up of mental patients pumped full of nicotine. Head spinning yet? I haven’t even mentioned the glove monster. Once the novelty has worn off though it’s down to the music to impress, which I’m happy to say this does in abundance. Big, catchy, and weird pop music that deserves to be absolutely huge, in fact, I think people should be forced to listen to it for their own good. This is only half the show though. Just when you think things can’t get any better Brute Force, American weird-pop genius/lunatic, takes over on vocals to sing some of his repertoire. This includes songs named Sit On A Sandwich, Cuddly (an ode to cuddly girls) and The Extremist Polka. It has to be seen to be believed and is something quite, quite wonderful.
10 out of 10 (Best Band of the Festival Award)






KaitO are rather trendy right now aren’t they? Or did I make that up? If they’re not it’s only a matter of time. This is largely because KaitO’s sound bears more than a passing resemblance to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (assuming Karen O was restricted to the squeaky top, and rather annoying after time, end of her vocal range). It’s good enough in its own way but is far too repetitive and lacking the hooks it requires to make it really worth listening to.
6 out of 10





Sons and Daughters play rather bland blues’n’roll with more than a sprinkling of country influences that does nothing in particular for me. And it doesn’t do a lot, by the looks on their faces anyway, for the band either. There aren’t many things more dispiriting than a band who doesn’t want to be there. Hard to think what else to say, dull and lifeless as far as I’m concerned but possibly of appeal if country-tinged alternative rock is your thing.
6 out of 10





Aging English punks pretending to be German and playing Beatles covers at breakneck speed might sound quite amusing and it is. For about five minutes anyway. After that it is just repetitive and a slightly cruel way to treat some decent songs. And when The Punkles kept playing for twenty minutes after they were due to stop meaning I couldn’t see undertheigloo it was the last straw. Naughty Punkles! Naughty!
5 out of 10





So as I made my way down to the Barn That Could Not Be Named I was met with the horrific sound of Suitable Case For Treatment. Tuneless, annoying and unfunny sludgecore which will have you reaching for the nearest plug socket with a fork just to make it stop. And when your frontman looks like Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs ugly brother and sounds like a frog you really don’t have a lot going for you.
4 out of 10 (Crappest Band of the Festival Award)





How do such polite young men make such a big noise? Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies really are very polite, very nice people (seeing the vocalist giggle and stare at the floor after various comments from the audience is so endearingly nice it hurts). But they still manage to somehow change completely into a brutal and atmospheric, Mogwai crossed with At The Drive-In, heavy rock band willing to throw themselves around the stage and scream their little heads off when they start playing. Listening to them, especially live where everything is bigger and better, is tantamount to being sensually caressed before taking an uppercut to your chin. Not space rock, more space hardcore, it’s music that can’t fail to grab your attention. They introduced a saxophone to play a free jazz interlude during one song, an audacious move perhaps but one pulled off with ease. Some slightly wobbly vocals aside a great show, destiny awaits them.
9 out of 10





Plagued with technical difficulties from the start and with hints of an unwelcome rock’n’roll attitude (which in turn stripped the songs of some of the quiet joy they have on record) there would be many reasons to mark Simple Kid down if you wanted to. Unfortunately the sheer quality of his songs stops me from doing this, damn near perfect guitar pop played to near perfection (other than the aforementioned technical problems and Simple Kid’s occasional inability to keep the harmonica to the microphone) it bordered on the sublime. I’d be very interested as if to whether he could transform his show into one with a whole live band, rather than just the guitars and programmed drums and samples that he uses currently.
8 out of 10






Electric Eel Shock then, what else need I say? It’s Electric Eel Shock for hell’s sake, of course it was going to be excellent. What? You haven’t seen Electric Eel Shock yet? Why not you fool? What’s wrong with you? Look, sell and organ or an elderly relative if you must but make sure you see Electric Eel Shock. The sooner the better. Just put it down right there on the list of things you have to do before you die. It’s important.They’re three utterly insane Japanese guys playing their heavy metal obsessed and adoring brand of garage rock. How it’s possible for something to be hilarious and the pure, unadulterated essence of rock’n’roll at the same time I don’t know but Electric Eel Shock manage it and put on one of the most entertaining shows available to man at the same time. A real must see.
10 out of 10