LITTLE ZE (25) from Sheffield are a rocking blues-based band who love playing this stuff. Mike, the singer has Robert Harvey range and his voice cuts through clean and clear. There's a beardy, Nudie-shirt country rock look to the band with a stomp-along Brit rock sound. The songs are big on confidence, with individual band members standing a bit shy of full contact with the audience.
As Sunday emerges as a fresh new morning, with the sun breaking through skipping clouds ERNEST (26) push out their boogie rock of 1970s vintage. It’s quirky though and spiced up with post rock intros and spoken samples dropped in to give an edge. There's a funky choppiness in there too – because it’s fun to play and the crowd lap it up. Their finale moves towards heavier rock, with a burst of slightly disconnected electronic squalling to start it off and a sweet melodic section in the middle.
SHUT YOUR EYES AND YOU'LL BURST INTO FLAMES (27) are yet another bursting-with excitement-and ideas band from Leeds. Constant rushing to and fro on stage and busy audience engagement keep it boiling, and the songs are strong. The five-piece sugar-rush hyperactivity is held together with a distinctively crisp take on the ¡Forward, Russia! rock reconstructivist thing. It's fun, it’s hard-edged and It looks great. The spontaneous madness of the band is a delight - generally unpredictable and not yet bludgeoned into choreographed moves by repeated performance. Alan Raw, the BBC presenter for the weekend, is drawn into the infectiousness and sits in with Sean Langan on drums.
Heavy metal music hasn’t had much of a showing this year on the Topman Stage. D-KOY (28) carry the flag and do a classic straight down the middle chugga chugga thing. The North has much stronger, more distinctive bands at the riff heavy end of the independent music spectrum, but if they don’t put their names up, they aren’t going to get on this stage I guess. In their absence Leeds' D-KOY remind us how much fun the big riff and the juggernaut beat can be. Punky looking KC adds energetic guitar squealing and effects and sports nicely tasteless striped trousers.
EVER SINCE THE LAKE CAUGHT FIRE (29) have travelled south from Tynemouth. THE CRIBS might provide a closer match in style than Other Bands With Long Names Who You Might Have Heard Of. The longish instrumental sections, with near-guitar-solos seem more like interludes than journeys into space. Interludes where the band takes a breather and turn away from the crowd. There seems to be a trend running here – from memory that's three bands this year indulging in fits of audience avoidance.
Ben Siddall has been working on his songs and finding the right band over a couple of years now. For me (musical dullard that I am), the results are suddenly and wonderfully revealed. THE LODGER (30) are a Leeds indie favourite, and have been for a while. But the sunshine, the crowds and a good bright sound bring out the best in the songs and the performance - and all becomes clear. These are subtle, terse and witty songs. They repay attentive listening. They have beguiling musical inflections and bring pleasure through a sense of authentic humanity staying alive in unpromising situations. I'm drawn in hook line and sinker and so is the crowd.
CHAMPION KICKBOXER (31) from Sheffield are a shade or two quirkier and a wee bit spikier. Their tune-laden, fragmented intelligence can go "woo ooh ooh" and deliver meaningful sentences with equal conviction. Their aesthetic minimalism is more than sufficient to entertain and educate. An alert crowd has one of the highest musician to punter ratios of the day. There are hints of ANDY PARTRIDGE's long influence in the music and there are smiles all round. I can also hear an affinity with PAVEMENT and with the long lost LANDSPEED LOUNGERS. The band's relaxed confidence is a guarantee against any hint of emulation.
|
VIVA HIGH ROLLERS (32) are five mature blokes from Sheffield milking the old UK garage and punk formulae for all they're worth, while the crowd go mental and one of the guitarists strikes up heavy metal poses. It's energetic, entertaining pub rock stuff that looks a bit out of place in the wider context of a Festival where a whole tent full of sharper, hungrier-looking punk, metal and skater bands are playing the Lock Up Stage. Not that VIVA HIGH ROLLERS would give a damn.
If you thought (like me) that DEAD DISCO (33) were a novelty electro disco band with pouting, then tonight the Leeds four piece put the case for the defence with a rollicking set that bubbled from start to finish. Victoria dominates centre stage, squirming, singing, playing keyboards and stamping her stilettoed feet with not one second of off-message time in the half hour set. The songs are catchy. Ali on drums piles it along and guitars and bass make it as much rock as its pop. They are not mucking about. And the Full Monty contingent of photographers seethes in the pit like a bathtub of piranhas. Finale "Automatic" is their single, and I'm off to buy it on vinyl asap.
As some early rain blows away, a mighty rainbow soars across the Festival site. From my point of view, walking up from the Main Stage to catch the Topman headliners, the crock of gold sits right under the rainbow's end over the canopy of the stage itself. VIB GYOR (34, 35) are the auspicious beneficiaries. Their rainbow music sweeps up the whole spectrum of rock and indie music and pumps out huge songs through David Fendick's rich voice and lashes them with sinuous trails of guitars and keyboards. A bit RADIOHEAD a bit COLDPLAY and a whole heap of their own confident instinct for strong melody and raw power.
The Topman Stage this year consolidated the great start made last year. One of the sources of bands to fill the stage was a series of competitive auditions run by Futuresound at the Cockpit in Leeds during the summer. The overall "winners" of that competition were BREAKING THE ILLUSION (36). His doubled edged reward was a slot on the much larger Carling Stage. The downside of this billing was the 11.30 am start on Saturday. BREAKING THE ILLUSION is an artist/producer with a funky rock and super-tight band behind him. Sheer charisma with vein bursting enthusiasm and enough chat to fuel a revolution multiplies the crowd from 50 to 200 in about three minutes flat. Rapping across 5 or 6 tunes - smiling, moving, pumping up the place single handed he has 300 cheering by the end of the set, and the word goes out that here's a man with more Factor X, Y and Z than is decent.
|
