SUNDAY
Having left David Murphy to root out the goodies during the sepulchral gloom of Saturday, your reviewer showed up at Charlbury on Sunday afternoon in brilliant sunshine, albeit with a howling gale for company. Rosa Klebb provided a strong introduction to the festival; indeed they could have been bussed in from the Isle of Wight circa 1969 to judge from the jangly guitars and shimmering Hammond organs on display. The latter barely needed the obligatory Lesley speaker, as the previously-mentioned howling gale pretty much did the job of phasing, distorting and generally weirding-up-the-vibe all on its own. Who needs a poxy rotating cabinet, when you have meteorology on your side? (They also had a pretty girl singer who has obviously listened to a few Airplane albums, which always helps).
Stannah and the Stairlifts were a bunch of good-timey old-timers playing mercilessly competent blues rock to a largely uncritical audience. And who am I to carp? If I never heard them again I guess I would cope, but lounging under the intermittent Cotswold sun, I wouldn’t have preferred anyone else at that moment in my life.
Liking ska-tinged funk-rock has replaced homosexuality as the love that dare not speak its name, and I was accused by a friend of digging (non-ironically) the efforts of London’s Captain Strange. Indeed, I pathetically felt the need to hastily back-track and pretend I was drunk when caught grooving (non-ironically) to one of their many toe-tappers. I don’t care, I like crazy tenor sax, tight-as-a-gnat’s chuff rhythm sections and hypnotic, slightly macabre lyrics. They had a brilliant tune called ‘I don’t believe that’ which I can’t find on Myspace, and may end up pining for as much as the Sigur Ros ‘Nothing Song’ from Vanilla Sky ( the bastards omitted it from the soundtrack album. Thank you, YouTube!). Oddly, the bass player had more stage presence about him than the nominal frontman, who looked like he wanted his mum. If the band played for about half an hour more than was good for them or us, and indulged in too much festival noodling, those are some of the more amiable vices.
Next up was the class act that is Chantelle Pike, a country-folk-pop singer who is part PJ Harvey and part Tammy Wynette. She was backed by a selfless drummer and bassist who toiled anonymously on a needlessly short leash. Still, they performed their function of augmenting Pike’s sometimes over-clever, sometimes not-clever-enough songs, but it’s Chantelle that really matters and I’ve never heard her sound so good. She has so much technical control, but the swoops and melismas are never overdone and are just part of her emotional rhetoric. She and her band get it exactly right on a song called, I think, ‘Sweet Symphony’ which is passionate, taut and has a superbly singable chorus. She needs more in that vein.
The schedulers inexplicably stuck a sixteen-year-old kid called Toby high onto the bill, and he proceeded to play flawless Spanish guitar for forty-five minutes while singing forgettable little songs in a pretty, posho voice, borrowed mostly from James Blunt. Fair play to him for all that tricky fretting, but it was a triumph of stamina rather than skill.
On to Borderville, who gallantly replaced those useless Moneyshots at the tenth hour, and performed their highly original rock cabaret with well-drilled precision. A polished four-piece now, their principal strengths are Joe Swarbrick’s twitchy, Bowiesque performance art and keyboardist Woody’s clever interstitial flourishes. I can’t say I liked any of it much: the luxuriation in artifice, the hysterical, screamy vocals, the lack of any genuine emotion in the songwriting other than the Brechtian satisfaction at the distance created; Borderville feel like a concept rather than a band. The superb cover of ‘Chelsea Hotel’ showed us Swarbrick’s fabulous vocal talent (he’s also a brilliant rock guitarist) before he moved back into the circus tent.
Closing the set in eternal sunlight were a favourite of mine, anti-folk doomsters Witches, and they were rubbish. Well, at least for the first three songs, which sounded shapeless and indistinct, uncertain parodies of some of their recent classics. They seem to be breaking in new musicians a lot at the moment, so we’ll cut them some slack. Anyhow, the set lurched up a few gears when they started playing songs from their excellent ‘Heart of Stone’ album, as well as the oldie ‘In the Chaos of a Friday night’, which rocked like Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be Wild’. Difficult? Esoteric? Introverted? I’ve seen these guys in pink Shirelles wigs. As they moved into the second half of the set, even the new songs sounded ace. Sorry I doubted yis, brothers (and sister).