Truck 2012 was to be the year of the much-loved festival ‘getting back to its roots’, after some rapid growth saw problems set in last year and ultimately resulted in something of a financial meltdown for the organisers. The people behind Y-Not Festival took over this year, and promised to maintain the elements that everybody seemed to want – the welcoming atmosphere, the quirky countryside fête approach to running a festival, and an overall feeling of independence and integrity that’s lacking in more corporate-style megafestivals.
Friday 20 July 2012
Upon arriving on Friday – the festival now running over Friday and Saturday rather than Saturday and Sunday as it has done before – it certainly feels like Trucks of yore. The expanded festival plot of last year has been scaled back, and the gourmet (aka expensive) food vendors from 2011 are gone. One big deal seems to be the rebirth of The Barn, which is back along with its familiar, shabby, ‘countryside-smelling’ charm – it is, after all, a great big brick’n’metal barn.
So, to the main stage initially for the Scottish electro-tinged funk disco (I kid you not) of Federation Of The Disco Pimp. Acid Jazz wacka-wacka cheese has a tendency to send me running into the nearest field to jam dry corn husks into my ears, but these guys pull it off with a certain amount of charm. The basslines and fervent melodies echo across the festival and the band – especially as they edge into Herbie Hancock future-funk areas – provide a pretty fun diversion. At least they seem to be genuinely having fun, which is more than seems to be the case for Delta Alaska in The Barn. As is unfortunately the case for so many post-everything endless-echoes-of-math-rock bands, they seem keen to show how much they really mean it, but tend towards looking like they’re just having a petulant strop. Give me genuine, messy honesty over formulaic, studied post-rock by numbers any day; a non-drummer playing a separate tom-tom, the band clapping rhythms in the air and self-conscious hipsterism became tiresome around two days after they were first trialled around ten years ago.
Fixers provided a stellar Truck performance last year, which felt like being dragged to the moon with a mouthful of mushrooms and a fieldful of acolytes cheering you on. A real let down, then, that this year they provided something of a car crash on the main stage, with intense drunkenness causing total misreadings of familiar songs, stumbling around on stage and proclaiming meaningless statements with a slurring, wry smile. “This is all built on a lie”, we were told, and true enough, we felt deceived. A shocking performance that threatened to topple Fixers from a pretty lofty position. In fairness, the band have since apologised; they don’t work as a ‘drunken chaos’ band, so hopefully this was a one-off, and they’ll be back to their epic, jolly, shamanistic weirdo-rock very soon. Far from chaotic are Spring Offensive in The Barn: another jewel in Oxford’s current musical crown, and a band who seem to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that every little thing is just right in their songs, performances and overall way of approaching music. So it was that their set was very refined and impressively tight, although it did come across as somewhat quiet, and prone to get lost in the Barn’s environs. Still, an effortlessly slick performance played to a very enthusiastic crowd, and a fine blend of pop in all its guises.
Brontide are up next in The Barn, and they do nothing except for playing loud, crunching guitar music, with extreme precision, as if Oxford alumni Bitches were having an argument about mathematics with Shellac. Unlike Shellac, Brontide offer little in the way of chat or humorous between-song banter: in fact, they offer little beyond their sound, which is superb, direct, powerful and stunning. Wandering past the main stage after such an aural assault, Villagers seem nondescript and frustratingly inoffensive – it’s all a bit too floaty and friendly to register. They were, perhaps, a bit folky? A bit pedestrian indie? A bit shoegaze-light-y? Can’t really remember. Wondering if Turbowolf might skew things back in favour of noise and riffs, a peek into The Barn reveals too-stupid hair metal-sounding pseudo-macho nonsense, that paradoxically makes me long for Villagers, if only to cleanse away the dirt.
As the evening light began to fade, Tim Minchin took to the main stage with a set that was more band-length (circa 40 minutes or so) than comedian-length. This is greatly to his benefit, as his performance seems completely focussed, efficient and effective. Minchin is charming, funny and musically very proficient indeed, with the horrific thought of ‘funny songs’ pushed aside by great, varied pop music and an impressive number (and breadth) of swear words. Nothing better than seeing a huge crowd with a large proportion of kids dancing and singing along to a song based around the line “fuck the motherfucking Pope”. Smiles all around!
Still smiling? Wipe that stupid grin off your mush, then, as Future Of The Left are in The Barn next, and their formidably arsey frontman Falco seems angry. When he’s not glaring at the crowd or chiding those at the back for not being ‘into it’, he’s getting on with creating some fantastic, noisy tunes. Perhaps he’s too aware of the clamour for songs that sound like the band’s precursor Mclusky to be happy, and indeed one or two of their works go down brilliantly. Their own songs, despite being similar in style (poppy, angry, noisy indie rock) extend the template in more synth-heavy directions, and these are the more interesting bits. As their set dissolves into a noisy swirl involving crowd members playing instruments within the growing chaos on stage, it seems Future Of The Left won’t, or can’t, embrace a more artful side.
Finally, heading home, what’s that? The sound of Mystery Jets floating across the festival site from the main stage? That sound confirms that driving home through the terrifying pitch blackness of Steventon is preferable to their weedy, mannered MOR indie rock.
Saturday 21 July 2012
Saturday brings with it more good weather and a feeling of relaxed calm – no signs of bad stuff happening overnight, or anything beyond a few hangovers for campers to deal with. Toliesel on the second stage are a rattling start, performing today as a full band (in contrast to the recent solo performance at the last MusicInOxford.co.uk gig). They’re on fine form, and not at all cool, in the best way possible – drawing influences from Americana and mainstream 60s/70s pop to provide a confident and bouncy performance, with the full band lineup confirming that these songs can work in several forms. Very Nice Harry, in The Barn, have a terrible name, conjuring up imaginings of lumpen Dad-rock, but in reality combine a number of Oxfordian influences (Foals, Black Hats, Radiohead) into an effervescent and interesting sound that hints at becoming more than just the sum of those influences. A mental note is made to investigate them further. The distant sound of the aforementioned Black Hats is heard from the main stage as iced coffee is sought, and it’s instantly familiar – the kind of music that’s perfect for a sunny afternoon setting like this one; charming and perky songs that recall the Jam and which eschew the more annoying elements of poppy punk.
It’s back to The Barn for Flights Of Helios, who, despite being comprised of several space cadets with a huge amount of Oxford band experience behind them, produce a surprisingly non-out-there performance. This is no bad thing – what it means is that, rather than directionless drones and noodling, we get warm, soulful and heartfelt songs that occasionally veer off into atmospherics. They’re led by keyboards and strong vocals, and they make for a calming moment of contemplation. That’s at odds with Kill It Kid who are inadvertantly witnessed on the main stage, who make Whiskey Rock for drunken field inhabitants. ‘Nuff said.
This Town Needs Guns do a kind of post-rock that now seems a little bit pre-, although that speaks of their own influence over bands rather than anything else. The complexity of their guitar parts is always impressive, and their set on the second stage is triumphant and received by a hugely appreciative crowd. The appearance of ex-frontman Stuart Smith for a good-natured and subtly emotional couple of numbers – followed by crowdsurfing antics – was good to see, and an effective way of handing over to the band’s now-altered line-up.
More local boys done good in the form of Gunning For Tamar in The Barn: a really great performance that propels them beyond ‘local band’ familiarity and into the realms of just being, well, an excellent band. They now almost entirely sideline the musical clichés that marred some of their earliest performances, and they’re getting fiercer and more defined in their sound. Onwards and upwards for these fellows…
…unlike 65daysofstatic who, on the main stage, sound increasingly dated and hackneyed. Even if they once pioneered a combination of electronics and guitars, they just don’t sound revolutionary as they may have done for a brief moment in the past. This sounds like incidental music from Casualty. Their popularity is baffling!
Johnny Foreigner in The Barn are, as expected, ramshackle, fun and charming – that’s their thing, a combination of Bis, poppy Sonic Youth and apolitical Huggy Bear that results in what is oft referred to as ‘glorious noise’. A little more musical togetherness might be nice from time to time, to prevent songs falling apart completely as they did more than once during their set, but to reign them in might be to sap their spirit too much.
Anyway, what’s missing in terms of tightness and precision is made up for many times over by Three Trapped Tigers, also in The Barn, who offer infinitely impressive drum patterns over keyboards, samples and the odd – in several senses of the word – vocal interlude. It’s a great sound, mixing up Hella with Lamb, Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, but unfortunately around midway through their set, it becomes a little clear like they’re not pushing boundaries in the way that their forebears did. Technically, it’s fantastic – but a more colourful palette wouldn’t go amiss.
Finally, British Sea Power on the main stage, with their traditional foliage and on-stage shenanigans spreading to certain members of the crowd who have brought their own leafy branches to wave. The visual creativity the band displays tends to raise expectations of something more unique and special than they actually offer – they’re never as impressive as one might hope. They’re still brilliant, mind, and very enjoyable to watch and listen to, they just leave a feeling of wanting something more. That feeling certainly isn’t fulfilled by The Temper Trap, whose weak-kneed sounds we hear dribbling across the festival from the main stage as we begin to wend our way homewards.
So there it was – a new Truck, which aimed to be more like the old Truck. They did a very good job. This was a brilliantly enjoyable couple of days – musically hit-and-miss, perhaps, but the warm atmosphere the organisers wanted to create was definitely there. This was a family-friendly festival that wasn’t overflowing with kids’ stuff; a local music showcase with wide vision; a well-judged balance between smooth logistics and rough-around-the-edges-charm.