This is the second time we've been to the Somers Town Festival near Kings Cross, a one day local free festival held on Chalton Street, that this was battling not only with everything else taking place this weekend, but also some very overcast weather and the odd shower.
We arrived early enough to go and have a pint in the Coffee House before going to see the first band for us, who were Stingray, they were on the Pearly stage and are a super young shoegaze band who may need to change their name to not get confused with any other bands called either Stingray or The Stingrays etc.
The young woman singing had a cool ethereal voice, as she asked all sorts of questions on How Can I that was nicely laid back, Sketches seemed to be outlines of events taken from a notebook and set to slowly evolving low key shoegaze like Lush with less theatrics.
Field had a good bit more groove to it, as it got disturbed by Sambattalion marching by playing some very drum centric marching band music in this soundclash The Sambattalion were sort of victorious.
See The Road Ahead was quite reflective for a teenage group who it can only be hoped have long futures ahead of them. When this reviewer shouted out who are you the entire band replied in unison Stingray just before they played Man On The Moon that had nothing to do with REM, they closed with the quite bitter No Rhyme Or Reason about trying to make sense of things outside of anyone's control.
After a lunch break, we wandered down to the main stage and managed to catch another march through by Sambattalion who had that drum core rhythm going nicely and had a core of local women dancing with them. On the main stage were The Bob Marley Revival a 7 piece covers band that included their own version of the I-Three's as they got going playing some very bland and yet close enough covers to get the sizable crowd grooving, we stayed long enough to hear Jamming that was just perfunctory, I'd rather go and hear another new young band instead.
So we went back to the Pearly Stage in time for SNM_Band who according to the bands website are all about fighting a suppressive education system and formed whole still at school, from the opener this 4 piece band were grungy, as singer Mimi attacked her guitar while singing about acting Like A Witch, there was plenty of anger both musically and lyrically on the song about If You Wouldn't Mind.
Come And Want Me Now was seductive enough to get older folks like me squirming a little, but the key song of the set was You Can't Save My Given Name that was also on the bands fliers they gave out afterwards, this is a song I want to hear the proper version of, it could be the band's first break out tune.
Stumble was a bit ramshackle but still showed plenty of promise before they did a stripped-down cover of the UK Subs Down On The Farm a bit thin but this worked pretty well. They closed with Burn Out Our Dreams or whatever it's really called that had a good guitar solo and some bile filled vocals to get the anger across.
Next on the Pearly Stage were Miraculous Mule who's current five-piece line-up played a cool laid back set of gospel tinged blues that opened with Run On that had a nice sun dappled feel to celebrate the sun finally coming out. John The Revelator felt perfect to be sung in St Pancras close to the site of the old Roman temple that Joseph of Arimathea came on Pilgrimage to see way back when, it featured some lovely backing vocals from Alex Petty.
Oh Death allowed Michael J Sheehy to beg for some mercy while the fairground bell rang out on the stall next to the stage. We Get What We Deserve built slowly and surely as most of the band joined in singing the chorus.
Wayfaring Stranger kept things deep in the gospel tradition as they sang about crossing over the river Jordan rather than the far closer river Fleet. Fire In My Bones has a down at heart bruised feel to it.
They closed with Run Shaker Life that mentions Moses and some other biblical characters as the band took the loud applause of the crowd the guy sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked if they were actually singing about Moses and the bible, when I confirmed they were, he went into a long rant on why bands shouldn't sing about the bible and only sing about things they know about, he seemed quite affronted at having listened to a Christian band, he seemed to have missed the main message that everyone needs some redemption if they have lived a full life no matter what religion they are of if they have no religion at all.
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Next on and far less religious were The Priscillas who are promoting Angela the band's first new single in quite some time, that's out this Friday. They opened with the classic All The Way To Holloway with Jen as always dressed for nighttime and not playing in daylight hours, as this classic Girl Group punk kicked into gear. The next song was full of memories for someone who is always on Jen's mind.
Jimmy In A Dress was good fun and had an extra nudge and wink towards the locals wandering by. The new single Angela was next and having heard it a couple of times already it was guaranteed to be stuck in my head, as it's super catchy, as we find out why she deserves to have a song sung about her.
They then paid homage to all the friends who have gone too soon, Jen sent a message to them all, before they asked When Will They See You Again a question they sort of answered by promoting the bands forthcoming gig at the Hope & Anchor later this week.
Oh Keiko saw Jen hanging off the stage and being the only act this year to use the bollards in front of the stage as a prop. They then shed a Teardrop on a Shangri La's style bruised pop song before closing by getting us all singing along to Can't Help Falling In Love that was a cool close to a great set, it's been too long since I last saw The Priscillas.
We then strolled down to the main stage to catch almost all of Chris Difford's headline set, he was playing in an acoustic trio that opened with a very minimal version of Pulling Mussels From A Shell that had almost everyone in the seats singing along to the chorus.
Tempted was next and in this setting felt a little bit slight. After some very 70's in between song banter they did Fat As A Fiddle about Chris' expanding waistline.
Up The Junction was in places in danger of the audience being louder than the band, as loads of us sang along to one of the Squeeze classic's, that just failed to reach number one on the charts. After some off-color tales of life on the road in the States he did Cowboys Are My Weakness that could be read more than one way.
Goodbye Girl again had a large slice of the crowd singing along to help lift the trio from sounding too bland. Labelled With Love was sung with a cheeky nod and wink before Chris closed with a super long version of Cool For Cats with some messing about, band intros and questions as to what Chris should do while the rest of the band are soloing, at times he came across as rather unreconstructed 70's pop star, who has enough hits to allow us to ignore the off color remarks, as the set came to a close at the end of another good Somers Town Festival.
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