The BBC Introducing Stage at Leeds Festival 2009 opened with three Leeds bands in the first five performances of the day. The City's DINOSAUR PILE-UP (touring in October with THE PIXIES) had already made a roaring start on the NME/Radio 1 Stage. It's clear that Yorkshire is a lot more than just the festival's host these days. The idea of a dedicated emerging talent stage, first introduced at Leeds in 2005 at the instigation of Hull's ALAN RAW has now become a feature at Reading too, and while the BBC seems to have appropriated the management of the show, the power of music from Yorkshire is providing even more of the forward momentum.
The evidence started with the appearance of WONDERSWAN (1) as 12.15, precisely, marked the beginning of 27 hours of music from 34 bands over three days. WONDERSWAN have an impressive collection of sharply sweet slacker tunes that are looking ready to break out into clear daylight any time now. With a debut single "Furrrpile" still to be released (on October 5th), these are very early days. But it is clear that they are growing with every gig and every new tune. Today Michael Watts' louche delivery wanders off stage right and barely comes back. The band are pushing for a big white shimmering noise of guitar distortion, with spikes of sophisticated melody and good song shapes, and they're more or less getting it. They're a band who seem set on occupying their own open ground, littered with plenty of interesting music. The current set seems to me to be first sketches, full of tension and inventiveness, developing as they go.
Once they are done, the trippy mood closes down the hatches for a bit of a storm. CHICKENHAWK (2) do not do slack. They are fierce, tight, loud and very single minded. They play blisteringly creative guitar noise and they have the moves to match. They aren't shy of performing. Robert Stephens hops over the crowd barrier and burrows his way out into the throng, with his radio connection beaming back the riffs to an obligingly large sound system. Poses are struck and necks are whiplashed. The sinewed muscularity of the music is spelt out in body shapes and the crowd are impressed. I was glued to the front for the duration, and made sure I took out my trusted ear protectors for a least the final shuddering number. It's far too exciting to encourage note taking or noticing what the tunes are all called - but there's a new single out on Brew Records and I'm pretty sure they played it's stabbing ferocity, "I Hate This, Do You Like It?" is an odd question but I like their style and I think the answer is Yes.
OUR FOLD (3) Were here last year. Now, with added Aziz Ibrahim on guitar, they stand a little taller and Damien Riley's sneering swagger has more confidence. There's a Manchester brashness to the sound: there's a certainty of the rightness of what they are doing. It's fluent, effective guitar thunder with a strong vocal. I wonder, improvements apart, if their rather ageing style is working against them finding a way into the consciousness of a new young audience? It has to be said that Ibrahim's guitar offers some very slick additions, and that this is where my own attention is drawn. I can hear 60s throwback - not Gallagher-filtered Beatles this time, but direct Hendrix. Perhaps the demise of Oasis offers an opportunity to plunder some cultural space with a new approach?. Or maybe it's no more that the end of a particular way of doing rock and roll. On that uncertain basis it would be 50/50 for Our Fold's future.
BRITISH INTELLIGENCE (4) are a great concept - tried more than once - offering straight-ahead fat-kid goatee rock with edgy rappers spitting out the narrative and making the street moves. They look good and they sound good. Guitarist/producer Steve Lavers gets a big cheesy solo at one point. It's all great fun. The climax is their big single "Street Fight" with the head-on chorus "You don't wanna die ... in a street fight". But for all the boxes ticked, I still get a strong sense of a band formed out of a clear plan, using rather than living out of a genuine experience. They have an air of pro musicians showing raw kids how to play the licks and make the moves. Jay Aldridge, pro or not, has real authority in his vocal delivery. Danny Bounce mixes in the decks and effects. Steve Wilson is a charismatic drummer, Leon Aldridge puts in a second vocal and Tim Jackson plays very good bass.
As the afternoon rolls on, Leeds comes on stage again, with very new band ELLEN AND THE ESCAPADES (5). There is a short delay for a misbehaving guitar replacement. (It lets Ellen down again later and leads to a shortening of the set.) The band (guitar, bass, drums, keyboard) and the crowd smile protectively. Ellen Smith smiles back, and looks up shyly. The atmosphere warms. Things start properly with "Preying on Your Mind" that I haven't heard before. All the songs have classic lines and strong country tunes - the very kind that call out for oak-matured musicians to play solid supportive parts. Ellen Smith has a rich and distinctive voice that combines fragility and strength. She sings with a natural grace that needs no affectation and which gets no intrusion from the exaggerated warbles of current fashion. "Without You", (the chirpy and highly recognisable single) "This Ace I've Burned", "Coming Back Home to You" and "Nothing to Lose" comprise the very strong set. The current B side "Run", a languid pedal steel sort of song, and my personal favourite, isn't there. But that's just a mark of how strong the repertoire already is.
Sarah Tanat Jones - lead vocals and drums, Mikey Morrison - guitar and vocals and Rob Howell - bass and vocals, are the COME ON GANG (6) from Edinburgh. They look and sound perkier and brasher than Sarah's semi-twee vocal lines would lead you to expect. The band sound is spiky and fuzzy, describing life in a city far away. It could be Edinburgh, Brighton or, indeed Leicester. But I can also detect a groundswell of ancient Scottish ballads about drownings and unnatural graves. (I might be alone on this, but you'll just have to trust me). On the chirpier side there is a balancing hint of ceilidh with cowbell for the post punk dancefloor as well. "Spinning Room" is a bouncy finish that confirms COME ON GANG's inherently cheerful Scots hedonism.
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A drummer, two bass players and a sequencer called NOT SQUARES (7) are well outside the normal Leeds Festival daytime range. This is good. Speed drumming and basses locked tight makes everything possible. But is anyone dancing? Is it Hot Chip for speed metal fans? Nearly. 4.30 in the afternoon outdoors in the sunshine isn't their natural habitat but they are making a decent fist of it. As a music buff I'm getting excited by the drummers speed and variations but, being dance music, for dancing, it doesn't develop or offer much to take back home. Distinguishing between tracks isn't straightforward either. Last year we had RAZMATAZ LORRY EXCITEMENT to take up the dance flag and drag the ravers off the grass and onto their feet. This was nearly there, demonstration quality dance music from Belfast, waiting for a discerning audience that didn't quite show up.
RULING CLASS (8) are a five piece London/Swedish band with Stone Roses influence, good hair, smart casual clothes and shades playing note-perfect baggy music. The tunes are OK, the lead guitar chimes nicely, a rhythm guitar fills it out well. The template is steady mood music for feeling cool and liberated, but it makes no dent on my organic iPod. The brain is fully charged but this stuff isn't going in. Something has to be communicated, with or around the music, and this just seems sterile, I can't hear or see anything emotional or intellectual to fix on.
With SOFT TOY EMERGENCY (9) there is plenty going on. Dance rhythms, hard-edged female vocals, bass, drums, guitar, synth and no surnames. It's Liverpudlians doing Holyoaks grade sociodrama lyrics. It's flashy, shallow, hooky and loads of fun. Like all the best candyfloss it reaches the point when you want to give the last twirl away. Enough is enough - and while some people like a lot more than others the point of disappointed expectation arrives eventually. Can indie and pop factory fuse? Is Little Boots doing well? Are any of SOFT TOY EMERGENCY's target demographic here at Leeds Festival? Is this Steve Lamacq's Sheena Easton moment? So many questions.
All around Britain there are decent musicians who can make a decent stab at a song about love, regret, time passing and so on. And many can play well enough to make a local audience happy for part of their evening. HORSE GUARDS PARADE (10) come on stage like a bunch of old friends who play the local pubs from time to time and sit around a beer together talking about guitars, Gram Parsons and gigs they went to when they were younger. But it doesn't take off for me, and the gentleness of one or two of their pleasant folksy Myspace tracks are a bit lost in a bigger meat and potatoes soft rock band sound, with whole verses of OK guitar solo and a slightly uninterested keyboard player who wears what looks like a tweed fishing hat.
TO THE BONES (11) definitely look like a menacing guitar band with the long black coats and long black hair that you would not see pushing a trolley in B&Q. That much, they have conquered before they even start. If this is all show, smoke and mirrors, artfully constructed to make the naieve heart tremble and the innocent blood pump, we are doing fine so far. It's an intermediate time of the early evening with most of the Festival crowd streaming off to the best spots from which to see PRODIGY and ARCTIC MONKEYS. But a decent looking crowd has gathered for Bolton's sleazy riffmongers. The racket they make is satisfactorily messy, angry, tighlty played and macho. There are some hooks in there too, and some vampire howling. Angular metal goth? The red stage lights give Reppion (aka Rhys.G.Bradley) a suitably demonic appearance and the band do the menace with a credible leer. It isn't as scary as scary now needs to be to raise a genuine shudder, but the band are making the effort and it sounds pretty loud and ballsy. People do like a bit of a show.
After a run of several emulators PUNCH & THE APOSTLES (12) make my day by finishing the night with magnificent originality and verve. Be Bop Dada, Zappa, Beefheart, The Bonzos, Moondog, Screaming Jay Hawkins ... ? Somewhere over there with a bit of Music College, pop addiction, Billy Jenkins and Ivor Cutler chopped up, shaken and spilt in glittering fragments all over the stage. There are starts and stops (and the reverse) and swerves, exceptional timing, thrilling bursts of virtuosity and lots of plainly perverse madness, yelps of the frustration at the impossibility of doing, and Mark E. Smith impersonations. For a start. The music and the ideas pour out furiously and gloriously. If BBC Introducing is about unearthing new music, then HOORAY, it has worked, come up trumps, succeeded, hit the snail on the head and fired the bullet of enthusiasm into the bloodless corpse of aesthetic apathy. PUNCH & THE APOSTLES we salute you. There were few people to greet you tonight and you had come, it seems, from the part of Scotland called Glasgow. But your sonic arrival brought a whirlwind of hyperactive eccentrics hopping and cart wheeling to the stage - like giant abnormal moths to a distant flame of nurturing madness.
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