BLACKLISTERS (13) tore onto the stage and showed what a bit of local madness can do. At 12 noon on Saturday vocalist Billy Blister hurled himself, his emotional state and his shouting screaming voice, metaphorically and literally into the audience and they loved it, him and the band. Musically, BLACKLISTERS might not be the most extreme, original or technically brilliant band (very good nonetheless). But they did connect directly with the audience and got undivided attention for what they were doing for every one of the allowed 25 minutes. The shame is that such a performance was pushed off the BBC TV scheduling by some rather duller bands in the middle of today’s programme.
KVELERTAK (14), from Norway, followed them with a bravura horns and devils show of triple guitar metal mayhem. (Three different Gibsons). Every song was treated to full throttle rock moves, raw riffing drama and howled vocals. A band that can carry off the best clichés of rock and still look like they really mean are going to get anybody pumped up and excited. When their dust had settled it was only ten past one and people were feeling that they had had a great day of thrilling bands. KVELERTAK’S huge tattooed bear of a front man, Erlend Hjelvik, was some kind of Norse god to us all, and probably one of the bad ones.
RUNAROUND KIDS (15) and their huge following gave another object lesson in what an Introducing Stage band should be like. George Garthwaite, with his fascinatingly re-engineered left leg is clearly a man of some dark humour. The band’s rattling sound included cute guitar playing, frantic, well-packed lyrics and all the other good things passed on by Wombats and their contemporary ilk. The crowd was very large and cheered like mad for a fine example of nice kid with specs and guitar pop rock.
Making their solemn entrances one at a time, PEERS (16) were two guitars with bass and drums from Berkshire. The opening was on the heavy side, but things settled down into some twinkly shoegazing with threads of yearning. Very young, they are a bit unsteady and the singing wandered off key. It’s hard to know why such a band were picked to play this stage. They are very young – but so are many beginner, slightly out of tune bands without any strong material or distinctive sound.
NERVES (17) from Sheffield were not a great improvement. Doomy, derivative and bit dull they at least have a charismatic-looking front man. His 1966 Dylan impersonation was pretty cool. (I thought so anyway). The rest of the band stuck to their anonymous street clothes and generally avoided eye-contact. Thudding drums, fuzzy reverb and spacey guitar chord sequences sought sensation but aroused none in my corner of the crowd.
WILDER (18) from Bristol also did the staggered entry thing. They were young and fresh looking and sounded only a good song away from being a very good band. A dance vibe was the main thing with Korg riffs and plenty of cowbell. A fairly spread-out crowd was absorbed and attentive.
But the BBC Introducing Stage was only illuminated for a short span, and Dublin’s THE BRILLIANT THINGS (19) returned me to the slightly downbeat mood that had set in after the three opening bands had made such a good start. They looked and sounded like a decent function band. They threw a fair copy of “Dreaming” from the Blondie song book into an otherwise mundane set of songs. Some crystal clear harmonies (some on backing track?) were a bonus. Singer Marie Junior commanded centre stage with a strong voice and huge blue skirt. The sun shone and people were drawn to the stage.
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Wales was high on Saturday’s agenda. Aberdare’s contribution was REAPER IN SICILY (20). They played the basic punk chords and bass lines of a thousand Tuesday nights in a hundred cities, with emo styling, and a couple of close-knitted hats. They played with enthusiasm, a good attacking dynamic and a bright clear voice. A shouted call-response chorus engaged the crowd successfully. I guess this is another band who do all the right things for their local audience, but who suddenly look a bit mundane in the anonymous glare of a distant festival. I remembered a song title “Disco Disco”, but no songs as such.
EXIT INTERNATIONAL (21)came from Cardiff with two bass guitars and a drummer. Aggressive, pummelling rock with shouty vocals was the result. The parked-on-the-grass audience were shaken to their feet, as if ants or a minor earthquake had disturbed their afternoon. The novelty of two bass guitars was, however, the only one – the songs were otherwise made of the same old building block staples of head banging and moshing incitement. But it was loud and proud.
LAFARO (22) had come from Belfast with tales of ferries, Buckfast and Jaegermeister. They gradually established their own character as true sons of that part of Belfast where a man can get kneecapped for running a loan-shark racket on the estate where he lives. LAFARO were rough and tough and (eventually) engaging. A bit like meat and potato pie – it was plain fare, but worth shovelling down for the nutritious content. By the end I felt that I had met some really interesting, not necessarily lovable, real people. Not many bands achieved that degree of connection on Saturday.
Southend’s REDTRACK (23) wore black and white livery. They played at a furious tempo with a punchy, sharp vocal delivery in the garage rock style that nearly established itself in the 80s. Enunciation, harmony and acidic lyrics worked well for me. Lines like “One more man, one more kiss, one more number in her contact book” was the sort of thing: tales of young adult social life in a crazy world. One song introduced a light reggae shuffle without making an issue of it - accepting the cultural mix as normal. This was small-scale absorbing stuff, well received by an interested audience.
Wales had been theme of the day – Wrexham showed up as top of the bill with the very dull-looking GALLOPS (24). Some were clearly overjoyed at the musical qualities, but the heads down no-stage-show-at-all approach left me bored and cold. A live (excellent) drummer behind a guitar and electro set-up seemed to me to be doing far too much work to allow the dance vibe to reach any of the limbs I might use for dancing. Their final tune, nevertheless, did have more of the psychotropic glints and beats that the setup could have delivered. Caribou did a much stronger version from the Festival Republic Stage immediately afterwards, without the manic drumming.
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