Glastonbury Festival

[m_thomp]

Slightly over a week since the event, but to survive a mud war of attrition and survive unharmed (apart from a cold) is pretty brave, and I'm the bravest soldier of them all (at least in my mum's eyes). There were, as usual, a host of bands and performers to be enjoyed and this is the lowdown:

 

=================================================================

 

Pear cider, goat curry and trench foot: welcome back Glasto, we've missed you

 

In 2007 The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing arts had its biggest ever capacity since the introduction of the so-called "Superfence", with 177,500 tickets sold, an increase of 27,500 from the last festival in 2005.

 

In its year off Glastonbury has gone through quite a few changes. The Park, the new Emily Eavis-organised area of the festival, is designed to provide additional stages and watering holes and to help absorb the additional capacity on site. And the once-mythical Lost Vagueness is no longer lost: it's shown on maps and offers its heritage of bohemia and sauce quite wantonly; once a word-of-mouth discovery, it is now self-proclaimed and advertised along its own perimeter hedges. It has a rival too - Trash City, "an intergalactic red-light district where space pirates, bootleggers, illegal aliens and all the scum of the universe can come to party the night away". Just so you know.

 

Other less trumpeted perennials remain: the Mexican cheers still sweep the camping fields and beyond, as if to advertise how much fun everyone is having, or expected to have; the this-joke's-not-worn-thin-yet bellowing of 'Bollocks!' or the slightly more inventive 'Dan!' still get an airing on the half-hour, every half-hour to the pleasure of all but most.

 

Glastonbury does, however, have a new craze this year, and it's that of guerilla graffiti. Well publicised for 2007 was the appearance of a new installation by subterranean artist Banksy: his Eavis-sanctioned Sanitation Stonehenge stood proudly next to the Stone Circle. But there was a far more renegade and covert graffiti operation in force as teenage urban response units rampantly also smeared their tags in double quick time on any available space. Mostly portaloos. Whilst they're in use. So, after you've left a brown stripe on the plastic bowl, open the door to expect a green one from an aerosol across your face.

 

You could spend the entire weekend exploring all of this and more; or carving yourself a milking stool to stow away in your shed back in suburbia; watching cabaret and circus acts or witnessing the likes of comic Bill Bailey or ranty left wing poet Atilla the Stockbroker. Let's not forget the music, though - this year Glastonbury hosted a diverse range of artists and bands from big names like The Who and Arctic Monkeys on the Pyramid stage to the Twisted Ear postman's cousin playing on the bandstand (true) at some obscure time of day.

 

But is Glasto the jewel in the UK festival calendar's crown or a Dunkirk-spirit fostering endurance event? Well, that depends on your perspective. And the weather. And this year, we all know that the skies opened. A lot. And it was muddy. A lot. So much so, the brown stuff looked (but did not smell) nice enough to eat - chocolate fudge, anyone? - and most festivalgoers were shattered by the end of the weekend. But it's a bit like giving birth or running a marathon (half your intrepid team of reporters has achieved at least one of these feats, so we say this with utmost authority) and after a while, the pain fades and only happy memories remain. And within this feature lie some of ours: this is Glastonbury 2007, as witnessed by Twisted Ear.

 

Friday

 

Squally proggy guitars and the increasing menace of the rain as it gets heavier and heavier (and you thought we were due a nice one this year?) makes The Earlies' Friday afternoon slot a lot more dramatic than it really has a right to be and - unlike some of the festival's bigger 'stars' - they have a huge, swirling sound that forces the gathering gloom into submission, allowing the crowd to forget that the weather is crap and the mud is swelling.

 

So it is with gritted teeth and steely determination that they transcend the elements, shifting from ambience to brilliance in a single swoop with One Of Us Is Dead. They look like history teachers gone native, or the Hairy Bikers, but with their pan-Atlantic personnel they manage to bend Uncut-friendly Americana towards a modern take on psychedelia, embodied particularly with No Love In Your Heart and Bad Is As Bad Does.

 

It seems ludicrous to be stood in a field like this, black clouds gathering and mud splashed all over your clothes, but we're English and this is Glastonbury: we queue, we grin and bear it and we just laugh at rain bouncing off the ground so hard it threatens to hit you in the face.

 

It's part way through the techno-clatter backing track of Slow Life's introduction that Super Furry Animals take to the Other Stage. They're an unassuming bunch for whom Gruff Rhys, in his casual clothing writ large, epitomises all that is good about the pop-rock mavericks: whether he's loping about stage during the outro to Slow Life, looking like Ian Brown had he joined the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers rather than The Stone Roses; spearheading a jangly homage to Big Star (it was MC Hammer last time!) on Northern Lites or munching crisps during the Hawkwind-gone-death-metal of Receptacle For The Respectable. Rhys keeps a quiet but confident countenance which is markedly different to that of the loud(speaker) bravado of their kindred spirits The Flaming Lips, and is something that makes them and their back catalogue's multi-layered hits all the more endearing.

 

Tracks from new album Hey Venus! are bounced through quickly, the sneeze-and-you'll-miss-it Status Quo shapeage of The Gateway Song and the Spector rumble of Runaway slotting neatly alongside robo-toned soul of Juxtaposed With U and God! Show Me Magic's manic spirit. If there is a complaint, though, it's that these songs, along with other newie Show Your Hand, expose SFA's fondness for having choruses that rely solely on repeating the song's title. This would grate if they weren't as catchy as fuck, and, as the set closer triumphantly spells out, it's not something that The Man, or anyone, can be bothered about.

 

There's a small lake forming outside the John Peel Tent and several large puddles inside it, but it doesn't dampen The New Pornographers' euphoric guitar pop any. Minus Neko Case and Dan Bejar they may be, but they still make the stage look cramped as they rush headlong into Electric Version, the title track from their second album. They remain something of a curiosity outside their native Canada (where they're saddled with the 'supergroup' tag, something band leader AC Newman reportedly hates) but the tent is busy nevertheless and it's not because of the rain, which has (finally!) stopped (temporarily!). It even gets a little bit sunny outside, ever so briefly, but the crowd sticks around because this is shameless fun, with boy-girl harmonies and power-pop chords and sing-along choruses and all that stuff that sounds like it really ought to be quite unremarkable but which isn't somehow.

 

They rattle through some of the best bits of their previous albums and play a couple from their forthcoming longplayer Challengers (My Rights Versus Yours, Mutiny, I Promise You) before closing with Sing Me Spanish Techno and Bleeding Heart Show, which has everyone - even those who don't know who on earth The New Pornographers are - joining in the harmonies at the end. This band is as intoxicating as pear cider and will give you an equally silly grin.

 

A bit like your big sister or the babysitter who lets you stay up for too long eating chocolate, Martha Wainwright has an air of benign mischief that endears her to the healthy crowd that has gathered around the Park Stage. This new area of Glastonbury, curated by Emily Eavis, is a lovely addition to the festival, and although it becomes increasingly treacherous and slippery throughout the weekend, on Friday afternoon when the sun is (almost) out and people have dry straw to stand on it is an intimate rural idyll, a world away from the large crowds at the Pyramid and Other stages.

 

Glastonbury is always full of special moments and Martha's set turns out to be one of the best of the weekend: there is something about The Park, and her approach as a performer, that makes it feel very communal - she banters with the crowd, smoking a joint someone has thrown onstage for her and asking her cameraman to retrieve a beer she has left backstage. She is natural and likeable and messes up on Factory but nobody really minds, and it only adds to the easy atmosphere; this is how summer festivals are supposed to be and sometimes, the vastness of the Pyramid Stage and the distance between the musicians and the crowd can detract from that. It's different here and Martha Wainwright can see the face of everyone in the crowd as she plays a mix of old and new songs, and although everybody's itching to hear her sweary anthem Bloody Motherfucking Asshole, it is a new song, Jesus and Mary, that is the highlight; it involves audience participation to the silliest and most glorious degree and you just can't help but smile.

 

Apparently, Rufus Wainwright and his band are dressed in stripes to represent America - good and bad - but actually, as he saunters onto the Other Stage he looks a little bit like Andy Pandy, or maybe a strawberry humbug, if such a thing existed. Still, the garb suits this most theatrical of performers down to the ground; most of this evening's set is culled from his fabulously over-the-top new album Release The Stars, though he does throw in a couple of numbers (14th Street and Art Teacher) from 2005's Want One and Want Two. It's as dramatic as you'd expect: Between My Legs is irresistibly sleazy and Slideshow is operatic, bombastic, indulgent - but Rufus can do humility as well, and the unadorned cover of Hallelujah, which he sings with his sister Martha, is one of the best moments of the set: it's funny how a superlative musical moment can make you forget the fact that you're up to your ankles in effluent (probably: the toilets near the Other Stage have never been the most hygienic) and the fact that Martha fluffs her lines.

 

It seems as though Hallelujah will be the set closer until Rufus strides back onstage in a dressing gown, taking it off to reveal full drag, put on some lipstick and sing Judy Garland's Get Happy. The sound has suddenly become atrocious - as if it had been recorded and played through the speakers on someone's mobile phone - so he stops and restarts it. It doesn't actually sound any better the second time around, but nobody seems to mind, because this is Glastonbury and we're British, etc.

 

It's obligatory, y'know, to say that you think Arcade Fire are great. To utter anything else has dire repercussions for your muso cred, even if you do secretly think that actually, they're not beyond criticism. There were massive expectations for Win Butler and his crew as they took on the almost-headlining slot on the Other Stage, and - well - they fail, quite spectacularly, to deliver. In fact, Arcade Fire have gone drum and bass. No, really - that's all you can hear: drum and bass.

 

It's a crying shame: they're big on bombast but their delivery is less than imaginative. The band members - and there are a lot of them, don't forget - look like they're doing something, but to these ears they may as well be backstage keeping warm with a cup of Bovril as they play guitars you can't hear and brass that must be hypersonic, audible only to dogs and dolphins. I mean, really - why write or even bother to perform a song as massive and apocalyptic as Intervention if you can't get the sound mix right, rendering it no more stirring than something overheard from someone else's personal stereo?

 

Husband and wife pair Win Butler and Regine Chassagne do appear to be singing their hearts out, but this is like watching TV with the sound turned down, except Arcade Fire don't have any subtitles. Only with the final five songs do they manage to crank things into gear, and it's one of the big letdowns of this festival because when this band gets it right their live shows are almost religious in the emotional heights they reach. He might not be naked, but the Emperor is wearing very little tonight.

 

Where there's muck, there's brass. There's plenty of muck about, and for Bjork there's a huge brass section decked out in multi-coloured robes - The Polyphonic Spree with talent, if you like. But then this is Bjork, and they are just one element in tonight's list of onstage companions, the rest comprising of an eclectic array of turns: laptop boffins, a drummer tapping away on some very un-drum-like shapes, Toumani Diabante, a Vangelis-esque keybaord maestro and a radioactive coffee table (more of which later). Y'see, Bjork don't do traditional.

 

What of the lady herself? She is simply unstoppable tonight, expounding energy with scampering and shadow boxing that would frighten a greyhound. Her manner, movement and appearance is that of Daniel La Russo in the garb of Wicket the Warrior, and she's the unshakable focus of everyone's attention. That would be enough, but there's also the voice: tender feline naiviety yet tenaciously volatile and determined - the kitten backed into a corner.

 

Taking the jewels from Volta and laying them alongside a huge selection from her back catalogue, what's inspiring is that all the chart monsters (Human Behaviour, It's Oh So Quiet, Big Time Sensuality and Violently Happy) are rightly passed over in favour of the cerebral and intensely emotional material from her hidden place (All Is Full Of Love, Bachelorette, Hunter). It's simple but, like the lady herself, extremely intoxicating: how could you not gravitate towards someone who wishes you a 'Happy Summer Solstice'?

 

Hyperballad kicks off the triumvirate of songs to close the set and the radioactive coffee table uses the power of chess pieces to manipulate some dirty electro funk and punishing, almost terrifying, techno (Pluto). It's the vital detonation that, even with the speakers to the right of the stage conceding defeat, ensures a festival victory by Bjork for all to admire. Checkmate.

 

===================================================================

 

For Saturday and Sunday to read reviews of Brakes, The Bees, Lily Allen, Editors, Iggy & The Stooges, The Killers, Tinariwen, Beirut, Adem, The Go! Team, The Who and Chemical Brothers, as well as the all important mud-stained pictures, then let your fingers do the walking and click the mouse over here:

 

http://www.twistedear.com/index.php?option...1&Itemid=29

 

Ithankyou.