Leeds 2009 Day 3

In a valiant effort to open a much-needed discussion with us muggles about the state of the music industry, Sunday at Leeds opened with two hours of ‘Instigate Debate’. Ten questions were distributed around the sitting audience to be put to a panel featuring the ubiquitous Jon McClure of Reverend And The Makers, Jamie Fullerton from NME, and Clint Boon of Xfm Manchester. The questions, ranging from ‘Are gig tickets too expensive?’ and ‘Would The Clash or The Libertines ever have made it in today’s industry?’ required some serious thought, resulting in several semi-drunken, semi-sensible outburst from the crowd. But it was McClure who stole the show, turning every question into a mini advert for his oh-so-worthy musical outings. Shush now, young man, and let the rest of us have a say.

It was The Horrors, later on in the afternoon, that proved substance will take you a lot further in life than a loud mouth and a few nice outfits. Their NME/Radio 1 Stage set blew doubters out the arena with new tracks like ‘A Sea Within A Sea’ and reinvented old ones, bolstered by the band’s more confident sound. The struggle with noise-laden records is often in bringing them to a live setting, but The Horrors managed admirably.

The Big Pink, by contrast, nearly fell on their arse with a lacklustre, rambling set of very little energy, failing to recreate any of the buzz surrounding new album ‘A Brief History Of Love’ in the Festival Republic tent. At one point the whole show looked set to implode as the music was replaced by a heated discussion between vocalist Robbie Furze and drummer Akiki Matsuura, presumably about the next song on the setlist. Onlookers stayed politely until the end, but those yet to be convinced by The Big Pink’s big sound are unlikely to be satiated that performance.

Jamie T entertained in a packed out set mid-afternoon, punters struggling for a space in the cavernous NME/Radio 1 tent. His set erred almost on pantomime, the south London wunderkind mustering sing-a-longs and call and responses with all his might. And then, as he drew to a close and everyone present trekked over to see Kings Of Leon on the mainstage, the carnage started. Muddy fields had prompted the organisers to make the festival one-way, and suddenly hundreds of festival-goers found themselves trapped and suffocating in a massive crush to get into the main arena. It was terrifying and frankly could have been fatal – that security were no where to be seen and KOL carried on regardless shows Leeds up as the corporately organised riot for which it has become reknown.

And for what? Kings Of Leon’s set was a disaster of wet stadium rock, a messianic Caleb Followill rambling endlessly about the band’s success and promising fans to return from the US next year with the best album the band have ever made. “Every song I wrote, I thought of England,” he gushed, before launching into the lifeless rock-by-numbers that is ‘Reverie’ and ‘Use Somebody’. Even old tracks ‘Red Morning Light’, ‘Four Kicks’ and ‘Charmer’ seemed devoid of the grit and guts that once made them so special. At the back, watching the circus, early fans felt betrayed. Yet the word on everyone’s lips was that this was the gig of the weekend, the best performance of the band’s career – just proves, if you’re going to sell out, you might as well do it properly. And if the thousand-strong crowd enraptured by this performance are anything to go by, KOL have done it very successfully indeed.

Leeds 2009 Day 2

Leeds this year was blessed with one of those most British of bank holidays, where the clouds bluster past at the rate of knots and you’re one minute set for sunbathing and the next scrabbling for wellies and waterproofs.

The changing seasons were nowhere better demonstrated than on the miserable chops of one Charlie Fink, Noah And The Whale frontman, who’s suffered in the last week from a horribly embarrassingly personal interview with the Guardian in which he waxed lyrical about new album ‘The First Days Of Spring’ being all about his break up with Laura Marling. Marling isn’t there for the Leeds show, and neither is any other female backing vocalist, a conspicuous omission after their prominence on the band’s debut. Instead the set is dark and electric, Fink’s stubble and furrowed brow a constant reminder that this is no long the happy-clappy band that gave us ‘5 Years Time’.

In sharp contrast, The XX manage subdued miserablisms so restrained and self-contained that they crawl under the skin. The stark, unharmonised melodies of vocalists Oliver Sims and Romy Madley Croft whisper outwards throughout the tent and raucous, neon-faced kids stand quietly in awe at such unexpected and unusual subtlety. Meanwhile, in a triumph of street team PR, roaming promoters hand out t-shirts and badges for free, and suddenly giant white X’s brand every other torso in sight.

Broken Records smash all subtlety out the water with their string flanked Scottish folk. A regular at many a festival this summer, their infectious jigging and cleverly orchestrated songs gather quite a crowd. It’s a well-deserved success that can only augment as the year draws on.

Now, there was a time when Brooklyn’s Yeah Yeah Yeahs had bite and guile to spare – a rip-roaring mess of distortion and screeching, furious vocals to make your stomach turn and the whites of your eyes bulge. And while ‘It’s Blitz’ was a very lovely slice of disco – ten points for diversity, guys – where was the hacked up guitar riffs, the sawn off Zinner magic, that made earlier stuff so striking? New sources show that it may have been hiding in an amp on the mainstage at Leeds, just waiting to blow the socks off the assembled festival-goers in 2009. This was a stormer of a set including ‘Black Tongue’, ‘Rich’, ‘Cheated Hearts’ and a mesmerisingly well-executed acoustic version of ‘Maps’ alongside the new stuff. It was all perfect – vocals, pacing, guitars and, of course, delivery from the inimitable Miss O.

A Bloc Party interlude – three years on the trot at Leeds and still holding out for that headline slot – preceded the moment everyone had been waiting for: Radiohead. Well, everyone apart from the screaming hoards of girls who trotted off to see La Roux. Two hours passed in moments as Radiohead set the bar higher than ever. Their set was a proper mix of all seven of their albums, from the lesser known ‘Wolf At The Door’ and ‘Gloaming’, right through to anthems ‘Idiotheque’ and ‘Just’, finishing with the cinematic ‘Everything In Its Right Place’.

It was musicially flawless, Thom Yorke’s vocal so well-timed and glorious that it could have been pre-recorded. Depite this, Yorke revealed to a photographer straight after the gig that he wasn’t happy with his performance at all, perhaps due to his slightly squiffy banter between songs, where he once asked Johnny Greenwood for the chords to new song ‘These Are My Twisted Words’. A perfectionist, no less – the rest of us were left speechless.

Leeds 2009 Day 1

Ah, Leeds. Where else would you find thousands of overdressed teenagers battling mud and queues to spend all of their pocket money on a tiny tray of chips and a paper cup of lager to the soundtrack of hundreds of crappy middling pop-punk bands?

Alright, it’s not all that bad. Those arriving early enough on Thursday and Friday morning caught a glimpse of the festival arena pre-carnage – a grassy, neon-lit circus of a festival site, all fairground rides and burger stands. Overcrowded sets from Wild Beasts and Blood Red Shoes attempted to entertain the early birds on Thursday night, but with so many people at the tiny BBC Introducing stage, it was impossible to catch a glimpse of the bands, let alone hear them properly.

Friday lunchtime heralded the start of the festival proper, just a red ribbon and a start line short of a race to narcotic oblivion. Newcastle’s Detroit Social Club did little to raise the pulse on the Festival Republic stage, sounding too much of a hotch-potch of Elbow and dad rock to make waves.

It was a special guest appearance – one of those secret gigs that everyone who wasn’t there kicks themselves for the whole weekend afterwards – that really set off Leeds 2009. Josh Homme, John Paul Jones and Dave Grohl turned up on the NME/Radio 1 Stage as Them Crooked Vultures, the QOTSA/Zepplin/Foo Fighters hybrid also featuring guitarist Alain Johannes. Homme should supposedly have played with Eagles Of Death Metal, the band he formed with guitarist Jesse Hughes, on the main stage that very day, but was apparently saving all his energy for the ‘Vultures, whose epic set finished with ‘New Fang’ and ‘Nobody Loves Me (And Neither Do I)’.

Later that day The Maccabees snatched the very same limelight for a packed out set to hundreds of punters, igniting a huge dance off with a mix of new and old material. Even Orlando looked to be enjoying himself as people jostled for a space in the massive tent.

Meanwhile things were heating up on the main stage for Friday’s headliners. Prodigy cemented themselves as undisputed kings of British rave, attracting a crowd that moshed right up to the sound desk and beyond. They mixed old classics ‘Firestarter’ and ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ with newer material from Invaders Must Die, never once letting up on intensity.

There was much speculation as to the direction that Arctic Monkeys would take before they hit the main stage – and while sceptics were momentarily silenced as Alex Turner entered with dark glasses, leather and a swagger, the ensuing set violently divided fans. Much has been made of Turner’s drunkenness, austerity and lack of chatter on the night, but the bottom line has to be that this was a set constructed to reinvent a band bored of the relentless smalltown louts turning Arctic Monkeys gigs into hooligan affairs (many of whom found apt accommodation in the kindly branded ‘Relentless’ tent a little later).

A month in the desert has transformed this band into one of depth and distinction – so much so that even old favourites ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ and closer ‘505’ came off darker and more accomplished than ever before. It’s unsurprising that the indie-pop plaudits were pissed off. It takes courage to slap thousands of fans in the face with the cold water of a new musical direction (no wonder Turner took to the bottle before the stage), but ultimately, it’s what’s required for a band to keep the cogs turning, the kids guessing, and their career alive. What’s more, the hoards of fans word perfect on new tracks like ‘Crying Lightning’ and ‘Propeller’ prove that there’s more than a little on ‘Humbug’ to get at, should the critics open their ears before their mouths.

Leeds Festival: Day 3

Sunday 24th August 2008

British Sea Power is the perfect start to a Sunday at Leeds. Their eccentric and elusive media personality quickly becomes irrelevant in the face of a set composed almost entirely of new material from their 2008 LP ‘Do You Like Rock Music?’ as they push forward into the future with carefully pieced together musical soundspheres of the most consuming and absorbing variety. The Brighton four-piece are unhurried and unassuming, making no attempt to crowd-please with theatrics or musical acrobatics. They come off best in prolonged intros and outros that drift and swell into the blue skies of the early festival day.

Mystery Jets follow the seamless, urban-inspired dramatics of Santogold a little later on the Radio 1 stage. Having played Reading the day before, they are obviously a little worse for wear, and arrive twenty minutes late, only leaving them time for a fraction of their set. Just at the Eel Pie Island pop-innovators are about to launch into sing-a-long favourite ‘Two Doors Down’, they are informed that they’ve run out of time. It looks for a moment like it might all kick off, with guitarist William Rees verbally abusing the festival organisers and then smashing up his microphone stand in disappointed protest, but the Leeds crowd doesn’t really seem that bothered, save for a smattering of token booing and bottling of onstage security. It’s a shame, but Mystery Jets with their self-conscious candy-coloured suits and shamelessly melodic pop are more of a Reading band anyway.

For the rest of the afternoon we make like one should at Leeds and trudge around the arena swilling warm lager with no where to sit, since the whole field is now a waterlogged muddy pitch, while mediocre indie from We Are Scientists and Dirty Pretty Things reverberates in the warm air.

Just before seven, The Raconteurs emerge, and it suddenly becomes apparent just quite how ahead of the game Brandon and Jack really are in comparison to their main stage predecessors. Their set has evolved over their summer festival appearances to become refined to the point of perfection. They slip between ‘Old Enough’ and ‘Broken Boy Soldier’ with an astounding drumming interlude that reveals the musicians behind the frontmen to be as outstanding as their more famous bandmates. Jack White is more solemn than on any other occasion this summer, especially during the prolonged piano riff of ‘You Don’t Understand Me’, yet the sound that emanates from Leeds’ dodgy speakers is more ferocious and convincing than ever. They are faux-humble, White muttering “We have one more song, then we’ll be out of your way,” before finishing on ‘Salute Your Solution’, privy to their own incomparable musical ability. Easily the highlight of the whole weekend, The Raconteurs are the kind of band that make you feel lucky just to have seen them play, as though a little bit of their greatness might just be contagious.

Bloc Party can’t match this musically, but they are on home turf and have happily managed to fill every inch of the hill infront of the main stage with an alcoholically-lubricated crowd of dry and well-disposed punters, ready to give the last of the British acts at the festival a proper reception. Kele is obviously a little bit drunk, but it in no way affects his delivery, instead adding to the general jubilant sentiment as they make their way through a well-paced, hour-long set that includes some new material. Though still indelibly in the same Bloc Party vein, added samples and electronic effects enhance their well-established trademark sound on the new tracks, which is promising for new album ‘Intimacy’. Towards the end of the set, however, Kele says that the gig could be the band’s last live performance for a while, raising questions as to how they plan to promote the new stuff.

For those that would rather hack off their own ears with a rusty penknife than watch The Killers close the festival, there is very little else to do. We try The Manic Street Preachers, quickly get bored, and then, with nowhere to sit and nothing to do except watch kids get high on old fairground rides and narcotics, take solace in the campsite and a bottle of whisky with friends, where aerosol cans and flares illuminate tired faces around makeshift campfires. It seems the only thing to do at Leeds, a lot of the time. As other weekenders move in with fancy organic food, hand-tailored decorations and more home-comforts, it remains to be seen how much longer Leeds can hold its own, especially if they don’t sort out the basics in sound quality and security. But then, for those that want nothing more than to get smashed and smash things, it would be hard to imagine Leeds any other way.

Leeds Festival: Day 2

Saturday 23rd August 2008


It’s a young crowd that make it out of the campsite in time for Dizzee Rascal at 2pm, probably because they’re the only ones with enough hungover resilience to drag themselves though the foot-deep muddy ditches that have formed a moat in front of the arena entrance, or maybe because Dizzee and Leeds go together like, well, an east London grime artist at a luke-warm Tuborg-swilling Yorkshire festival. There’s a large amount of tongue-in-cheek bouncing along in the crowd, especially for ‘Fix Up Look Sharp’, as is to be expected, but the rest of the set is largely spurious fodder.

Over at the Lock-Up Stage Frank Turner is proving himself as Dizzee’s cultural antithesis. His band have stepped straight out of Napoleon Dynamite: the guitarist is visibly terrified by the crowd before him while the bassist attempts nonchalance by leaning on an amp, looking every inch like a mathematics lecturer. The keyboardist is just a mass of hair on a stool. And the music is almost unbearably cheesy in the most wonderful, northern, sing-a-long way imaginable. Everyone is singing. Everyone knows all the words. Frank shamelessly instigates as much audience participation as possible (at one point getting everyone to do-si-do), cites the experience as the highlight of his career, gives a shout out to his little sister, and then leaves the stage grinning.


Which is much more than MGMT can muster over at the Radio 1 stage. Today the Brooklyn duo look and sound like a pretty nasty comedown, perhaps due to their previous night’s success at Reading. They have pulled in a huge turnout, unsurprising considering MGMT’s astronomical leap into psychedelic-rock stardom this year. Their set does very little to excite the punters, not helped by Ben Goldwasser appearing utterly vacant, his baby-face pallid and clammy. Album tracks and downtempo numbers such as ‘The Youth’ and ‘Pieces Of What’ disappear into the ether, while even ‘Kids’ is entirely driven by the defiant energy of the tipsy mid-afternoon crowd.

Saturday night boasts the double bill of Queens Of The Stone Age and Rage Against The Machine. It has the potential to be a defining moment of the summer festival season, but technicalities complicate both performances, and festival greatness proves elusive. Queens Of The Stone Age suffer from shockingly poor sound during their 8pm set on the main stage, both patchy and too quiet to do justice to the awesome, polished American rock that exudes from up front. Favourites ‘No One Knows’, ‘Go With The Flow’ and ‘Little Sister’ are dispersed between tracks from last year’s Era Vulgaris album, all delivered with a slick ease that cements Josh Homme’s place among the American rock greats.


Rage are thirty minutes late, and do not give Leeds the same theatrical performance as the previous night’s set at Reading, where they emerged onstage sporting Guantanamo boiler suits. Instead, the cameraman up front keeps rather pointedly zooming in on frontman Zack de la Rocha’s Nike trainers, as if to demonstrate his artistic hypocrisy. Which is almost criminal considering that the sound technicians and security alike should be doing a much more professional job than they evidently are. Rage only make it to fourth track, ‘Bombtrack’, before the sound dies. Moments later de la Rocha begins to plead with the crowd to move backwards so that the people at the front can breathe, saying, “We don’t want to have to stop the show.” Eventually they plunge straight back in where they left off. There is a huge, moshing, metal contingent up front, but most of the crowd are clearly loitering on the fringes, waiting to hear ‘Killing In The Name’. Again, Rage prove themselves masters of their craft, especially with Tom Morello’s driving guitar work, but their set irretrievably suffers from technical problems that mar its impact.

Leeds Festival: Day 1

Friday 22nd August 2008

After weeks of heavy rain, the fields around Bramham Park are as saturated as the festival market this August. With numerous smaller festivals and one-day events emerging to compete with the big guns like V, Glasto and Leeds itself, the August Bank Holiday weekender formerly sponsored by Carling had its work cut out to hold its own this year. Leeds is the bread-and-butter of all the festivals: a no-nonsense, northern staple that attracts those who like their music with a side-portion of smash-ups, pies, rioting and toilets that are the sanitary equivalent of battery chicken coops.

This year the lineup veered from the musically extraneous likes of The Wombats and The Enemy to legendary American metal acts, Rage Against The Machine and Metallica. In between these opposing poles, the discerning festival-goer could pick from some of 2008’s biggest bands, including Mystery Jets, Glasvegas and MGMT, in one of the more impressive lineups of the summer. Leeds has the music and the mud covered, but with so many other competing festivals offering all that and much more besides, this year was a deciding time for the northernmost bastion of the British festival.



Gigwise starts the weekend by giving Wild Beasts another run for their money, hoping some of the hype surrounding the northern new-age pop act will finally rub-off. ‘Devil’s Crayon’, with its friendly calypso-chug, is a highlight, but vocalist Hayden’s shuddering falsetto that grinds to a forced growl is unnatural and affected. Coupled with the bands introverted, miserable stage manner, the set slips into the self-gratifying territory of the try-hard.

Adam Green’s set, over on the Radio 1 stage, is the perfect remedy. “I’m a sensitive fucking barometre for pleasure,” the statuesque ex-Moldy Peaches singer drunkenly drawls, before launching into casual musical obscenities such as ‘Novotel’ and ‘No Legs’ that have laughter reverberating around the tent. The soundmen have to pull the plug half way during ‘Crack House Blues’ due to overrunning, but Adam seems not to even really notice, happily receiving his applause and tumbling into the wings.

Holy Fuck give a mind-blowing mid-afternoon performance of introverted but not offensively exclusive analogue electronica. The Canadian five-piece recreate sounds DJs strain to conceive within the confines of their canvas venue, without the aid of any modern-day Mac-contrived confudgery. Their polish and poise become especially apparent when Crystal Castles follow them a little later on the Dance Stage. On record Crystal Castles sound like Alice Glass is doing dirty things to herself inside Ethan Kath’s gameboy. Live, seductive two-bit pop turns into Glass strutting and screeching over mediocre electro-formations. The wonder is that the audience entirely fail to notice. The Leeds crowd is doing what the Leeds crowd do best: getting off their faces and having a rave, mindless of the stuff coming out the speakers. And it’s only 5pm.

Consequently, by the time the evening shift comes around, reality is suspended, and there are enough wonky faces and wandering drunks to make the festival arena a walled confine of licentiousness and debauchery. Connor Oberst’s beguiling, trembling folk songs cement him as the Elliott Smith of his generation. His set with The Mystic Valley Band includes a cover of ‘Corrina Corrina’ that almost manages to anchor the crowd back to the field where we all began sometime earlier in the day.


All that earthy grass-roots folk is blown apart when Miles and Alex sweep onto the stage next to showcase the new-improved Last Shadow Puppets. They’ve dressed up for the occasion, too, in the sharpest of suits, their outlines illuminated against a velvet backdrop and a full-scale string orchestra. Magnificent, grandiose, and epic, of course, but we knew that from the record. Live, it’s a spectacle, but perhaps not quite kind of spectacle called for at a festival renowned for its outstanding capacity to get lagered up and throw piss. However, the duo, diminutive in stature but never understated in sound, get a hero’s welcome on their home territory, which will do nothing but cement Alex Turner’s ego as the fastest and most justifiably swelling in modern British indie.

The Kills are positively disappointing post-Puppets. Rather than physically manifesting the mature, overbearingly seductive garage-rock that has just about everyone from every walk of life slavering over VV’s sullen pout and Hotel’s filthy torn-up riffs in their bedrooms, The Kills walk through a wooden and worn routine, especially in terms of choreography. Midnight Boom is as brilliant as ever, but the duo’s typical proverbial sparks are dimmer than usual in the drunken, stale air of the tent.