Saturday lunchtime’s persistent drizzle sends most casual fans under canvas, so bands like the T Break tent-bound Astral Planes can benefit from a larger audience. But beyond the friends in the front row, the casual outliers never really take to them. Doris Day’s (the song, obvs) weighty riffs momentarily stop the crowd chatting and even inspire a little air guitar; but the Glasgow band’s similarities to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Blondie suggest a personality received, not conceived.
“The new Frightened Rabbit?” a friend jokes as we head to the BBC Introducing stage for Admiral Fallow, formerly Brother Louis Collective. A reductive, throwaway comment; sadly impossible to shrug off. In a 20 minute set, three songs feel like shadows of specific FRabbit tunes. Their best moment comes when they step out of that shadow: an emotional clarinet burst at the end of final song Subbuteo provides a welcome Roxy Music-style release.
Unfortunately for the newly Guardian-profiled Kid Adrift, the rain has stopped before he takes the stage, and fans seem determined to enjoy the skies while they’re dry. So only a wee group is present to gawp at his bombastic synth-rock, and despite the volume and scope, somehow even they don’t seem to be paying attention. He’s not helped by poor sound, specifically an underpowered mic that leaves his vocals clouded out by the bass and drums, but predictable quiet/loud shifts in his music don’t help either.
Vampire Weekend are astonishingly popular. For a group with only two Top 40 hits to attract a miles-deep crowd at the Main Stage is remarkable, and for miles around we can see fans dancing, not just to those minor hits, but to album tracks too. “Cousins” is the highlight, the off-kilter scratch guitar intro immediately drawing waves of cheers from the crowd, before Ezra Koenig draws laughs by asking for “anger and ecstasy” from the crowd during “One (Blake’s Got A New Face)”. Perhaps he touched on the real secret to all this dancing?
After We Are Scientists pack the King Tuts tent out, The Coral’s crowd is sparse. It’s a minor mystery why they have such a good slot at all, and they don’t offer any clues from the stage. They start with breakthrough single Goodbye, before a dreary In The Rain and a new song with a stultifying chorus of “oh oh, waiting for a thousand years, oh oh, sailing on a thousand tears”. We don’t wait a thousand milliseconds more.
In the Futures tent, we’d earlier seen the quiet, folky Middle East suffer because watchers were too drunk to listen. But now the same tent is packed and wholly attentive for 20 year old Laura Marling, the new star of English folk thanks to her beautiful second album I Speak Because I Can. There’s a dramatic pause in Rambling Man that’s perfectly held by the rapt crowd, emphasising the effect of the return; before a sizable core of fans sing along to every word of Ghosts. Wonderful.
The BBC’s Vic Galloway introduces Young Fathers as “the best three-piece electro hip-hop group Edinburgh’s ever produced!”, which might sound a soft compliment but it’s pretty accurate: while their lyrics are hard to make out in the melee, there’s no hating their style. Before the crowd knows it, we're jumping around and flapping our arms like birds, all because of their infectious onstage energy and charm.
Seven years since he last played in Scotland, it’s an honour and a thrill to see Eminem performing again, even if we do have to wait an additional forty minutes past showtime for him to arrive. In some ways it’s like he’s never been away: his performance is full of energy, he doesn’t miss a beat and he’s clearly enjoying himself. Unfortunately his wireless mic isn’t quite so wide awake, meaning whole verses are occasionally inaudible as he patrols the stage, and his set includes a few recent stinkers: Beautiful and Not Afraid are particularly galling. Luckily, a late run including My Name Is, Without Me and Lose Yourself is clearly audible and full of fire. Anytime, Mister Mathers.
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No way in hell was I missing the next day's World Cup Final, even for Jay-Z.
Eminem @ T in the Park, Balado near Kinross, Scotland, 10/07/2010 (***) live review for The Skinny
Five years after his last scheduled UK gig -- and seven years since he last actually performed in Scotland -- it's teasing to have to wait 40 minutes past showtime for Eminem to finally take the stage to close Saturday's Main Stage lineup. But when Marshall Mathers arrives, it's a relief to see him still youthful and full of fight; considering the drug problems and the rare public appearances, my subconscious feared he’d turn up in a string vest and pyjama bottoms, or unshaven and greying at least. But seven years away haven’t aged him at all, physically; artistically, it’s a different story. Growing up is a difficult subject to navigate, for any person or any artist, but it’s extra hard for artists who have a stage persona and a real personality as messily intertwined as Eminem’s. So, just as a new greatest hits release from Em would sound strangely incoherent, tonight's set contained songs as if written by a few different Slim Shadys.
His earliest persona -- the funny one -- is who everyone’s here to see, but he leaves most of that for the end. The first half of the show is almost entirely Recovery and Relapse tracks, plus a three-song set with D12, and it’s underwhelming for all but the Stans on the barrier, frequently shown on the giant screens reciting every word. Presumably the cause of the delayed start was technical, and technical problems with Em’s wireless mic persist - entire verses are lost while his sidekick MC is fully audible. When it comes to Stan -- the song -- Em’s mic problems frustratingly remain: after the crowd sings along to Dido’s intro, the first verse is a washout.
The mic is working by the time Em wants to talk to the crowd, pitting all the boys and girls against each other in a noise-making contest, and encouraging all the boys to turn to the nearest girl and say “fuck you bitch!”. That’s Slim Shady talking, but then comes the real head-fucking sequence of the evening: he asks the girls “how many of you ladies feel beautiful tonight?”, dedicates the next song to every girl in the crowd, and sings “don’t let them say you ain’t beautiful”. Minutes later, the girls are singing along to Rihanna’s Love The Way You Lie hook, as Eminem threatens to tie her to a bed and set the house on fire.
Beautiful is on Eminem’s 2009 comeback album Relapse, but who is it by? Is it by a fake Slim Shady? Who was Kim, by? Is Beautiful by the real Marshall Mathers? Is Beautiful by the same artist as Kim? Is Beautiful by the same artist as Not Afraid?
Well yes, those two seem to go together: they’re both morose, self-pitying ballads that look for strength and hope but find cliche instead. Not Afraid, tonight’s second-last song, is a power ballad that sets Eminem up like an inspirational moral guide: “Everybody come take my hand, we'll walk this road together through the storm” and so on. What happened to “you can suck my dick if you don't like my shit”? That was only 20 minutes ago.
He created a monster, but it was a fully formed and living monster: as writer Jeff Weiss put it, he was “the id of every 16-year old boy in America”. Now what is he? A hotchpotch of moods, attitudes and beliefs: a normal adult? It’s hard to believe.
Eminem closed his T set with a furious Lose Yourself, but it was the other song to sandwich Not Afraid, Without Me, that was most revealing. 18 months after Stan, his comeback single declared an intention to be provocative: “...we need a little controversy, cos it feels so empty without me”. Now on another comeback, Eminem provoked boos from the T crowd whenever he addressed it as “Edinburgh”. It’s a reasonable mistake to make -- we’re well within a Ryanair definition of Edinburgh, at least -- but some fans weren’t happy. “Oi Eminem!” a little lass behind me yelled. “I’m fae Glenrothes!”.
Remember when Eminem was intentionally provocative?
When M.I.A. released a song attacking journalists just days after a scathing recent New York Timesarticle, it either demonstrated a remarkable speed of execution, or that she had lots of room in her personal protesting schedule. That article exposed some of the half-truths in the M.I.A. mythos, including the discomforting leak that – having broken through as a pop artist with Paper Planes two years ago, and since got engaged to a multi-millionaire boyfriend – she's now very rich and famous. That's common for pop stars, but it leaves M.I.A. vulnerable: her rebel shtick could make her look like a trustafarian in a Che Guevara t-shirt if she isn’t careful with her words.
On new single Born Free she acknowledges that problem, singing “I don’t wanna talk about money, cos I got it”. She’s been forced to rein in the rhetoric, and thankfully she doesn’t say anything stupid on Maya about terrorism or truffles. But the problem with Maya is rooted in a far more mundane circumstance than the disorientating effect of celebrity: it’s that contentedness cools creativity. The NYT piece gave her a cause to fight for – her own reputation – hence the quick turnaround. But everything’s gone right for M.I.A. in the three years since second album Kala, so it’s no surprise that Maya is missing the spikiness so central to her personality.
Born Free is the stand-out, though – blowing through a four minute declaration of freedom in a frenzy, using an amped-up Suicide sample for its irresistible momentum. Story To Be Told combines heavily processed wailing Bollywood vocals and a low-flying jet with a cutting, juddering synth bassline, while Tell Me Why takes the Panda Bear route to psychedelia by endlessly looping and echoing choral samples. XXXO is probably the closest thing Maya will have to a hit, with a great shimmering synthline and a cloying hook: “you want me [to] be somebody who I’m really not”.
But it’s hard to take anything from, for example, Steppin’ Up, except the conclusion that the use of chainsaws for percussion is nowhere near as cool as it should be; or Teqkilla, which somehow stretches the dubious idea to pun on various drinks brands over six minutes of stuttering noise. If the politics of rebellion are now off-limits for M.I.A., then she’ll have to find something else to get angry about; we know what she thinks of journalists, so her fourth album is bound to be better.
Dirty Projectors + Björk - Mount Wittenberg Orca (***) album review for the skinny
Dave Longstreth is a man with great ideas: his breakthrough album as leader of Dirty Projectors, Rise Above, was an attempt to reinterpret Black Flag’s Damaged despite not having heard it in 15 years. By the sounds of it, Mount Wittenberg Orca could be a similar attempt at a from-memory version of Björk’s Medúlla, only with Björk on hand, and not enough time to finish.
In fact it’s a 21 minute suite, available to download in exchange for a charitable donation, about a family of frolicking whales spotted by vocalist Amber Coffman last year. As with Medúlla, it’s almost entirely vocal, with Coffman, Angel Deradoorian and Haley Dekle providing percussive chanting and precise harmonising to support the gymnastic lead roles of Longstreth and Björk. On And Ever Onward is the keeper, featuring Björk as the mommy whale celebrating the pleasures of a lifetime in the sea, with her calves cutely singing the title back to her.
Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid (****) album review for the skinny
It's easy to hear why Janelle Monáe has taken four years since her breakthrough as a guest on OutKast's Idlewild to complete her own debut album: The ArchAndroid is a staggeringly ambitious attempt. It's a first-time shot at a grand conceptual masterpiece that makes you wonder whether, considering the struggling record industry, she's perhaps pegged this as her only chance. She'll surely get another because her talent is obvious – the Big Boi-featuring Tightrope shuffles to an African rhythm before heckling horns intervene, Faster glides effortlessly and exuberantly like a Solange take on Stevie Wonder's Keep On Running, and Neon Valley Street showcases the full expressiveness of Monáe's voice. Almost inevitably for an 18 song opus, there are missteps – Make The Bus, featuring Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes, irritates as a Love Below pastiche, and the psychedelic ballad Sir Greendown frustratingly interrupts the momentum of a fantastic opening sequence. There is a masterpiece here, but it’ll take a little skipping to find it.
Primavera Sound has its fundamentals cast in stone: always a great line-up of music (always, in fact, far too much great music to see), in one of Europe's most beautiful cities, under the Mediterranean sun. So, while I'm going to explain a little why Primavera 2010 wasn't a vintage year in the context of its predecessors, it's with reluctance that one would attach negativity to it at all. Weeks like this one make life worth living.
Over the weekend we clocked Wilco, Spoon, Orbital, No Age, Mission of Burma, Tortoise, Low, Sunny Day Real Estate, CocoRosie, Wire, Liquid Liquid, HEALTH, Shellac and Sleigh Bells on the Primavera schedule; we didn't see any of them perform. The depth of the Primavera programme means there's frequently three- or even four-band clashes, which makes for some wrenching choices, and some fast cuts. Gary Numan played Cars third in his set, and then watched half his crowd leave to go elsewhere; it's a competitive market.
Primavera's expert curation and wonderful location mean it's getting more popular every year. Fittingly, as it's primarily an indie music festival, its fans have mixed feelings about it succeeding too much. What the organizers are presenting as the great achievement of attracting record attendances of 35,000 per day, is experienced by the crowds as a reason for disappointment, since it's now harder to get near the stage, takes longer to walk between them between sets, and takes longer to queue for the toilets or for food. As you might argue for many bands on this bill, Primavera's best days may have been before "everyone else" discovered it.
But even if that's the case, it's doubtful anybody left Primavera in the early hours of Sunday morning disappointed. For, at worst there was still the final few gigs in the city centre's Joan Miro Park later that afternoon to look forward to, and a closing party featuring Jeffrey Lewis and Black Lips (another two to add to that list; we chose paella on La Rambla instead). For the non-Barca resident, the Primavera experience begins when you arrive in beautiful Barcelona. We spent the day before the festival wandering the labyrinthine streets of the Gothic Quarter, dipping in and out of old, dark bars and cafes, and exploring parks with glorious fountains.
Despite the rise of music tourism, Primavera's core crowd is still decidedly Spanish (or, more precisely, Catalan). It's hard to say whether anyone ever listens to what The Fall's Mark E. Smith is saying anyway -- as opposed to how he says it -- but surrounded by singalong Spaniards, phonetically feeling their way in the dark, it becomes even more mysterious. On one song, sung by the keyboardist, MES is so bored that he wanders the stage, splays his fingers across her keys like a drunken duck trying to type, and then smirks. He hates the sunshine.
The XX sound like they hate the sunshine too -- tall bassist Oliver Sim looks like a young Lurch -- so their pre-sunset slot is poorly timed. But as the sun drops, the darkness shrouds their songs in gloom, and the bright stage lights shining on their faces present a similar black-white contrast to their album imagery. After much restrained tension, the climax of finale Infinity is stunning, with Sim slamming cymbals as bass beats blast like machine gun fire.
Thursday's headliner is the newly reformed Pavement, who are just as the backhanded compliments of their youth suggested: very good. There's a thrill in simply seeing them perform so many of their best songs, but our favourite parts are when Bob Nastanovich gets involved: leaping to the front of the stage to yell the chorus to Conduit For Sale, leaping up and down to hit a wood block on Silence Kid, and, well, leaping to the front of the stage to yell the chorus of Unfair. Like a big kid, he looks like the one band member enjoying it as much as the crowd.
Geoff Barrow's Jaki Liebezeit-indulgence project Beak> is apparently inspirational in a dark, intimate setting, but as with The XX, here a large stage, bright sunlight and Mediterranean backdrop makes it difficult to admire. A little later, in the dark, Beach House make the same ATP stage intimate with an inspirational set. Their sedated sound bores some, but fatigue makes you forget social pretences, so the Baltimore duo's permanent tiredness lends an end-of-tether honesty to their ballads. Finishing with the unusually peppy 10 Mile Stereo sends us away regenerated.
Les Savy Fav's Tim Harrington is more frontman than singer, and more ADHD-mad toddler than frontman. He emerges in a giant furry bear suit, wearing flashing red lights round his eyes, strips down to his pants, then runs a good 30m through the crowd to balance, on his belly, on the top of a pole. He then races past us -- we're not near the stage at all -- nearly taking our neck off with the mic cable, finds a fan on someone's shoulders and heads to embrace him. There's a burst of noise -- no singing yet -- and he returns to the stage to attempt to climb it. Les Savy Fav are exciting to listen to, but they're much more exciting to watch.
Unfortunately where we headed next, The Vice stage, was problematic. Everything we saw there lived down to expectations. Panda Bear had to perform with a minimum of on-stage lighting, and at a volume which barely washed over the crowd's excited chatter. Stood there in darkness, with a guitar and a mixing desk, Noah Lennox's echoing warble sounded dreary, not trippy. Like Numan, whose fans abandoned him three songs in, Panda Bear had to deal with a quick exodus. Numan himself was delayed 25 minutes by technical difficulties, and Yeasayer's post-Pixies set was hampered by poor sound too.
Pixies themselves were thrilling, moreso than we expected. Sure, Black Francis has moobs and Kim Deal has a new "manageable" haircut, but fans lamenting the loss of Pixies' youth, the fantasy of their early wee garage shows, are clutching expectations wildly out-of-step with, y'know, how time works. Those days are past now, and in the past they must remain. Isla De Encanta and Vamos are sungalong to by Spaniards relishing lyrics they understand for a change, and Hey!, Debaser, Broken Face, Nimrod's Son and the encore of Gigantic and Where Is My Mind? get ecstatic receptions too. In a festival in thrall to nostalgia, the Pixies exude the most vitality. After Diplo finished the night at 5:30am, we walked five minutes to the beach to watch the sunrise, then went for breakfast. More Friday nights should finish like that.
The Food: Do the free-poured spirits with mixer count as food? The non-alcoholic food in Primavera is pretty poor: its signature dish, the pizza cone, is only to be enjoyed ironically ("It's like an ice cream, but pizza!" and so on). The flavour of the pad thai remarkably managed to be overwhelmed by the taste of the cardboard box it was served in, but the felafel kebab gains a few points by actually being a chicken kebab. A nice surprise for me, probably not if I happened to be a veggie.
Inevitably, Saturday begins slowly. Van Dyke Parks is credited with assisting Brian Wilson away from the Beach Boys' surf-pop origins towards the avant-garde, having worked with him on SMiLE. In the auditorium, his traditional pop and classical influences are clear: while superficially similar to Sherman Brothers-era Disney, his arrangements are complex: Parks on piano, his cellist, bassist and violinist all seem to start playing different songs before converging together. His modest patter is hugely endearing, his return for an encore seems genuine, and the standing ovation that follows certainly is. Built To Spill's set at the ATP stage is packed with highlights from classics Perfect From Now On and Keep It Like A Secret, but it's an epic rendition of Goin' Against Your Mind from the less-appreciated You In Reverse that unleashes rolls of energy through the crowd.
Headlining the final night on the main stage, Pet Shop Boys' bizarre on-stage choreography is endlessly entertaining: dancers with boxes for heads building walls, line-dancing skyscrapers of the world, box-headed couples fighting with the bricks of the wall; Neil Tennant dresses up as a king, and Chris Lowe seems to wear a pineapple on his head. More entertaining are their hits -- Can You Forgive Her?, What Have I Done To Deserve This?, Go West, Always On My Mind, West End Girls -- which buffer the lesser known songs to keep the mood high.
Finally, the 3am clash between The Field, Orbital and HEALTH is particularly galling, but we have no regrets about picking the former, at the Pitchfork stage. Playing with a drummer, guitarist and bassist enables Axel Willner to exercise a lot more fluidity in his performance than Ableton Live alone would allow; or at least, it looks more like a performance than a man at a laptop ever could. The drummer is especially good, adding frills, rolls and extra rhythms to create new patterns; he needs a break after 45 hypnotic minutes, before a final 15-minute Over The Ice that seems to hold for an eternity before shattering.
Sadly, the A Sunny Day In Glasgow founding member who would be most excited about playing with his band on an actual sunny day in Glasgow has left the group, leaving co-founder Ben Daniels to understatedly point out the obvious irony to the packed Sleazy's crowd.
This Philadelphian band have gathered a lot of attention round these parts for their bizarre name; and held that attention longer with two beautifully textured albums. Unfortunately, in Sleazy’s ASDIG are unable to fully replicate all the depths of noise that they wash their sound with on record, which exposes a frailty common to any dream pop-type band whose melodic nous is anywhere south of Kevin Shields’.
Precisely: if the 'dream' goes missing, the 'pop' has to stand on its own. The cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Everywhere certainly achieves that, but the band's own songs gasp for a little more fog.
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