Indietracks: Everyday Is Like Sunday

That's right – I am still going on about the last day of that festival.

I went to see reformed Sarah act Secret Shine in the indoor venue, mainly because I hoped they would be rubbish and so we would be able to review them thus: "Secret Shine? Secret shite, more like". It was therefore a big disappointment when they turned out to be a kickarse shoegaze band. I was sorry to only catch the last few songs of their high quality set. They have apparently reformed properly (recording new material that apparently makes up a lot of their set), so it is possible they will come and play live in your town soon.


And then there were Shrag, playing on the main stage. These were also rather impressive. They play a more rambunctious strain of indiepop – based on shouting and jumping around rather than the insipid stuff that some people like. The music is both guitarry and synthy. I think, though, that what really sets them above so many of the other bands on the bill was star quality – partly of the band as a whole but primarily of the lead singer. Marvelling at how impressive a front woman she was I was struck by how few of the bands at this festival were fronted by singers who did not play instruments. Little Ms Shrag exuded energy and charisma in a way that so many of the others did not, though the generally appealing nature of the tunes also helped.

The fact that Shrag's singer had grasped the importance of jumping around a lot on stage while wearing a short skirt was not lost on many members of the audience. A number of pervertalists trained cameras on her in the hope of capturing a special image that could be of use for private research later. I tried to snap a picture of the perv photographers in action, but failed. This is the story of my life.


I was eating dinner when musical sounds lured us back to the main stage, to see Slow Club. There were two of them, a man and a woman. He did vocals and played guitar and she did vocals (sounding like she comes from a region), played guitar AND played drums (so she wins). They were funny and their music had a certain folkie quality to it. I remember enjoying them a lot, but I wonder now if it was mainly their amusing chit chat that I liked.


And then The Pooh Sticks, another reformed band. The only song by The Pooh Sticks I know is that 'I Know Someone Who Knows Someone Who Knows Alan McGee Quite Well' one, which meant that I had them down as idiot savants, perhaps the Indietracks Television Personalities. But actually no – it turned out that i) they were surprisingly rocky and together and ii) great fun. As part of their general commitment to rock action they gave out placards to the audience with important messages on them like "E=MC5" and "Don't Bore Us – Get To The Chorus". They were also joined for some songs by Amelia Fletcher, but sadly they failed to do the wonderful version of 'Float On' they recorded for the celebrated anti-Poll Tax compilation Alvin Lives… In Leeds.

After enjoying such a succession of bands it was great to get one that was, at best, only alright – it meant that my critical faculties had not collapsed, that I had not been reprogrammed into the kind of person who likes everything. The not brilliant band in question was The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. They go in for washes of synthy noise to such an extent that they seem to have based their entire set on 'Friday I'm In Love' by The Cure. I was therefore annoyed to find this band not merely derivative, but derivative of something I dislike. Still, the band did have a certain proficiency. They were also the last band of the festival, so rather than stand there going "Bah C***bug" I decided to extend them a kind of grudging admiration. They certainly went down well with the rest of the audience, perhaps thanks to their continuous bigging up of the whole indiepop scene generally, something that made them sound like the indiepop Manowar.

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The Giant Penguin from Beyond

Scientists have found the remains of a giant 1.5 metre tall penguin that seems to have lived 36 million years ago. Elements of the flightless bird’s plumage have survived the fossilisation process, revealing that it did not have the familiar black and white pattern of modern penguins, but was instead grey and brown.

Sources from the Miskatonic University were evasive when queried on reports that headless giant penguin fossils have also been found. They also dismissed rumours of mysterious piping noises in the vicinity of the dig site. Claims that several of their team are now resident in secure psychiatric institutions were flatly denied.

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Monkey v. Monkey

There has been much discussion in the media about the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Much of this discussion has focussed on the apparent lack of preparation by the Indian hosts. However, preparations are well under way against one menace that could otherwise threaten athletes – the threat of monkey attack. Delhi is a city known for its out of control Rhesus monkey population, with civil servants and office workers often having to battle the cute yet fierce beasts to continue with their daily work. These animals can be highly dangerous. In 2007, the city’s deputy mayor was chased to his death from a balcony by the little fellows, while in 2001, Delhi was terrorised by a monkey monster described as part-man, part monkey.

Competitors at the Commonwealth Games need have no fear of monkey attack. The organisers have hired in Langur monkeys, natural enemies of the Rhesus monkeys, to scare away their smaller relatives. The Langurs have been deployed to a number of key Games-related locations.

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Indietracks: Don't Be Afraid Of The Robot

Although I rose early on Sunday, financial embarrassment meant that I had to trek into nearby Ripley to obtain more funds, thus missing many of the early bands. The first thing we saw turned out to be M.J. Hibbett & The Validators. I have seen Mr Hibbett before, and have a somewhat problematic relationship with him, because some of his songs annoy me. I was particularly incensed by 'Merchant Ivory Punks', where he made fun of punk rockers who are stuck in this eternal 1977 time warp. Fair enough, but he was playing this at a festival of indiepop, one of the world's most conservative musical forms, where most of the acts would not have been out of place on a Sarah Records compilation from twenty-five years ago. It therefore seemed a bit pot-kettle to be scoffing at the lack of innovation in other musical genres.

On the other hand, there is something appealing about many of Hibbett's lyrical concerns: giant robots, people being eaten by dinosaurs*, vegetarianism, and opposing the Iraq invasion. Furthermore, one of his songs does make the important things that you should not disown the things you like just because they are not kewl. I should also point out that on an Internet message board he also recommended the rather good Return of Bruce Wayne comic. So maybe he is worthy of respect after all.

The Specific Heats were, for us, one of the hits of Indietracks 2009. That time round they were playing in the Chapel and proved so popular that we could not get in to see them, so we stayed outside to listen to their garage rock sounds, pressing our noses against the glass to get the occasional look. This year they were in the larger indoor venue and seemed to have had a massive turnover in membership. And they also seemed to have left behind the Sixties garage rock revivalism and instead gone all indiepop! Oh noes. But then they started playing more garagey stuff and we remembered why we liked them.

I was also struck by how good their drummer was, especially after the monotonous thumping from a certain previous band**. That said, this band is in great danger. From playing at Indietracks, they seem to be picking up indiepop stylings. Their between song banter is of the friendly apologetic type you get from the more usual of the festival's bands. The Specific Heats basically need someone to throw out all their Smittens records, make them wear dark sunglasses onstage and do nothing but snarl between songs. "Stick to the acid rock", this tough but well-meaning Svengali might say. "If you do or play anything twee I will batter you".

After a few other bands I came to what, with Everybody Was In The French Resistance…Now!, might have been one of the real finds of the festival. Standard Fare had not been a band I was planning to see – their name suggests a certain lack of imagination and there was nothing particularly exciting about their write-up in the programme. However, one of our pals recommended them to us, and as he had previously implied a certain fondness for Hawkwind he was clearly a man to be trusted.

So what do you get with this band? Well, they are a three piece, with a drummer and gentleman guitarist and lady bassist. Both the guitarist and bassist do vocals. The songs had a certain angular quality to them and owed little or nothing to indiepop. The band were all very good at what they did, but I reckon the bassist (whose name is Emma Kupa) is the real star here. Not merely is her voice very distinctive (albeit not necessarily a classically good singing voice, being a bit strained but in a way that suggests character), her bass playing seemed a good bit more interesting than the dum dum dum dum you get from most bassists. She and the guitarist played well off each other, and the songs they played had some odd lyrical concerns – one song was introduced as being about genocide, and then it was, but not in a Slayer-esque way, more focussing on the people who have genocide done to them.

Anyway, I was very impressed by Standard Fare, and hope to take a punt on their album to see if they also deliver on record. In fact, not buying their album there and then is one of my big festival regrets.

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* These appear in his rock opera, which he is touring to Edinburgh. Maybe you saw it in the Fringe Festival?

**This band, whose name I am not at liberty to reveal, set the percussion bar so low that I thought "mmm, great drumming" for every subsequent band.

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Indietracks: Day In Day Out Day In Day Out

I will not go through all the subsequent Indietracks bands in such detail. For many, little need be said. In fact, for many nothing need be said, at least by me. One band who were talking about, however, were Greek art rock sensations The Callas, who we saw on the Saturday. There were three of them, two blokes and a woman. They all wore sunglasses and had an air of snarling uncommunicativeness (possibly driven by their not being Anglophones, but it worked for me). Their drummer was rather impressive, though this might have been just in comparison to the shite programmed drumming of an earlier band whose name I am not at liberty to divulge. And the music of The Callas had a much more full-on rock attack than any of the other bedwetters we had seen earlier that day. This made The Callas something of a new favourite. I also liked when the drummer took over the bass and the lady keyboardist replaced him behind the drum kit, standing photogenically and banging away on her instrument. I was nevertheless left with the feeling that The Callas have room for improvement – they may need a ball breaking manager to crack the whip and say to them: "Keep doing what you're doing – but do it better!"

At some point on Saturday afternoon I became separated from my beloved and, after drinking some unusually strong ales, I found myself in a very appreciative frame of mind. I drifted along to see The Just Joans for no better reason than that Mr Chris Gilmour mentioned them in his film treatment*. I went with low expectations but found their Scottish miserablism rather appealing. There was one song that had a chorus something like:

'If you don't pull
you'll go home on your own
if you go home on your own
you'll wake up on your own'

And so on. Oh wait, is this just a rehash of 'How Soon Is Now?'? Well imagine it being sung by two sadface Scots, one male and one female, and imagine the whole new dimension of misery being brought to it.

Then I went to see The Smittens. I always think of this lot as being the archetypal Indietracks band. For all they play surprisingly low down the bill, they are always one of the bands that the typical Indietracks attendee most wants to see. They are from the United States of America, have lovely teeth, and are rather perky. We took against them last year, but this year I found them more enjoyable. There is a cheery quality to them that makes them genuinely difficult to dislike (though I fear they would not go down too well if opening for Iron Maiden at Castle Donnington). Part of my change in sentiment came from one of their singers mentioning in passing that many of them bat for the other team – suddenly some of their more perplexing features made a lot more sense.

When I re-encountered my beloved again, she was a bit perplexed by my new appreciativeness. We nevertheless squeezed into the Chapel venue to see two acts. Firstly, there was Cineplexxx, some Argentinean guy's one-person band. He was playing today on his own, mostly acoustically, and proved to be a bit of a snappy dresser. The Chapel was a good place for him, as he looked a bit like Jesus, and we enjoyed his folky tunes. That he sang in foreign was also rather appealing.

The following Chapel act was White Town. It said in the programme that White Town had had an actual chart hit (albeit one we could not remember), something of a rarity for the underachieving Indietracks mainstream, so that piqued our interest. The Town turn out to be this one bloke who used to be in the Socialist Workers, and his tunes often nod to that world. He seemed not to have entirely left ultra-leftism behind - at one point he refused to play a song about Alain Delon, because Delon has apparently become a fascist since it was written.

I kind of liked White Town, but I found his lurches between acoustic songs and ones with big, loud, and pre-programmed electropop flourishes a bit awkward. When he finally played his hit ('Your Woman'), it sounded rather familiar, but it might just be that some bit of it has been sampled by a hip-hop act.

I was looking forward to seeing the Swedish indiepop sensations Love Is All, as the one track I heard by them sounded almost like post-punk with its screaming brass and relentless rhythm, but they had cancelled. Their slot was instead taken by Tendertrap, the current band of Amelia Fletcher (the singing economist and Queen of Indiepop). They seemed to have mastered the large indoor venue's hopeless acoustics and were able to bash out a good beat, but after a couple of songs it struck us that, basically, if you have heard one Tendertrap song you have heard them all. I started wondering if this applies retrospectively to the Heavenly tracks I think of as classics – do they only seem to have unique qualities because they are the ones I heard first?

And finally for Saturday, we had The Primitives, the recently reformed indiepop band of the late 1980s. I was really looking forward to seeing them, having loved them back in the day and greatly enjoying them when I saw them in their later years. But they turned out to be a big disappointment. They sounded lumpen and plodding, making me wonder if they had actually never been any good.

The best is yet to come.

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* It is called Glasgow Indie Eye-Spy but could more appropriately be entitled The Life and Opinions of Christopher Gilmour, Gentleman. I gather this project is currently in hiatus.

"The Last Exorcism"

Just a quick note to say – if you like being scared, go and see this film in the cinema. It is very scary and lacks any of that ironic pomo crap that has been bedevilling horror films recently. And it has no vampires or zombies either.

The film's premise is simple enough – a disenchanted Southern US preacher and exorcist is having a documentary made in which he is going to demonstrate what a load of bunkum the whole exorcist business is. What the preacher intends to be his last exorcee turns out to be of a home-schooled teenage girl living on a farm with her religious lunatic father and creepy brother. The father has called in the preacher because the girl is apparently sleep-walking at night and mutilating farm animals, remembering nothing when she wakes. Piece of piss, thinks the preacher. Things turn out to be more complicated.

The whole film is supposedly footage shot for the documentary. The actors all seem to be unknowns, or at least people I do not recognise, giving it a certain cinema verité feel. The film starts out jauntily enough, as the preacher shows how he goes about his everyday work of ripping off people, but the atmosphere becomes oppressive once we get out to the farmhouse. It is easy to see that there is something very bad going on here, but the film keeps you guessing as to whether it is demonic possession or a disturbed and vulnerable girl undergoing psychotic episodes. Either of these would of course be a disturbing explanation for what is happening.

The actors deliver some fine performances. I must particularly salute Patrick Fabian as the preacher, who gives us an engaging mixture of smarminess, exploitativeness, and yet a troubled sense of self and drive to do what is right. Ashley Bell as the girl is also very impressive, equally adept at portraying troubled innocence and the awfulness of apparent possession. The subtle performance of the father is also very striking, but all the others in this small cast do their job very well, managing to come across like they are not acting and so maintaining the illusion that this is really happening.

Watching this film on a weekday afternoon made for a particularly spooky experience. I had the Savoy 2 more or less to myself, and there is nothing like combining the disorientation of emerging from a darkened cinema into the bright afternoon with the aftermath of a film as shocking as this.


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Indietracks: Start Together

The first actual band I saw was Veronica Falls. I liked them from the get-go. Their music seemed a lot more based on fuzz guitar, reverb, distortion and all that, meaning that this felt like proper old school indie music like mama used to make, not that apologetic crap the bedwetters like. The shambolic nature of their set was endearing – they kept starting and stopping playing instruments semi-randomly, with their songs being a ramshackle combination of elements rather than anything polished to perfection. They were also battling some hopeless sound engineering, with the various instruments having their volumes raised and lowered continuously for no obvious reason. And in true Jesus & Mary Chain style, they only played two chaotic tunes before stomping off the stage.

It was only when they came back on and resumed playing that I realised that I had been won over by their sound check. The actual set was also pretty good, pretty much as described above except without the elements that make them or the sound engineers sound like loveable incompetents. That said, one of their songs did have a lurching chord change as atonal as the one in 'My Lovely Horse'. Veronica Falls had a somewhat doomy overall air to their sound, with the wonderful track 'Found Love In A Graveyard' sounding almost Goth. So yeah, a great start to the festival.

The last band on Friday had the wonderfully snappy name Everybody Was In The French Resistance… Now!. They were one of the big draws for me, as their lead vocalist is Eddie Argos of Art Brut, one of the bands who served up a set of total win last year. EWITFR…N proved to be a rather different band, eschewing Art Brut's art rock attack. Instead, they came on to the stirring tones of La Marseillaise, arguably the world's greatest national anthem. There were three of them on stage – Eddie Argos on vocals, some geezer on guitar, and the lovely Dyan Valdés of The Blood Arm* on keyboards and backing vocals, with Ms Valdés fetchingly attired in a short tricolour skirt and a rather racy top.

EWITFR…N began with an eponymous tune giving us a surprisingly accurate account of the French Resistance's development in the Second World War. Then they launched into a series of songs that were all answers to other songs. So, they had a tune called 'Billie's Genes', sung as though from Michael Jackson's lovechild, or 'GIRLFREN (You Know I've Got A)', replying to some song in which Avril Lavigne is trying to steal some other bird's bloke. I also liked their rejoinder to 'Jimmy Mack', which Eddie Argos introduced by suggesting that poor Jimmy Mack might well have been drafted off to serve in Vietnam – the poor guy is sweating it in the jungle and now his bird is telling him that she is going off looking for action elsewhere unless he somehow manages to get home sharpish. Several of the others were ripostes to tunes with which I am unfamiliar (notably the one that had a great line about how no one loves you when you smell of chip fat).

But what did it all sound like? Well, many readers will be familiar with Art Brut. Musically, they are all rock all the time, with Eddie Argos basically speaking his vocals. EWITFR…N are not so rock – for all they have the geezer on guitars, it is more about the keyboards. But Argos' vocal delivery is pretty much the same. In overall execution, my beloved reckoned they were like a reverse engineered Black Box Recorder – arty, conceptual, with an attractive woman playing a key role (here as a musician rather than as lead vocalist).

Before leaving EWITFR…N, let me mention one odd incident. In one of their later songs, possibly a reply to 'My Way' or 'You'll Never Walk Alone', Argos suddenly switched into a Bongo style caterwaul and, yes, launched into the chorus of 'With Or Without You'. And then he started walking through the crowd. What was odd about this was that he was rapidly surrounded by people taking pictures of him. I wish I had had the presence of mind to whip out the camera and take a picture of them photographing him, as it looked really bizarre and illustrated well the over-mediated nature of society today.

Do not worry, EWITFR…N do not normally sound like U2. And they finished with a song specially composed for Indietracks – the wonderful 'Look At Us, We've Got A Side Project'. These were more or less the entire lyrics, so they sang them several times.

It all proved to be rather appealing package. Small wonder that I picked up a copy of their album – of which more anon.

More Indietracks fun coming soon!!!

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*a band with whom I had not hitherto been acquainted.

Indietracks: Deus Lo Volt!

As you will recall, Indietracks is the festival that takes place in the Midlands Railway Centre, which you will find in Butterley in Derbyshire. As well as trains and real ale, the punters also get served up a selection of bands from the indiepop end of the musical spectrum.

It would have to be accepted that the musical palette at Indietracks is a bit more restricted than at most other festivals. The centre of musical gravity here tends very much towards earnest white people playing guitar driven tunes with some vague approximation to pop music. If this is anathema to you then do not go to Indietracks – you are not going to encounter Konono No. 1 or Omar Souleyman chugging away on one of the smaller stages. You would also struggle to find anything that rocks out or that owes anything to the electronic dance music or hip-hop traditions. That is not to say that Indietracks is just a festival for a succession of Field Mice tribute acts, as there are people here who push the musical envelope somewhat, but there are very pronounced limits to how far the envelope can be pushed.

As you might have picked up from the previous, my own relationship with Indietracks is somewhat ambivalent. I cannot in all honesty describe myself as a big indiepop fan. At festivals I would prefer to encounter music that was a bit more innovative and challenging. So, what was I doing at Indietracks? Well, the festival has a couple of things going for it. First of all, it is a small, human-scale affair. I do like the massiveness of something like Glastonbury, but there is a lot to be said for a festival where it takes less than five minutes to move between the stages, where you recognise a significant proportion of the other attendees by the end of the weekend*. Indietracks is also something of a wanker-free zone – you do not really get trend people or beered-up twunts wandering around in jester hats looking for their hole or generally being messy.

The railway setting, meanwhile, adds a frisson of mechanical excitement, and the lashings of real ale that Indietracks serves up also make for a fun event. And in fairness, there is always some actually good music to be had at Indietracks, once you accept that none of Acid Mothers Temple, Omar Souleyman or Scooter will ever be asked to play. And maybe I should stop apologising for the music at the festival – it is like I have adopted the apologetic bedwetter mindset or something. Be indie and be proud, that's what I say.

One thing we did this year that greatly enhanced our enjoyment was that we camped at the nearby Golden Valley campsite outside Alfreton. This meant that we avoided hour-long bus journeys between Nottingham and the festival and did not have to run off to catch the last bus instead of enjoying the later bands and ensuing discos. For someone whose only adult experience of camping is Glastonbury, the campsite was astonishing – it had proper toilets and showers and stuff like that! Plus there were no crazy Scots mentalists blasting out Gabba all through the night in the next tent. Truly amazing.

Come back soon for discussion of some Indietracks musical performances.

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*Some of these became figures of fascination – like Indie Tom Ewing or the Grebo guy here for his second year on the trot. The latter won the prize for least indie person at the festival. I kept wondering what his story was. Maybe he was under the mistaken impression that Turbonegro or a reformed Prolapse were going to be the surprise headliners. The recent contestant on Mastermind whose specialist subject was Belle & Sebastian was another Indietracks face.

Things I have learned about Korea

I have been reading about Korea. Expect an exciting post on my other blog at some stage in the future. My current favourite Korean fact, however, is that c. 40% of Koreans have either Kim, Park, or Lee as their surnames. And as well as North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il, there is also Kim Jong-Pil, a former foreign minister in South Korea, and Kim Yong-Il, a one-time senior official in the North.

Stephen Baxter - "Ark"

I read this for Science Fiction book club. It is the sequel to Flood, the book in which the world is drowned (over the course of several decades) by water erupting out from subterranaean reservoirs. Or it is kind of a sequel – Ark begins before the other book ends, though it goes on for decades afterwards. Each book could be read independently of the other, more or less.

In Flood the narrative followed quite a few characters and jumped around the world. With this one, though, things are a bit more focussed. The main thrust is on these youngsters being trained up to take part in a spaceflight that should hopefully allow enough humans to escape the drowning world to ensure the survival of our species. These people – the candidates – live largely in a bubble of privilege and comfort as the rising sea levels cause the wider world to go to shit. We get occasional glimpses of that wider world through the eyes of people guarding the space programme's facilities from people trying to flee the rising waters. Like with the first book, Baxter seems very adept at painting a grim picture of a world falling apart. Maybe because of the more precise geographical focus (pretty much all of the earthbound stuff takes place in Colorado), the effect is maybe even more disturbing than in Flood - the book communicates a vivid sense of the horror of the endless retreat from the rising waters and the loss of human decency that this brings with it.

The second half of the book follows the spaceship (called, amazingly, Ark) after its launch into space. Because near future humans have handily managed to develop a warp drive, it is able to travel to the stars in less than centuries, but it still ends up taking decades to get anywhere interesting. And of course a relatively small group of people on a cramped spacecraft is a perfect recipe for an unpleasant hothouse of human emotions, with things getting almost a bit Batavia's Graveyard at one point.

I think maybe the earthbound stuff was the best part of the book, but the space travel stuff still cracks along. The dysfunctional internal politics of the space crew is rather fascinating, but it might have been more interesting if the characters were better drawn. Like a lot of SF writers, Baxter seems more comfortable with the sciencey stuff than in convincing characterisation, and it does seem like the deterioration of one character in particular into a monster is a bit two-dimensional.

Purely as a matter of taste, I found the use of a predatory paedophile as a plot device in the first half of the book a bit distasteful – more for somewhat over-graphic description of a nonce-crime episode. It could just be me, but maybe this is one situation where tell is better than show.

As with Flood, I am a bit ambivalent as to whether Ark is *that* good, but there is no denying the effect Baxter's description of the drowning world has been – I have been having intermittent nightmares about floods since I started reading these works. I suppose that counts as a result.

And in case you are wondering what our next SF book club is, then wonder no more – it is Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. I look forward to seeing whether Heinlein is as bad as his reputation suggests. Join us in the ILAC Library on the second Tuesday of October to discuss it.

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you could click here to help victims of flooding in Pakistan

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