Live
< The Green Man Festival 2008, Glanusk Park, Wales
words by Reef Younis
With Glastonbury succumbing to the evils of corporate sponsorship and generally failing to capture the imagination, middle England needs a new folly on which to fritter away its disposable income. There’s no shortage of sprightly little festivals, but we’re talking about a demographic that doesn’t want to be bludgeoned to deaf (sorry…) by abrasive electro in the wee hours, a portion of people that would appreciate showers, and expect a safe, designated area in which to tuck up their little mites and enjoy the odd glass of wine after a respectable stage curfew.
Welcome to Green Man: the new bastion for yuppie festival-goers, the next generation of festival kids and those looking to get obliterated around a communal festival fire. Fiercely independent, Green Man revels in its naked main stage speaker stacks, its close-knit camaraderie and its breathtaking setting. A festival embraced by mist-draped valleys, stone cottages and guarded by the River Usk, it’s a picturesque, bilboard backdrop. Slogan free, of course.
Stalls selling candle-powered steam boats, glow in the dark bubbles and tepees festooned with crafted knick knacks sidle alongside a meat souk, fresh juice tents and the obligatory greasy spoon van. Dads with belligerent, scraggly locks, decorative shirts and the extended family in tow lovingly nurse pints of cider, vocally reminiscing about Cream, while their better halves strategically nail the picnic rugs with the all zeal of German holidaymaker.
[Fight Like Apes]
Our neighbours aside, in glorious Welsh sunshine, we head in to witness Fight Like Apes inject a short, sharp blast of buzzsaw energy to the amiable atmosphere. Dervish front woman Maykay bounds and hollers to the feisty, synth-addled backing apes’ racket in a blitzkrieg of a set that includes a brilliant cover of Mclusky’s ‘Lightsabrecocksuckinblues’.
[The War On Drugs]
Considerably less feisty, The War On Drugs cosy up to the Green Man mantra with their pleasant, immediately endearing Americana in the fabulously titled ‘Folky Dokey’ tent. Deep set in the furrows of classic song writing, vocalist Adam Granduciel’s nods towards Dylan and Young might not be subtle, but they’re delivered with a consummate, restless energy befitting of any troubadour with a guitar.
[Black Mountain]
After a day of inoffensive folk loveliness, we need a fix of deviancy, of dark introspection, or at least to be left to idly drift into an abstract soundscape that doesn’t involve one man and his guitar. Thankfully, no one quite does stoner rock like Black Mountain: they broodingly turn the tide with their shadowy, harmoniously indulgent drug rock that thunders around the Folky Dokey tent. From the indolent lurch of ‘Don’t Run Our Hearts Around’ to the equally laggard but expansive ‘Druganaut’, Black Mountain’s indulgent instrumentals, coupled with Amber Webber’s painfully desolate vocal, hang long and heavy, and tonight, Black Mountain are utterly mesmerising.
[Spiritualized]
In a different dose of indulgence, we slide back to the main stage to watch Jason Pierce [pictured] close proceedings with a live set to question your own mortality. Off the back of this year’s well received ‘Songs in A&E’, and in his own gloomy obsession – he had a spell in intensive care in 2005 after a double hit of pneumonia – it’s a set that incorporates the full Spiritualized rainbow: the mournful strumming becomes ever more delicate in the face of the uplifting gospel of ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…’ and the Spaceman reads Green Man Friday night its last rites.
[Wild Beasts]
Less gloriously, the relentless Welsh rain soon claims shoes and sunny dispositions as Saturday rapidly becomes a washout. Feet bagged, we brave the downpour, finding shelter in Wild Beasts and Hayden Thorpe’s striking operatic vocal to protect us from the elements.
[Super Furry Animals]
Focusing heavily on material from more recent albums, Super Furry Animal’s wishlist turn on the main stage never really reaches the fervour of the riotous homecoming it should be. Opening with the abstract electro bounce of ‘Slowlife’, it soon gets the crowd mud stepping but the real highlights are few and far between. Those expecting a riotous sing-a-long to the heady days of ‘Fuzzy Logic’, or the long shot of an impromptu finale are soon disappointed – even the money shot of ‘The Man Don’t Give a Fuck’ feels flat and lifeless. Maybe expectation exceeded reality and that after more than a decade of lukewarm critical reception, despite their consistency, SFA don’t give one either.
[The Peth]
Something that can also be said about The Peth, a rag tag collective of characters fronted by sometime actor Rhys Ifans. A clearly obliterated Ifans stumbles on stage with a keg in tow: unsurprising being that we’d seen him the night before donned in a bin bag, wielding a fast dwindling bottle of white. Ungainly and uncomfortable, he’s an awkward amalgamation of every iconic frontman he’s ever wanted to be, a tuneless drunken mess. The Peth are a forgettable shambles, butchering anything remotely musical in the stage radius. Having long launched the keg into the unfortunate front rows, we leave The Peth to their ramshackle merriment and Ifans to the mother of all hangovers.
[Los Campesinos]
Thankfully Los Campesinos paint an altogether more positive picture for Welsh music with a lively, sprightly turn on the main stage including some passing boy-on-boy action before…
[The National]
…the powerful majesty of The National peerlessly demonstrate the kind of musicianship and intensity The Peth sorely lacked. After an intensive summer schedule, Matt Berninger’s voice could do with a little TLC, but it doesn’t stop the likable front man kneeling down to the barrier-less front rows for regular handshakes and high fives. ‘Slow Show’ is heartbreaking, ‘Squalor Victoria’ is rasped out with increasingly bedraggled effort, Berninger hurling everything he has left for the rousing finale of ‘Mr November’.
[Caribou]
With the majority otherwise lost, Bermuda-style, in Pentangle, Daniel Snaith aka Caribou serves up a booming double drum and visual assault to kick start the Sunday night revelry. An initially sparse crowd soon bear witness to the show of the festival. Searing bouts of psychedelica crash around undulant bass, Snaith periodically switching between guitar, the sticks and a brief tinkle on xylophone. A dynamic stage set-up sees the twin kits at the forefront with his backing band clumped around him, either engaged in elaborate rock pantomime drum dance routines or lurching in hunched, silhouetted unison. After pausing to say this’ll be their last show for ‘quite some time’, Snaith steadies himself for a final, elaborate percussive bombast before all four members go all ‘Animal’ on the kits, cymbal smashing their way to a tectonic apocalypse. Even Bert Jansch sat up to say, “Sounds like thunder”.
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