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If Glastonbury is the aging hippy of the festival scene, and Reading
the surly teenager, V Festival has always been seen as the
middle-class parent - polite, moneyed and, well, more than a little
boring. However, with a giant Glasto-sized hole in the calendar, and a
Carling weekender disappearing quickly into emo-pop turgidity, there's
a suddenly an opportunity for a really decent festival to come and
steal the show this summer.
And with the best line-up it's ever had, V
could be the answer to our prayers - enough indie to please the trendy
fringes (We Are Scientists, Imogen Heap) enough pop for
the festival virgins (Girls Aloud, Daniel Powter) and
the coup of the year - bringing notoriously conglomerate-hating
Radiohead to the live music equivalent of Bluewater.
The thing about festivals with the reputation of V is that you expect
something a cut above your traditional warm-cider-in-a-field
experience. You expect sun, grass, Pimms and girls in straw boaters.
You certainly don't expect sheeting rain, mud of Somme-like
proportions and a army of pissed Brummies wearing wellies, which is
exactly what greeted us as we arrived at Weston Park on Saturday
morning. So much for 'nice', then.
Inside the enormous festival site, things weren't getting much better.
After refusing to pay £10 for a bit of cardboard with the hideously
inaccurate stage times on, it was a shock to the system to find we had
to queue for a token just to get a beer. And someone, even worse,
somewhere is playing the Sugababes new album so loudly we
can't really
concentrate on the complicated token system. Actually - hang on a
second - it is the Sugababes, mincing about behind a couple of
white stools on the main stage. And, funnily enough, despite the rain
the crowds are lapping it up, despite the old one, the blonde one and
the one whose name we can't remember not actually doing
anything. Hits? Check. Pouts? Check. On-stage charisma? Bugger, left it
backstage with me makeup.
We miss Lily Allen here (but caught her at the Secret Garden Party on the same weekend) and
head over to catch the end of real queen of MySpace, Imogen
Heap, at the cavernous JJB Arena. On stage, a woman wearing a
pattern dress
stands alone behind a huge stack of keyboards. "Thank you" she intones
demurely, "this is my last song", before launching into something that can only
be described as death-metal-gone-disco. It's visceral, experimental,
exciting pop music, and completely unexpected from such an
unassuming-looking girl.
Back at the main stage, Hard-Fi are industriously attempting to
sabotage all the hard work they've put in over the last few years by
being, well, indescribably awful. While footage of bombs and riots on big
screens is bad enough (c'mon guys - leave the Combat Rock stuff out,
you're not The Clash) frontman Richard Archer is completely
wasted - God knows what on - and ruins what could have been a high
point
of the band's career. Even the rest of the band look faintly
embarrassed when he launches into another burbling monologue before
Live For The Weekend. It's a sad sight, especially for a band that
promised so much.
Disappointed, we hop across to see perennial indie nearly-men
Delays at the Channel 4 stage, which is a gloriously sunny
affair, replete
with smoke machines, flashing lights and singer Greg Gilbert's
impossibly high vocals, which would have threatened to smash all glass
in the vicinity, if it hadn't been confiscated on entry. Nearer Than
Heaven and Long Time Coming are joyous, and, even in the torrential
downpour, it seems that the sun shines down on this little stage.
Delays are
the complete antithesis of Hard-Fi, professional, committed and
excellent live. As is James Dean Bradfield, erstwhile frontman of
generation terrorists The Manic Street Preachers, and currently
forging a successful solo career with album The Great Eastern. Finally
freed from penning jaunty jingles to Nicky Wire's risible lyrics, JDB
has grabbed the chance to write an entire album's worth of songs to
himself in impressive style - new single That's No Way to Tell A Lie
is a fantastic slice of XTC inspired pop, and he even drops in Ocean
Spray and a rapturously received No Surface, All Feeling from his
Manics days.
By now forced by the exorbitant festival prices to exist solely on
a diet of chips and Strongbow, we stumble
through the mud to the pick of the tents, the Virgin Union to catch
dark indie popsters The Crimea. With song titles like Lottery Winners
on Acid and My Girlfriend Just Died, you'd expect a bunch of
Morrissey devotees, instead, the Crimea are the missing link between
The Kinks and Leonard Cohen - gloriously melodic, but with the heart of
a serial killer.
In a completely different, but equally transcendent moment, The
Pipettes bound onstage minutes after the Crimea, and deliver a
comprehensive masterclass in cool, offsetting matching polkadot
dresses with '60s wall-of-sound inspired three minute pop. Beautiful,
sassy and spiky, these three girls from Brighton are everything the
lifeless Sugababes are not; Pull Shapes, One Night Stand and
Dirty Mind sound fuller live than they do on record, and we can
expect much in the future from these sassy lasses.
We catch the tail end Faithless, who have been expertly
playing the same festival-pleasing set for the last... ooo... 50 years or
so, and trudge across the now gamely flowing river of mud to see
Razorlight unleash their eponymous second album upon the
festival circuit. It is a bombastic experience.
Johnny Borrell's confidence, sky high at the best of times, now
appears to have gone into orbit, and deservedly so - spiky post-punk
tracks from their first album like Stumble And Fall and Golden
Touch are almost drowned out by the cacophony of cheers, and the more
MOR-tinged new songs like America and Can't Stop This Feeling
greeted like old friends.
On the way back to the tent, we meet a tidal wave of people
walking in the opposite direction. Morrissey finished already?
Actually, he's just getting started - thousands are deserting the
Mozfather as his pretty hitless set veers into solo-album overkill.
Muddy punters, desperate for There Is A Light That Never Goes Out,
are bemused and shiftless in the face of a barrage of effete songs off
his occasionally tortuous recent albums. Closer How Soon Is Now is
too little, too late - most have left the field for the campsite. On
the way out, we hear one punter mutter "Well, at least tomorrow,
Radiohead are playing". A subdued end to a good day.
Day 2
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