I like a lie in and for me one of the most irritating things in life is waking up earlier than you have to. I knew that I’d be seeing my first band at about midday and yet for some reason my subconscious decided to wake me up at half 9. This wasn’t funny considering the late night I had yesterday. With all the will in the world a shower does not take three hours!
Nevermind, I dossed around the hostel for a bit, went for a walk, had some breakfast and was still the first one in the queue to see Kieran Leonard at The Brighthelm Center. It was a nice way to settle into another day madness. A cup of overly fizzy larger branded cidre, a bloke with a guitar singing songs about hangovers and surprisingly, no hangover myself. Keiran’s catchy tunes got under everyone’s skin and as he played you could have heard a pin drop, if it wasn’t for the fact that their was a giant stack of amps blaring out what was happening on stage, but you know what i mean.
I Have A Tribe was on at Audio. This was an Irish chap who is usually part of a large group, but the group didn’t show up, so he decided to carry on without them. I always try and see a few Irish bands over the course of the weekend because someone is always handing out a freebee music from Ireland CD. I Have A Tribe’s surviving member has a really impressive beard. You can hear in the music the similarities between them and Villagers, I wouldn’t be surprised if they get compared quite a lot.
I had decided to catch the end of the band that was playing upstairs in Above Audio, The People, The Poet, and on the way out I bumped into Christian and Marcus, two friends from Germany who make their way to Brighton every year to witness the Great Escape. I had met them last year where we saw quite a few bands together, including The Jooles, who still stick out for me as one of the highlights of 2013’s festival.
I had to make a quick decision, go upstairs and stick with the plan or go back downstairs and talk to Marcus and Christin for a bit and watch September Girls instead. I think I made the wrong decision. Don’t get me wrong, The People, The Poet were good, they were a couple of chaps from Wales who do what you do with an acoustic guitar, it’s just when I went back downstairs to catch the end of September Girls set I was blown away. They rocked it like a good’n. Impressed indeed.
Based on a recommendation from Marcus and Christian I went up to the Green Door Store to see Mighty Oaks. I didn’t get to see them even though I got in because the Green Door Store has a room with a bar and a room with a stage. One was full and the other was so rammed full of people that you had no hope. I abandoned my plans and made for The Hope, a pub with a small venue above.
It took an age for Sun Glitters to come on and when he started it took an age for him to finish. This was a sort of ambient trance DJ set. I’m sure if you were in the back room of some sort of hipster club in Hoxton at 3 a.m. then that would be fine. Not 3 p.m. in a pub in Brighton.
I left as soon as it finished and practically ran to Komedia to see KiT. Show canceled – crap! Ahh well, back to the festival hub to see what’s happening there then. What was happening was Misty Miller. I was really enjoying Misty Miller, a great rock chick band, to my mind nothing offensive, just good old fashioned rock ‘n’ Roll. Half way through the set they were told that they had to stop because they were too loud.
Too loud?
TOO LOUD!
What bullshit! What the hell do you expect if you book a rock band, I mean they did listen to the bands they booked, didn’t they? So yeah, that was cut short and as I waited for the next band to come on I watched as there were heated discussions backstage, by back stage I mean behind a drum kit. A plastic Rose suffered from this sudden shyness on behalf of the organisers. At least Misty Miller got to play a few songs, A Plastic Rose just didn’t play at all.
After the cockup I decided I’d find somewhere else to watch bands, at least they would be playing! The Unitarian Church for me has always had really soulful and exceptionally beautiful music in previous years. So I didn’t even look up Seoul. In the queue I was talking to a couple of chaps who had signed up to the txt alert scheme. They had ended up getting tickets to see Kaiser Chiefs, all for the princely sum of £1.50 to sign up to a txt alert. I will be doing the same next year. So, Seoul. Some say they are dream-pop. Well they certainly put me to sleep. burn.
What followed was a long stint in Coalition. I bumped into Marcus and Christian again and this time we stuck together. They clearly have an instinct for the best bands because I stuck with them for most of the night and it was wicked. First on the bill at coalition was Theo Verney. Quite simply Theo rocked! Imagine Chad dickface from Nickelback, now imagine that he was actually good, now try and forget all the crap that Nickelback have put out over the years, now add some personality, some fun, turn the bass up and take away the OTT canadian accent and replace it with an ordinary English voice and you are some way towards Theo. He was so good I was compelled afterwards to go over just to tell him I enjoyed his set.
Team Me look like their just having fun. So much so that the audience is sucked into it as well. Probably some of the best party rock I have ever seen live. Honestly if these were playing at any house party it would go on until the police were called. I don’t see how anyone could get bored of these. They finished their set by jumping into the crowd and finishing off their guitar solo’s amongst us all.
I had a vague recognition of the name of the band Glass Animals, I listened to them completely unaware, loving it all the same, right up to the point they played their current single, Gooey. Gooey is a song that optimized their whole set. Not too fast paced but all enveloping and strangely sexy (An odd thing to say about a group of men, I’m talking about the music, not them). The sound hits you and its like you’re absorbed into it. Christ, what were you smoking Looke? No really it’s like that without any mind altering substances. Listen to it in a dark room with the volume up and you never know, you might just feel the same way.
The same couldn’t be said for Fat White Family. If you have heard the single touch the leather you might think you have an idea of what Fat White Family are all about. You don’t. The single played on the radio is a dark, brooding slow song which doesn’t give even a hint of their true nature. In essence I left that gig realising that they were in fact a punk band pure and simple. A punk band complete with its very own nutter front man who was more than happy to get half his kit off. I heard about another gig they played later in the festival where the guy was down to just a g-string. I’m not sure if I want that mental image or if I would want to remember the spectacle of the whole event.
We left and went to see Syd Arthur at Dome Studio. A relaxed wicked general rock band. Nothing particularly stood out about this band but it was all pretty good. This is where I should have parted company with my German friends. They had been instrumental in some of the best picks of the day and thought they would carry on doing the same. We had thought about seeing Royal Blood at the Corn Exchange but the queue was stupid. We ended up in pub called the Fitzherbert in a small room above listening to a thrash metal band that was so incoherent that we left pretty soon after they started playing. REally and truly I should have stuck with the queue at for Royal Blood or stayed in the Dome Studio after Syd Arthur and watched Courtney Barnett play again. Instead we ended up having fish and chips on the sea front and then going our separate ways, the Germans went to bed and I went to the hostel.
Back at the hostel I nearly ended up going with an Irish guy back out to watch Fat White Family again, but decided against it. Instead I ended up having a strange conversation with a chap called Martin (who had a very errr.. lets say distinctive red coat) and Andrew the wine sommelier (not a festival goer, just lived nearby and was in the bar). Irish came back at about three in the morning and we had a chat about music and bands etc. with an Australian girl and her incoherently drunk friend until dawn.