My Leeds Festival 2009

This year I've felt a little too self absorbed to induldge myself in Leeds Festival properly. I spent the Friday & Sunday bed down in House Of Mook perfecting the mix for You Animals forthcoming opus, and setting up for recording some Honour Before Glory tracks on Monday

I did have a great day in attendance on the Saturday, though as usual it was the social aspect as much as the bands that made it the occasion it was.

I started the day watching The XX, who's album has quickly become a bit of a favourite of mine. It was an odd entity live, I wasn't expecting it to be that much more than it was, but I still thought it was a shame there wasn't more to it. Still, it's made me listen to the album today and I've enjoyed it all the more.

After The XX, I wandered around the site a little bit and checked out the BBC Introducing Stage, caught a little bit of ex-Loiner Anna Prior in Metronomy, before watching the Grammatics in the Festval Republic tent. And very good they were too

Later on, we camped out on the main stage to catch Vampire Weekend (who reminded me more than ever of Gracelands), bits of Bloc Party (very festival) and then Radiohead.

Radiohead was a bit of an odd one as not the set per se, but the whole set-up seemed very hard for a casual observer to 'break through' - and what I find odd, is why a band that was doing a sponsor-less tour in their own tents, was headlining such a 'corporate' festival?? With the 'arty' set up of video screens and lighting it was hard to connect from a distance, so I lost interest. I'm sure if I'd have been in the mood for an intense Radiohead set it would've been outstanding. I guess it was the festival equivalent of The Wire - not one for the casual observer. But that's what I go to the festival to be.

Two brief links / mentions:

1) To the festival volunteers who are actively getting involved. Great work if you can get it:

http://festvolunteers.blogspot.com/

2) Check out highlights of loads of bands on 'death of independent journalism' website the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/readingandleeds/2009/videos/

Keep an eye out for Faith No More covering the Eastenders theme

Many thanks to the kind people at Festival Republic though for letting me attend again. Hopefully next year I can do something worthwhile to attend

Soundtrack to this post: Wilco, Fever Ray

Highbrow Lo-Fi

Having a lazy Sunday, and picked up The Observer. In the review section there's an article on American bands intelligent lyrics and music, and berating the lack of English 'representatives' in this field of clever music

Sorry, that's not a great description, I am not great with words, and articles like this make me very angry. You can find the article online here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/aug/03/popandrock

 It's articles like this, that over hype, good but not amazing bands, and totally fail to acknowledge the existance of many a fine band. The bands mentioned are all pretty good, and some of them do write pretty fine lyrics. But they're not the greatest, please mention Will Oldham, Nina Nastasia, Jason Molina... absolutely no need to bring up Vampire Weekend. Infact all the article does is pander to a trend of in vogue American bands - see my point below about how US bands are making the Mercury trendy albums of the moment

The fact is, America's 'music industry' is big enough to support a relatively self sustaining alternative to the mainstream. The UK isn't, and with Myspace diluting the pond of 'diehard' fans over a million decent bands, it's even harder. But that's fine to a certain degree, it actually means there are probably even more great bands from the UK, though relatively undiscovered. What completely stunts the growth of these bands is the media's insistence that bands only exist over a certain level and in a certain framework

Soundtrack to this post: The Good Life, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy