Truck Festival 2008 - first timers first impressions

United Kingdom | | 23 July 2008

The other striking thing is how young the friendly crowd are, despite a line-up which you could initially mistake for being aimed squarely at someone’s uncle. They youngsters have no doubt been enticed by the plethora of dance music options accompanying the more relaxed offerings of the main stages, although the biggest attraction of all has to be the thankfully beautiful weather.
 
Local bedroom boffin Alphabet Backwards draws a large crowd for his lunchtime set in the Barn. In his live incarnation the band swells to a five-piece, whose irrepressible performance provides the first high point of the day. James Hitchman makes an engaging and energetic frontman, and his lo-fi acoustic offerings are lifted above the dirge of other singer/songwriters by the eccentric synth lines that soar out of nowhere, making them more comparable to the quirky pop of early Athlete (before they started trying to be Coldplay). One to watch.
 
“Hello, we’re the Kooks… and we’re shit”, announces Dodgy’s drummer as they take to the Market Stage for an acoustic performance. Now, believe me, I hate the Kooks as much as the next man, but I can’t help thinking that being in Dodgy is hardly the perfect platform for commenting on the shit scores of other bands. Indeed, this bungled attempt at arrogance, when coupled with the fact that as far as I can remember Dodgy were fairly shit even back when they were good, means my expectations are hardly sky high. But as the gig proceeds, it soon becomes clear that Dodgy are one of those bands who actually have more hits than you think; just over half an hours worth actually, which proves pretty handy under the circumstances. By the time they finish with ‘If You’re Thinking of Me’ followed by ‘Good Enough’, they’ve inspired that treasured festival nirvana: the entire crowd singing along as singer simply smiles from stage. A pleasant surprise indeed.
 
It’s fair to say that Noah and the Whale approach the Market Stage from the opposite trajectory to Dodgy, with ‘5 Years Time’ becoming something of a summer anthem despite it not having even been released yet. They open their set to a huge crowd with a quick reminder that they’re not just a one trick pony, in the form of the equally sublime previous single ‘Shape of My Heart’, and much of what follows bodes extremely well for their eagerly anticipated debut album. The majority of their material mines a similar vein, mixing the melancholic with the uplifting, as personified by ‘Beating’, an acoustic lament that suddenly kicks into a full scale, tent shaking, fiddle driven hoe down. Unfortunately the synchronised whistling intro to ‘5 Years Time’ is deemed too risky for the live environment, but the song’s sheer infectiousness makes it sound as fresh as ever, despite the absence of Laura Marling’s backing vocals. The experience of hugging complete strangers while singing along to the refrains “sun, sun, sun”, “fun, fun, fun” and “love, love, love” seems to somehow encapsulate everything that is so right about the Truck Festival.
 
A planned warm-up gig in an Oxford pub on Friday night was unfortunately cancelled due to The Lemonheads being stranded overnight in New York, and it would appear that come Saturday night Evan Dando is still suffering from jetlag. They begin their set with a run through of the classic ‘Shame About Ray’ album, and with no in between banter the whole thing’s done and dusted in little over 20 minutes (they unsurprisingly omit ‘Mrs. Robinson’). The songs themselves have aged just as well as Dando, who looks no different to when the album was released 15 years ago. The highlight comes with the upbeat ‘Bit Part’, in which the band stop momentarily for the crowd to add backing vocals. This aside, though, the band’s performance lacks the charm of their material, which is unusual, especially for a frontman who during his solo shows used to revel in taking requests from the audience and attempt cover versions of songs he’d clearly never played before. Unfortunately, when Dando returns for a lone slot he still fails to loosen up, and despite delivering the likes of ‘Being Around’ and ‘Different Drum’, the set feels like something of a missed opportunity. Dando has been compared musically to Brian Wilson many times in the past, but unfortunately the analogy is starting to look apt for less flattering reasons.
 
The day finishes where it began, in the Barn, to see Altern-8 headlining what’s billed as “the biggest rave ever”. This may be a slight exaggeration but the place is rammed and it’s certainly the first time I’ve ever had to queue to get into a cowshed. The absence of an MC is a slight disappointment, though this is more than atoned for by the huge laser that fires over the dancefloor within reaching distance of the crowd, many of whom are decked out in Altern-8 style gas masks (though this choice of attire may also be attributed to the smell, which can only be described as distinctly barn-like!). What follows comes across like the soundtrack to a mis-spent youth, with hardcore anthems from the likes of Bizarre Inc and The Prodigy preceding the true highlight, an ingenious splicing of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ and Joey Beltram’s ‘Energy Flash’. The set finishes with Altern-8’s own ‘Evapor-8’ as the massed ranks reach up towards the confetti that begins falling from the ceiling, prompting the question: on what day did God invent nu-rave and couldn’t he have rested on that day too?

by Henry Norman