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Despite the fact that this is their first gig, Smiling Pirates have already been through a few band names – they’re billed on the posters as Neon Candlelight (shrug), and before that they were allegedly Kaleidovision (retch). But, call them what you want, what they really are is a mess, albeit a promising and likable one. They start out with big blocky piano parts and reverby guitar lines, an approximation of Keane and Sigur Ros at the bottom of a flooded mineshaft, but from there they swiftly move to their one discernible rhythm, the dark disco canter of many a band with Joy Division and Gang Of Four in their influence list. They’re a little like a Tesco Value version of Doves, and, although starting and finishing aren’t performing concepts they’ve really nailed, some of the middles are quite good. Their songs are like budget Jaffa Cakes, in that sense.

Promise is on display here, as well as a kind of affable unpretentiousness that wins them points, but there are a couple of issues Smiling Pirates could do with addressing: a) the drummer, who throws himself at his skins with a frantic and barely rhythmic desperation during the crescendos, thus looking like he’s playing Daley Thompson’s Decathlon (or Eddie Kidd’s Jump Challenge, for those who grew up with the BBC B), and b) the fact that the vocalist probably wants to be likened to Ian Curtis, but in actuality looks like a man trying not to make eye contact with the drunk skinhead at the bus stop, and has a voice like a bored supermarket announcer, even whilst his songs collapse around his ears. Clean up on aisle 3.

Londoners Libelula (it’s Spanish for “Dragonfly”, apparently, and has nothing to do with female anatomy, despite a heckle) have lots of differently shaped keyboards and some excellent synth-drums and create a humming pop buzz, roughly equivalent to The Human League with contemporary disco dolly vocals, or a Phildickian timeslip collaboration between the early OMD and already forgotten hitmakers Kosheen. The effect is rather lovely, due in no small part to Sarah Villaraus’ adaptable, but not overcooked, diva vocals, and her nice golden boots; in fact, at first there was a fear that the impressive vocals would be too emotive for the sparsely robotic technopop around which they twined, but then they played “Mountains”, a lithe Goldfrappian iceskate around chiming metallophone loops, and our final doubts were put to rest. They even have a dark minded tune that recalls the clumsy breakbeats of “Charley” era Prodigy, and even Kickin Vinyl hardcore mainstay, The Scientist. It’s heartening to see an act with unashamed commercial intent, who also have some clear ability with a tune, and enough ideas to keep miserable scribbling journos happy. Best of British to you, boys and girls.

Talking of commercial impact, Spring Offensive are a band who look as though they are only months away from an adulatory V festival set and an NME cover story, and they’re simply playing a debut EP launch at The Jericho. They’re a tightly-drilled, rousing indie band, with tiny puzzle pop inflections, whose greatest strength is their fluent and witty use of rhythms (here’s a band who can make a three beat cowbell feel funkier than most overweight soul acts doing the rounds). The vocalist boasts a strong voice, but like so many current bands he belts things out in a yearning, fists aloft style that sounds like he’s in the audience singing along to his favourite tunes, as opposed to performing a song, and when the rest of the band come in on backing vocals they may as well be singing “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow”. We think they have better vocal arrangements in them somewhere, but for now, this egalitarian terrace singalong style at least sounds completely contemporary.

However, underneath all the high guitar strap Foals twiddles, and clever rhythmic tics, Spring Offensive are a thinly disguised folk pop outfit, chock full of bolshily literate songs: something akin to a Stornoway who can talk to girls. And if lovely indie lilt “The Cable Routine” is their “Unfaithful” and an almost Chumbawambafied pecuniphagous* ditty about a man consuming the contents of his own wallet is their “We Are The Battery Human”, sadly they have a “Good Fish Guide”, in the shape of “1066″, an unfunny retelling of the battle of Hastings.

So, drop the second rate student humour. Drop the homemade T-shirts that make you look like a Why Don’t You version of The Manics. From thereon in there’s no need to change anything, Spring Offensive, as you are a wonderful, euphoric, twitchily danceable new Oxford band, and we wish you all the success in the world.

*It means “Money eating”; or at least it should, there’s obviously no such word.

By David Murphy

Oxford filmmaker extraordinaire and Videosyncratic supremo Jon Spira has whipped together an excellent ten-minute highlights package of the best Oxford bands playing at this year’s Truck Festival. It features The Candyskins, Dive Dive, Stornoway, Alphabet Backwards, From Light To Sound, Supergrass and loads more.

Stay tuned for more news on Jon’s feature-length documentary about Oxford music, Anyone Can Play Guitar, which is due for release at the end of 2009.

No, I’ve never heard of it either. And if you walk along Crown Street in East Oxford without your wits about you, you’ll walk straight past it. The Winchester has a shadowy existence, having neither a reputation (for good or evil) nor even a sign. However, with the vital intelligence that “it’s above a pool hall” you may brave the door, unlike Kafka’s hero in ‘Before the Law’. In my case, I had the added clue of hearing Anton Barbeau’s daft anthem to bananas floating out of the top window through the threatening humidity. With one exception, this was the best song of the night.

My Device are a high-voltage punk and hardcore trio from Brighton and of the three acts that I caught, fitted in best with the ‘Christ, what a heat, lets take all our shirts off’ atmosphere of this cloying, sweltering little room. Some comparisons with Fugazi came to mind, as well as the glory days of Black Flag, at least in the hectic energy and commitment to the performance. In addition they add a bit of pedal-stamping math rock to the mix and they are rather brilliant at what they do, even if the sonic assault allied to the blinding heat was rather overwhelming. There are a number of writers on this site who will love this band, but my attitude is that if I want to be assaulted I will do the conventional thing and wander around Lower Barton in a pink floral dress.

The Wookies took to the stage in their trademark beards and heavy brown suits, which must have been absolute torture, but they put on a spirited show, complete with waltzing lead guitarist. Their stock-in-trade is shouty, slightly camp prog-rock, with a brilliant keys player at the heart of everything good about the band. They fall down in two related areas: they possess three lead singers, but none are outstanding and perhaps due to their vocal limitations, are sorely lacking in memorable tunes. The exception is ‘In the Forest’, a mighty, breathless celebration of life and a fitting set closer.

King of Spain are named after Ashley Giles, a hangdog Warwickshire and England slow bowler of recent vintage. In his benefit season (that is, six months of legalised begging) he ordered a consignment of shirts bearing the logo ‘King of Spin’, but the type-setters had obviously been tanning the bevy and added an egregious ‘a’ to the last word. This had the ironic effect of turning Giles into a cult hero, with the crowds donning sombreros and strumming nylon-stringed guitars whenever the poor guy showed up at deep-fine-leg. Trust me that this story is a great deal more entertaining than the set put on by the tedious indie four-piece of the same name. Giles’ attritional style and workmanlike career are decent metaphors for the tiresome combination of lame rhymes (giraffe/laugh, anyone?), hackneyed lyrical themes (do we need yet more songs about chatting up birds in the boozer?) and enervated rhythms of this awful, awful band. I left after three songs, clutching a Magners in one hand and a saline drip in the other. Never again. Bring back the Port Mahon.

By Colin MacKinnon.

Shuffling sweatily through heat-maddened central Oxford, I had low hopes for a good turnout at this month’s Gappy Tooth night at the Wheatsheaf, (Cornmarket street, hazy and violently simmering in the late-evening sun provided proof positive that sometimes a water-cannon is in perfect order) but in the event, the pull of three local bands ensured that while the showing was modest, it was far from negligible.

Minor Coles are a new one on me, but they are making friends and news at a healthy rate, having secured a berth at the Truck festival recently. The honour is well-deserved, the quartet making punchy, melodic, wide-screen indie rock, and possessing two strong lead singers. It’s actually quite difficult to think of specific bands they sound like: the best I could come up with was Seafood with a dash of British Sea Power noise, while others mentioned the spikier end of The Delgados. In any case, their compact set was highly impressive: for a band that’s been together for a matter of months, everything seems astonishingly well-engineered: the vocal harmonies are note-perfect, the occasional double lead-guitar passages pulled off with ease, and the only imperfections were non-musical: a non-authoritative set-list and a comical onstage argument about the right position for a capo- of course these human blemishes made us like them all the more.

The Sidewinders are likeable for different reasons: their utter commitment to an art which was exhausted long before ‘This is Spinal Tap’ administered the last rites is both amusing and slightly sad. They are what Jeremy Clarkson might call a proper rock and roll band: the bassist looks like he could pack down in the front row for Banbury Town Third XV, the guitarist spends half the gig with his eyes shut and his tongue out, and the lead singer was sporting an extremely hirsute chest- no doubt there’s still a breed of lady out there who finds that sort of thing attractive- perhaps the kind who swoons over DCI Gene Hunt. In any case, they made loud, dumb, hairy rock music very effectively, even if most of the content felt like it had been culled from an obscure AC/DC album circa 1983 (interesting trivia point: AC/DC once wrote fifteen songs in one afternoon, eight of which contained the word ‘Rock’ in the title. What boundless invention!)

Closing the show were Punt stars, From Here, We Run!, who judging from their Myspace page, have an array of clever math-rock tunes. But it was a patchy set. Actually it was near-disastrous. Beginning well with the spiky yet catchy ‘Abdul Jafur Lives to Fight’, the band showed their best qualities: singer Pietke has a strong, slightly husky voice, and the instrumentalists (bass, drums and guitar) are nimble and energetic. But from there, things went awry. The second song train-wrecked, which is no biggie, but the second take didn’t sound a lot better than the first, and the impression soon formed of a band operating outside the level of their technical abilities, and (even worse) suffering internal division. It’s almost as if Pietke wants to be in a melodic, girly, indie band like Sleeper, while the three blokes prefer to ape the time-signature juggling and nutty chord shapes of bands like Youthmovies and This Town Needs Guns. I noticed as the set ended, that the singer jumped off stage before the last song had even ended, with barely a look at her bandmates. Whether this was a pose or not, it felt worrying, and  they need to get it together quick.

By Colin MacKinnon.

Sunday

What could be more Gallic than a stripy top, an accordion and a Jacques Brel cover?  Except for singing in like, French, and Les Clochards do that too.  But even if you’re semi-bilingual, like us, there’s tons to enjoy here, from the intimate vocals to the tight, buoyant drumming, to the rich chocolaty bass, which wraps round us on “Lavinia”.  Like The Relationships, a band with whom they share a close history, Les Clochards show that you don’t have to be like Tristan & The Troubadours, and fill your lyrics with death, ravens and black portent to be poetic, a well phrased piece of story telling can cut right to the quick.  Pound for pound Sunday’s lineup wasn’t a patch on Saturday’s, but Les Clochards quietly turned in one of the sets of the weekend to a smattering of listeners.

Oh, fuck off!  Look, we like covers bands in principle, we like ska and punk, we even like fun every once in awhile, but the repugnantly named When Alcohol Matters come from that horrible school of non-thought stating that a complete absence of talent and ideas are instantly justified by putting on some silly clothes.  So, here we go, one of WAM is wearing a red beret and a kilt. Wild.  The new wave era tunes they play are generally fine – “Geno”, “Too Much, Too Young”, and so on – and the dual saxes aren’t bad, but the rhythms are sluggish and the vocals are just terrible.  Talk about a paucity of ideas: simply playing songs you quite like doesn’t make you a good band, especially if you don’t play them very well.  Still, a kilt.  Just imagine.

Anyway, if you really want to know when alcohol maters, talk to some of the revellers about their attempts to smuggle it onto the site!  Some were successful, but Banjo Boy, our homebrew proffering chum form last year, was stopped at the gate with four cans of beer, so he just stood there in front of the entrance and drank them one after the other.  Before lunch.  You have to admire that sort of behaviour…unless you’re a hepatologist.

Over on the second stage young Chipping Norton outfit Relay may not be laden down by new ideas, but they’re worth a hundred WAMs.  Most of their songs are lean and poppy jaunts very much on the vein of Arctic Monkeys, but when they strip things down they have quite a subtle touch, and Jamie Biles has the beginnings of a pleasant indie croon. 

“Hi, I’m Judi, and I’m fourteen,” says Judi Luxmoore of Judi & The Jesters.  And then she says it again.  It’s either an apology in advance, or an attempt to make your friendly neighbourhood hatchetman reviewer look deep into his dark soul.  And, no, we’re not in the business of destroying the dreams of nervous teenagers who have bit the bullet and climbed onstage, so let’s get this over with. The Jesters play dirt simple lightly countrified songs, that are part Kitty Wells, and part “The Wheels On The Bus Go Round & Round”, and once she gets warmed up Judi has a pleasing voice.  There’s a huge amount of potential here, but let’s be straight, at the moment that’s all there is, and Judi’s presence on the bill is something of an indulgence.  Worth investigating in a couple of years, perhaps, and definitely worth investigating if the alternative is WAM.

A walk back to the main stage really brings home how very different in size the two stages are.  We wonder how many festival goers never even get past the toilet block over the weekend.  Anyway, Alan Fraser is getting the benefit of the excellent PA on the main stage, and his jazz sax floats across the crowd with crystal clear sound.  His tone is amazing, so pure and smooth, but the set itself is a real old West Coast jazz dawdle, like Stan Getz locked in an old folks home store cupboard and half buried under discarded surgical trusses.  As the set progresses Fraser starts to bring out some interesting low end honks and rasps, and a decent swipe at Miles’ “All Blues” mean we almost let him get away with it, until his sanctimonious sign off, “Thanks for listening, those of you who were listening and not just hearing“.  And there we were waiting for you to start playing, and not just making the right sounds.  Supercilious old trout.

We’ve got a bit muddled, but we think the band we drop in on back at the second stage briefly is Man Make Fire.  How about Man Throw All Your Instruments On It Whilst He There, if the limp soggy rendition of “Purple Haze” is anything to go by.  Time for a swift exit.

Back To Haunt Us, Part Four:  billypure make mention of our review of last year’s festival during their main stage set, and our allegation that they want to be The Waterboys.  Well, that’s not quite what we meant, but they do knock out the same Waterboys cover version and unless we misheard, it sounds as though they actually got their name from the lyrics, so we reckon they’re being a bit defensive.  Anyway, the song actually sounds lacklustre amongst some of their own, and their arrangement of “The Raggle Taggle Gypsy” is a searing folk rock delight.  It’s a chirpy, chunky set, with some useful fiddle parts, and we enjoy it enormously.  Does remind us a little of another band, though…oh, what are they called again…

Rob Stevenson from A Silent Film is firmly in the same breed as Juju from Little Fish, he looks so relaxed prowling around on the huge stage you’d think he was born and raised there.  They play a textbook set of wide-armed emotirock (featuring a genius reworking of Underworld’s “Born Slippy”), Rob’s warm, falsetto-happy voice twining gorgeously around his keyboard lines (a synth in the body of a parlour upright piano, nice touch).  No offence meant to the man, but our favourite track is the opener during which the guitarist is busy trying to sort out his hardware, and we get a spacious marimba led tune, as some of the music felt clogged and overly rich.  And that’s our only criticism: ASF are like Inlight – although clearly so much better – in that their songs are all huge and simple, as if they’re trying to create music that can be seen from space.  Look, we’re just over here, a few feet away, no need to telegraph the emotions, just let them happen.  When the scale is brought down a peg or two, this band is disarmingly impressive.

Next up, Ginger Toddler Rucksack Headbutt.  No, not the latest Poor Girl Noise booking, just a thing that happened whilst we were laying back watching Two Fingers OF Firewater.  And, hey, it’s a festival, if you want to express yourself by bashing our bag about, feel free – decent soundtrack to do it to, as well.  We could talk about Two Fingers’ dry humour, their contempo-country lope, their chiming pedal steel or their ‘60s rock touches (we heard the odd waft of Love in the climax), but all we can think about is their wah-wah mandolin.

The Epstein has long been a favourite of ours, and it’s been a long while since we saw them, but at first our rendezvous wasn’t too joyous.  The opening two numbers just didn’t grasp us, and seemed overly polished and polite after Two Fingers.  Thankfully, “Black Dog” gets things back on track, Stefan Hamilton’s electric banjo scuttles drawing us in, and Oli Wills’ easy, fruity vocal grasping us by the hand and leading us down some dusty mesa.  Even if it’s not their finest set, their encore was the track of the weekend, despite an awkward false start, a monolithic sonic surge creating valleys in its wake. 

And after that, Liddington were a disappointment, to put it mildly.   All the things that have been alleged about Inlight, and against which we have (partly) defended them, ring clear and true of Liddington: empty, vacuous stadium pop, with no discernible character and a vocal that is drab and lifeless just when the music is crying out for something, anything, to lift it out of the slough of over-amped indie balladeers swamping our nation’s musical profile.  And, yet again, we feel bored stupid by the giant gestures that the music is trying to make: what’s wrong with you lot?  Are you so concerned that your point won’t get across that you have to make it as big and obvious as possible?  What are you, a pop band or air traffic controllers?  After all, you don’t find us standing dead centre of the stage miming an elaborately theatrical yawn to show how little we’re enjoying the set, do you?  OK, OK, Liddington aren’t the worst band of the day (no kilts, see), and a few of the keyboard sounds were well chosen, but by this time we really need something to engage us, and not a whole bunch of vapid honks that sound like old Huey Lewis tunes left out in Chris Martin’s allotment for twenty years until every glint of colour has been bleached out, and nothing is left but the clumsy shell.

But, this brief concluding burst of rage notwithstanding, this has been an excellent festival.  It’s our third Riverside, and the first at which we’ve felt that the two stages have been equally interesting.  Once again, the effort of putting on this event for free is an astonishing thought to contemplate, and whilst we wish that the organisers could try paddling outside of their safety zones, we’re always happy to roll up our trouserlegs and join them for a dip.  Book us in at Diplomat’s Coffee, we’ll be there as soon as the doors open in 2010.

 By David Murphy

 Saturday

Back To Haunt Us, Part One: A year ago we saw Jeremy Hughes busking before the 2008 festival started, and suggested that he was better than many of the official artists.  We’re certainly not deluded enough to think that his presence as half of Moon Leopard has anything to do with that observation, but they are the ideal opener to the festival, encapsulating the strengths of this year’s best bookings: approachable, handmade, rootsy, melodic and with a pleasing absence of pretension.  The aforementioned Hughes (who looks like a gentle cross between a blasted hippy and Dumbledore’s understudy – you’d recognise him even if you don’t know him) adds chiming, lucent guitar lines to Julie Burrett’s rhythm and vocals on a selection of relaxed Americana tunes.  The set might contain more noodles than Norris McWhirter’s chilli ramen, and Burrett’s voice may occasionally drop into a mildly grating whinny, but they do manage to turn “Big Yellow Taxi” into a subtle waft, hanging in the air like a Texarkana blacktop heathaze, and many moments of the performance are implausibly lovely.

The Inventions Of Jerry Darge is a glorious development on Moon Leopard’s opening gambit, taking us further into the mid-west, and playing an even more ethereal set.  Theirs is a blurred, intoxicating sonic mist, sounding like a sleepy mixture of country balladry and vintage shoegaze.  Gram Parsons fronts Slowdive, if you will, with added ‘cello and a guitar with tolling bells dangling from the headstock.  A barely audible vocal even adds to the woozy effect.  We’re so floored by the allegation that this is a Deguello side project that we check the programme twice and order a strong coffee.

Ah, yes, the coffee.  Non-musical festival highlight is the excellently named Diplomat’s Coffee, served by a dapper, well-spoken chap with a gentility that belies the drizzly surroundings.  Presumably a Rocher pyramid is available on demand.  We chat about whether the toddlers in the crèche adjacent to his stand will prove louder and more difficult to handle than the musicians on the stage opposite. Probably a draw, all things considered.

Ex-members of Mondo Cada shock us slightly less than the Deguello boys with new act Ruins.  They play deep fried, artery clogging rock, with plenty of passion and intensity.  However, not only does the under-powered vocal mike cause them more detriment than Jerry Darge, but the bass and drums duo is becoming an increasingly over-stuffed corner of the rock spectrum, and they may have to come up with something else to make a mark.  A decent listen all the same.

“No one can hear you scream”, alleges Thin Green Candles‘ Elm Tree referencing track.  That’s as may be – it certainly sounds like none of the band can hear each other, such are the wild variations in tuning and time-keeping.  But whilst “tidy”, or even “vaguely proficient”, are terms highly unlikely to be applied to TGC in the foreseeable future, their twisted, hallucinogenic, paranoid techno rock actually gains from being a bit out of whack.  Listening to their set is like watching a 3D film without the special glasses – you’re not likely to follow the plot, but you might have a whale of a time all the same. 

We’d completely forgotten we saw Jamie Foley’s adequate semi-acoustic rock combo, until we wrung the beer out of the notebook.  That probably speaks volumes, though what we can actually recall was pleasant enough.  The fader for the vocal channel seemed to have been located by this time, but the effect was negligible, as the singing was an incomprehensible slur somewhere between Damien Rice and Rab C Nesbitt.  The last tune reminded us unexpectedly of Pearl Jam, and we conclude that it’s all decent, but not for us.

Music For Pleasure were forced to pull out of the gig, so Dave Bowmer is promoted to the main stage, widdling away on his Chapman stick, whilst a chum clatters about on a percussion rack that seems to be primarily constructed from biscuit tins and washing up liquid bottles, placing him equidistant between Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason and Blue Peter’s Yvette Fielding.  Pretty easy to ridicule this sort of polite mid-80s fusion (especially when they have a reggae tune celebrating hippy Volkswagen vans called – wait for it – “V Dub”), but the playing is able without being ostentatious, and the arrangements are intricate without being poncy, and Dave ends up as our surprise hit of the weekend.

“This does sound very heavy, but it’s certainly not classical,” says a man walking near us back towards the second stage, who has clearly misread the programme slightly.  This turns out to be the sound of Punt favourites Desert Storm, who turn in some top notch, Pantera influenced metal.  “Roaches feed on my brain,” growls Matt Ryan; we dare say, but they’ll probably find your black gravelly larynx less digestible.

There are three glaring reasons why you shouldn’t name your band Flutatious: 1) It’s a frankly unforgivable pun, 2) “Flautatious” would be more eloquent, if you really must go down that route, and 3) it’s liable to be misspelt in listings until the end of time. Lo and behold, the official Riverside T-shirt claims that “Flutations” played, although seeing as this was just one of a wopping seven errors, we suppose it’s immaterial.   They’re a surprisingly good band, though, cooking up a crusty shuffle that loosely recalls Afro-Celt Soundsystem, with plenty of fiery folky fiddle and (duh) flute.  Unlikely to make the transition for balmy afternoon field to dank city centre basement well, but plenty of fun at the time.

Back To Haunt Us, Part Two:  Just a few weeks ago we claimed that given a large enough festival stage, Inlight could make a huge impact.  Well, OK, we didn’t find ourselves transported with bliss at the section of their set we caught, but it was a good listen. They do have a well thought out, wide-angled sound, that’s neither over-egged nor emptily bombastic, but once again we felt that the songs lacked depth, even if they were well-played.  A note on the Wishing Tree read “I wish the world were one big sweet”.  If you think like this, you’ll adore Inlight; if you find the very concept of a Wishing Tree to be fatuous claptrap, then you can come and scowl in the corner with us.

Back To Haunt US, Part Three: In last years; review we hoped that Death Of A Small Town (FKA script) could hold onto their rhythm section for long enough to get their wonderful baroque pop across to the people of Oxfordshire.  Sadly personal issues mean that the whole band can’t be present today, but Pete Moore and Corinne Clark put in the effort and turn up with an unrehearsed set of songs for piano and guitar.  Several thousand marks out of ten for not letting the organisers down, but the reserved, slightly hesitant set won’t be one for the annals. 

A recent viewing of the 2004 Riverside DVD reminded us how good Smilex can be, but this year’s show blew that old recording out of the water.  Recent claims that their show is becoming more grown up and less theatrical only serve to remind us that everything’s relative: yes, there is no full frontal nudity or bloodshed during the performance, but the rest of their comic-book punk maelstrom is all present and correct, thankfully.  Mind you, Lee Christian’s eye-jarring lime shirt and purple satin jacket make him look like a gameshow host in Hades, and we almost prefer him half naked.  Almost.  Anyway, none of that matters when the music is so great, with sleazerock hooks tossed onto monumental glam punk rhythms, and Tom Sharp’s formidable guitar (his technical ability is sorely under-rated, but then again does a band that looks like a massacre in clown town want people stroking chins over their technique?).  Even if they don’t like the music, locals can amuse themselves by shouting “Sorry, Trev” every time Lee swears.           

After a quick burst of Winnebago Deal’s palate cleansing bludgeon, we check in with Oxfordshire’s other favourite duo, as Little Fish crank up on the main stage.  Reviewing them makes us feel like some Oxford music Grinch – no matter how good they clearly are, nor how entertaining their set is, we just can’t see them conquering the world and changing the face of music as we know it, as so many people seem to expect.  A topic for another day, perhaps, as they certainly don’t put a foot wrong onstage (although not talking breathless nonsense about chickens between every song might be nice), and Juju and Nez are definitely the only people performing today who look like they were born to be onstage: they manage to eclipse the spectacle of Smilex’ caffeinated cabaret just by, you know, being there.    In fact, far from being the authors of life affirming pop anthems, we think of Little Fish more as old fashioned craftspeople.  The songs are pretty much all two chord bashes, with little more than repeated blues rock yelps over the top, and they don’t really say or do anything at all, but they are gorgeously honed and shaped and whittled to perfection.  Less like the universal soul poetry of the much referenced Patti Smith, then, and more analogous to expert niche electronica producers, creating generic yet immaculate music for the discerning connoisseur.

“We’re very lucky to have them,” announces the Riverside MC about the closing act.  Wait, is it a reunited Morrissey and Marr?  Has Beefheart been coaxed out of retirement?  No, it’s Tristan & The Troubadours, some lads from down the road. Keep some perspective, love. But admittedly they’ve come a very long way since they opened the main stage two years ago, and now offer a very confident set, replete with literate lyrics and interesting arrangements, something like Belle & Sebastian’s early effete library pop filtered through the matinee rock of locals Witches and Borderville. Very good indeed, and a fitting end to what had been a hugely satisfying afternoon of music – and all for blinking free, lest we forget.  Some acts made more impression than others admittedly, but there was literally nothing on the bill deserving harsh criticism, and it was a pleasure from start to finish. The effort that goes into the festival should be applauded by all right-minded music fans.

By David Murphy