THE LONG BLONDES
Whether wantonly perverse on purpose or not, it surely takes balls the size of watermelons to kick off your Reading debut with two B-sides and a couple of unreleased gems. But then, as Disorder’s elbowed out of the way by dozens of glammed-up girls in festival-unfriendly attire (stripy frocks, berets and stilettos?), we realise that when you’re chucking away track of the bleeding year, ‘Fulwood Babylon’, as a B-side and you’re packing future pop hits like ‘Once And Never Again’, you can pull it off in style.
GUILLEMOTS
There’s a hint of 80’s-Big Music bombast (The Waterboys, perhaps?) to Guillemots which sets them apart from most other bands on the bill this weekend. Soaring melodies seem to fly over the heads of most of their audience today, so they didn’t quite ‘do an Arcade Fire’, yet no-one can resist the giddy romp through ‘Trains To Brazil’.
GOGOL BORDELLO
Now this is surreal. You may, like us, feel the urge to vomit every time ‘Start Wearing Purple’ comes on the radio, but Gogol Bordello pull of the most insanely intense performance of the weekend. Dressed in flamboyant gypsy attire, and coming on like The Birthday Party and The Pogues at some speeded-up Ukrainian hoedown, moustachioed singer Eugene Hutz is bouncing off the front barriers like some crazed pirate.
PEACHES
Peaches has a new silver-clad all-girl rock band to play with, even if she’s forced to perform half of it with an injured cock. It was there one minute, centre-stage and magnificently erect. Then it kind of drooped and fell over. Next, we’re pretty sure we catch sight of that Mikey from Big Brother. That’s at least two dysfunctional pricks on site, then.
MYSTERY JETS
What’s great about their Reading show and the release of ‘Making Dens’ is that all of the much-written-about wackiness (pots ‘n’ pans, Eel Pie Island, Dad in band, etc.) can now take a back seat and not overshadow the tunes. Lunging headfirst into ‘The Boy Who Ran Away’ and ‘You Can’t Fool Me Dennis’, they’ve triumphantly channelled their pastoral musical influences into something evidently more pop than prog.
BROMHEADS JACKET
“If you get the choice, don’t ever drink Carling,” warns the Bromheads frontman as they take to the, ahem, Carling Stage. “It tastes like shit.” Running through their likeable Streets-like tales of drunken lairiness, they save ‘What Ifs And Maybes’ for a guitar-smashing finale.
PRIMAL SCREAM
So which Scream Team do you prefer? The malevolent, techno-touting anti-consumerists from the turn of the decade, or the brown-sugary clichéd rockunrollers that drive themselves to excess on ‘Riot City Blues’? Whatever, whilst they may miss Kevin Shields’ ability to make the most timid of noises sound like the end of the world, there’s still room for a thunderous ‘Shoot Speed Kill Light’ and an arsenal of ‘Dirty Hits’.
BE YOUR OWN PET
Much as their debut album was on its arrival, this is like being punched in the face repeatedly in the centre of some adolescent temper tantrum. Singer Jemima Pearl is a hyperactive ball of youthful frustration, while the rest of these Nashville teens whip up a maelstrom of snotty anthems like ‘Bicycle Bicycle You Are My Bicycle’ that rarely hit the 2-minute mark. Fuuuuuun!
THE FALL
When’s it my turn to be in The Fall? There can’t be many of us that haven’t had a stint, given that the cantankerous Mark E. Smith has shed more wives and bandmates than he’s put out records (not necessarily true, but we can’t be arsed to check). Let’s face it, you just need to lock yourself into one repetitive riff, and stay there until Smith is bored of slurring over the top. Here’s another more-than-competent line-up, tearing through ‘Sparta FC’. And it’s ace, but…
SPINTO BAND
…the most intensely irritating clash of the day forces us to leg it over to catch the Spinto’s. With xylophones, mandolins and kazoos jostling for space within their quirky, slightly geeky pop, they’re probably the sort of band MES would snarl at. Still, having twitched their frames through half a dozen albums before they’ve hit their twenties, ‘Oh Mandy’ finally rewards them with a feel-good hit of the summer.
CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH
Given the hype this sextet have had, you can almost feel the pressure on them to deliver and, to be honest, it takes a while for them to hit their stride, as a largely insouciant crowd testifies. Still, their woozy, Grandaddy-ish melodies (and ‘The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth’ in particular) nearly makes up for the sudden departure of The Shins from the bill.
TILLY AND THE WALL
“We say oh! – You say fuck! Oh-“ “Fuck!” “Oh-“ “Fuck!” Entering like grinning cheerleaders, Tilly play tambourines and bells and have a tap-dancer. They make wonderfully melodic folk-pop tunes that sound like rallying cries from a desperately hedonistic youth. By the end of the anthemic ‘Nights Of The Living Dead’, we’re smiling like loons and wanting to join those high-school kids passing out in the yard.
THE NOISETTES
Singer Shingai Shoniwa is writhing around the Carling Stage like a maniac. One minute she’s draped over her mic stand like some soul diva, next she’s in spasms on the floor like a punkier Karen O. Her band make a helluva racket too, and with ‘Scratch Your Name’ and ‘Don’t Give Up’, they’re holding us firmly by the knackers and they ain’t letting go.
TV ON THE RADIO
Having blown our minds at Reading two years ago, TVOTR are back with bigger Afros, more impressive beards, A-list chums (Bowie) and a strangely overlooked new album. Guitars are brought to the fore this time for some no-holds-barred spazz-out moments like ‘Wolf Like Me’ and a cataclysmic ‘Staring At The Sun’. Muse may be ploughing their live savings into their lightshow-cum-apocalypse outside, but its in here that spines are really tingling.
SHIT DISCO
You kinda feel sorry for bands that are shoved on while most of us are still desperately seeking something substantial enough to be termed ‘breakfast’. But by the time the ‘Shits get round to doing the one about Bobby Orlando coming round for tea, they’ve got a healthily-populated tent going mad for them. After showering us with glowsticks and launching into ‘I Know Kung-Fu’, it all kicks off exquisitely.
VITALIC
There’s plenty to escape from today. It’s hairy old metal day outside, Peaches Geldof is on the prowl, and then there’s the dodgy Britpop revivalists (of which there are at least 3 on the bill this evening). To the dance stage then, where the punk-disco bombs of ‘OK Cowboy’ haven’t withered with age. ‘La Rock 01’ drops by, drops out, and then builds up again, resulting in the most euphoric mosh-pit of flailing limbs in the house.
TAPES N TAPES
Like several bands this weekend, they’ve arrived following a certain amount of frantic blogging and industry hype. Using Pixies-like dynamics, they switch between the frantic shouty moments and the more subdued ones from ‘The Loon’ with ease. It takes a riotous ‘Insistor’ to really warm the crowd to their slanted and enchanted charms.
¡FORWARD RUSSIA!
“So is everyone looking forward to Pearl Jam?” asks singer Tom Woodhead. Um, yeah, about as much as being administered ketamine and lobbed bollock-first into the Slayer pit, thanks. With matching stagewear (slightly grubbier than last year’s, we noticed), this lot tear the roof off; schizophrenically chopping tempos like At The Drive-In or Blood Brothers, but so pumped full of adrenaline that the frantic pace never lets up.
DRESDEN DOLLS
Those hoping for a Brechtian cabaret display of white faces and costumes might have been disappointed to see the Dolls in practically civvies today. Nevertheless, they pound away on drums and piano like they’re playing the heaviest metal songs on earth (although one of them, ‘War Pigs’, obviously is). They do a great version of ‘Coin-Operated Boy’ and then behave like clockwork toys that’ve got stuck.
GOOD SHOES
Exactly one year ago we left Good Shoes trying to scrape together enough change for their train fare home from Waterloo, after Disorder had persuaded them to dish the dirt in one of their first ever magazine interviews. Today, the likes of ‘Nazanin’, ‘Small Town Girl’ and ‘All In My Head’ have extra muscle to flex in front of a sizeable crowd. In short, they’ve grown balls and we love their spiky pop tunes more than ever.
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
OK, we’ll confess to being beered to the gills by the time Avey Tare, Geologist, Panda Bear and Deakin hit the stage, yet we couldn’t have wished for a more mental finale. It all whizzed by in a slightly disorientating kind of blur, full of pounding beats, echo-laden vocals, screams and crashes. Their wonderfully eccentric twisted pop tunes like ‘Grass’ and ‘The Purple Bottle’ all combined to make having to return to the ‘real’ world on Monday morning that little bit more painful.
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