Playlouder - Music is the Network

Friday:

Thomas Hardy called Larmertree Gardens "Quite the prettiest sight I ever saw in my life." And this was a man with a pretty encyclopaedic knowledge of the finer points of south England.

He was right, and the existing beauty of the woods and gardens around the site is such that it borders on a distraction from what is surely the most consistently quality line-up available on the UK festival circuit.

There are so many decent (or otherwise intriguing) bands on, however, that a clash of interests is inevitable at some point, so an early decision was made to take it easy and take in whatever I happened upon without worrying about the ramifications.

Three o’clock and the tent’s up. Kelly Stoltz offers the kind of country-tinged rawk that goes down well at such times of the afternoon, and is well worth a listen. While The Young Republic do nothing to offend, it proves too great a temptation to wander around the veritable maze of gardens gawping at curious tree decorations and holistic therapists in little colourful tents. 

The thing is – you can still hear the music from much of the secret gardens. Unless you’re by the weird stereo-pagoda thing where parents encourage their kids to dance to David Bowie and Arcade Fire.

Micah P. Hinson takes to the garden stage as evening comes down and his muscular melodies and occasional rock freakouts are a quite captivating combination.

Woman of the moment Laura Marling draws a massive crowd for such a small creature, as evidenced about a week ago with the enormous queue stretching down Bethnal Green Road from the over-subscribed Club Scruffy night. Fortunately, the mucky pit of the big top (bog tip) has enough room to house the hordes of curious and the crowds of devotees.

There’s a lot of talk through the quieter tracks, indicating that a sizeable proportion of this huge crowd is as yet undecided, but I’m pleased to find Ms. Marling is a wonderful live performer; though not much for banter or chatter, her voice is breathtaking and the songs stand out better live than they’ve ever done, for me, on her debut album. Her lyrics are evocative, fantastical and disarmingly cynical, and the songs are country-tinged folk pop masterworks.

“You crawled out of the sea / Straight into my arms” sends a shiver down a lot of spines, and ‘Alas I Cannot Swim’ is a wonderful set closer.

The day’s crowning moment is yet to come though, courtesy of Dirty Three.

Warren Ellis is a man made mostly of beard these days, and being all billowing sleeves, kicking legs and fucking amazing violin playing which is surely as intensely laboured over as it appears entirely improvised and instinctive.

As a trio of musicians they’re pretty much at the top of their game, and their swirling apocalyptic maelstroms of songs (one, ‘Everything’s Fucked’, amusingly described as their ‘pop hit’ by Warren Ellis) refuse to be pinned down to folk, jazz, post-rock or anything else you care to mention. They are very loud though. And very quiet too, sometimes. Just go see them.

The bar has been set pretty freakin’ high by these guys, and any further attempts to watch bands this evening are just drowned out by the memory of the Dirty Three experience...

(next day here)