Swanwick Junction, I've missed you
Aug. 7th, 2014 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaOnce again, I have been off and Done A Thing I want To Write Up, and then not found time for the writing. As I've mentioned before, I have to keep track of festivals or ChrisC and I have arbitrary arguments about which bands we saw, usually about ten years after the fact.
So, off to Derbyshire for the music-, steam-engine-, beer- and owl-fest that is Indietracks.
Friday
[Spearmint], The Chills, Allo Darlin'
I took Friday afternoon off, so we could scoot up the M1 and be there in time for the Friday top-support-band. When I saw the Indietracks line up, I thought hey, another band called The Chills is playing. Shame it isn't the actual... hey, wait! It is The Chills! (Admittedly, The Chills is one of those bands like the Divine Comedy where it's defined to be one particular person plus whoever he's roped in). But no matter! The 1980s New Zealand band The Chills were going to be in the UK, and playing at a festival I was going to! I was quite excited :)
So we scooted slowly up the road, through sunshine and mildly catastrophic rain, and just managed to have time to dump bags in our hotel before driving to Butterley and hopping on the preserved diesel over to Swanwick Junction. The condition-of-licence-but-actually-massively-unnecessary drugs sniffer dogs sniffed us, security searched our bags, we swapped our printed-out bit of paper for some wrist bands and we were in. Just in time to buy beer, hear the very tail end of the previous band, and to bump into![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zenithed (it really is a very small festival) before The Chills took to the stage, all chimey 80s pop.
Friday night was headlined by Allo Darlin', who are one of the rare circumstances where I will tolerate a ukelele. Twee pop music (recommended for fans of, say, Belle & Sebastian, as are many of the bands at Indietracks) with beautiful singing, occasional big choruses and a lovely, summer vibe. They had a large crowd, the songs to entertain it, and a general demeanour of being real headliners. As MJ Hibbett (more on him later) put it: it's like one of OUR bands has become a PROPER band, but is still OURS.
We chatted to Simon for a long while - or, rather, listened to him expounding drunkenly on an amazing variety of topics - then went off to the "indie disco". Briefly, as someone reminded us we needed to be on the last train at midnight :)
Saturday
Ace City Racers, [Skeletal Shakes], The Royal Landscaping Society, MJ Hibbett and the Validators, [Thee Ahs], ONSIND, [Linda Guilala], [Dorotea], The Blue Minkies, Alpaca Sports (acoustic), Spook School, [Joanna Gruesome], The Popguns, Dean Wareham, Gruff Rhys.
Having made the absolute most of the buffet breakfast our hotel provided, we rolled onto the festival site in time for Ace City Racers. They turned out to be... OK, and we left to go and have a look round some of the museum-y bits instead. Against a pleasant background of Skeletal Shakes, we pottered round the Power House, a museum of stationary engines, then joined the 2pm tour of the main (I think) railway museum. (There are surprisingly many bits of the museum. I may have missed one which is main-er.)
We ducked out of the tour slightly early (leaving after the very interesting explanation of the "travelling post office" carriage) and went to see the The Royal Landscaping Society, who were all right but a bit plagued with technical difficulties. ChrisC had been commenting that, given the magnitude of the bands playing, he was surprised that they were mostly fairly stage-competent. TRLS got themselves into gear eventually, but didn't live up to promise.
As we were working our way through the Indietracks 2014 compilation, ChrisC had been most taken with MJ Hibbett (and had already seen him walking about in the wild, and claimed celebrity-spotting points[**]). He'd described Mr Hibbett as "an IT worker who knows he's never going to be cool", and I'd been expecting a fairly small crowd. As it was, the engine shed was pretty full, with plenty of people singing along to every word. I strongly suspect that the Validators were not the most credible band of the weekend, but they're great fun. And if you'd like to hear songs about time-travel, about love triangles between office workers and computer support, or about the two best bands to come out of Manchester[***], I suggest you check him out.
ONSIND are 2/5 (or possibly 1/2, I'm confused) of Martha, a band I rather liked last year. Two blokes with guitars being angry and vegan and political, but also quite funny. I enjoyed them, and indeed bought a CD. The merch tent is quite a dangerous place. We may have, err, come home with some new albums.
For reasons that were never fully established, I was absolutely knackered on Saturday afternoon. Also, it was very hot. So I snoozed on the grass outside, snoozed in a handy chair in the engine shed, and err, generally didn't pay as much attention to a lot of bands as they probably deserved. Hence all the []s up there in the list. I woke up for Spook School, who appeared to be three 12 year olds and someone's dad. Actually, the four of them are approximately the same age - it's just that (as Zenithed's friend Johnny put it) "three children have formed a band with the BFG". Their stand-out song (which got played two nights running in the indie disco) is probably I'll Be Honest With You.
I'm a big fan of both the one Popguns song I knew anyway, and the one they'd put on the compilation. On stage, they were slightly disappointing. Nothing specific, just less exciting than hoped. Leaving Dean Wareham's set, we found the (scheduled) indiepop singalong in full swing with a particularly raucous version of the Just Joans' If You Don't Pull. I like a nice bit of community singing, so stopped and joined in. And moved on to Aztec Camera, and then MJ Hibbett took to the floor to sing his take on Will Smith's Boom! Shake the Room!. And then someone started on the rather ill-advised choice of Blitzkrieg Bop (no one ever actually knows the words), and we finally made it over to the headliner.
I wasn't terribly excited about Gruff Rhys as a headliner. I mean, I don't mind a bit of SFA now and again, but he wasn't likely to be doing Super Furries' songs and was almost certainly not going to end with The Man Don't. Approaching the stage, he was talking between songs. For a really long time. In fact, he was doing an extended slide-show-with-lecture with occasional songs. About an ancestor of his who set off to America seeking the legendary lost Welsh-speaking native-American tribe. As tales go it is above average height, but incredibly entertaining. The crowd lazed around in the cool of the evening, sitting on the grass, and enjoyed the story. I actually wish I'd been there since the beginning, but even arriving mid-tale I was totally sucked in.
I managed a more credible quantity of dancing at the disco, although I am (a) sadly out of touch with current indiepop and (b) in awe of Zenithed's knowledge of musical trivia.
[*] Very necessary. Once Allo Darlin' came off stage on Friday night, I'd exhausted my supply of knowledge about the bands playing. A few listens through the compilation is a good way of picking out possibles.
[**] Indietracks is both brilliant and terrible for games of "Today, I Celebrity Spotted...".
C, shortly after arrival: Today, I celebrity-sp...
Me: No dice. I just saw the bloke out of Lardpony as well.
I only guessed MJ Hibbett after the question "Is this person in any actual sense an actual celebrity?" (no).
[***] The Smiths and Take That, for the record.
Sunday
[Axalotes Mexicanos], The Swapsies, The Thyme Machine, [No Ditching], The Wendy Darlings, Bordeauxx, The Hobbes Fan Club, Cosines, Flatmates, Martha (acoustic), [Sweet Baboo], The Just Joans, [Mega Emotion], Withered Hand, Hidden Cameras.
On Sunday morning we arrived at Butterely just in time to miss the train. Wait 25 minutes, or walk? For some reason, I thought it was about 3 miles. It is not. 10 minutes, or 15 if you do what we did and get on the wrong side of the railway and end up sneaking into the back of the site down a disused branch line.
Axalotes Mexicanos were kicking off on the main stage but were, frankly, a bit too much for that time of the morning. We watched the Swapsies, who were lovely but very possibly the twee-est band of the weekend, all light, soft voices and a xylophone. I wanted to see The Thyme Machine on the strength of the amazing The Amateur Taxidermist's Bird on the compilation. The Thyme Machine turned out to be four people, probably best described as "endearingly shambolic". OK, three of them could pass for a band, but the singer (ropey voice, one-chord guitar, furry leopard onesie, habit of throwing Tunnocks tea-cakes into the audience[*]) is enough shambles for them all.
We got snared by the merch tent again, and then got a run of good bands. The Hobbes Fan Club were spectacularly miserable, and The Wendy Darlings were just not quite as exciting as I'd hoped, but everyone else was great. The Bordeauxxx, in particular, massively outstripped the promise of their one compilation track. My one disappointment was missing Mega Emotion - the final song (which we heard from outside the church they were playing in) sounded awesome.
We also had a good run of covers, making it hard to pick cover-of-the-festival. Allo Darlin' had done a Just Joans cover (though possibly negated their right to consideration by getting two of the Just Joans to join in), and then managed to squeeze a sizable chunk of You Can Call Me Al into the middle of Kiss Your Lips. I don't remember any covers on Saturday, other than MJ Hibbett's Will Smith effort. But Sunday... we had the Wendy Darlings covering The Ramones, Bordeauxx covering All Saints, Cosines covering Rod Stewart, The Just Joans covering Dolly Mixture and Pulp... (plus of course any covers I didn't spot...). I'm quite spoiled for choice.
Withered Hand closed the engine shed - I infer Withered Hand is really just one man, but he had a sizable band with him. I didn't know any of the songs, but found myself completely caught up in them (I haven't yet worked out a good link to show them off, suggestions welcome). And then... Well. I'd never heard of the Hidden Cameras. I downloaded an album, filed them as 'a bit gothy', and went along prepared to enjoy. I hadn't realised that they file themselves as 'gay church music' (I hadn't realised there was such a thing as a gay church music scene), and it suits them well. Five blokes, shirtless and wearing black skirts, play guitars, keyboard, drums and cello - and easily the most professional band of the weekend. (Weirdly, the cello isn't very noticeable when they're recorded). A great way to close a festival.
And then it was a bit more dancing until the last train home :-)
[*] The gentleman sitting next to me carefully removed his earplugs to ask me whether Tunnocks tea-cakes were vegetarian. I said I thought probably not.
So, off to Derbyshire for the music-, steam-engine-, beer- and owl-fest that is Indietracks.
Friday
[Spearmint], The Chills, Allo Darlin'
I took Friday afternoon off, so we could scoot up the M1 and be there in time for the Friday top-support-band. When I saw the Indietracks line up, I thought hey, another band called The Chills is playing. Shame it isn't the actual... hey, wait! It is The Chills! (Admittedly, The Chills is one of those bands like the Divine Comedy where it's defined to be one particular person plus whoever he's roped in). But no matter! The 1980s New Zealand band The Chills were going to be in the UK, and playing at a festival I was going to! I was quite excited :)
So we scooted slowly up the road, through sunshine and mildly catastrophic rain, and just managed to have time to dump bags in our hotel before driving to Butterley and hopping on the preserved diesel over to Swanwick Junction. The condition-of-licence-but-actually-massively-unnecessary drugs sniffer dogs sniffed us, security searched our bags, we swapped our printed-out bit of paper for some wrist bands and we were in. Just in time to buy beer, hear the very tail end of the previous band, and to bump into
zenithed (it really is a very small festival) before The Chills took to the stage, all chimey 80s pop.Friday night was headlined by Allo Darlin', who are one of the rare circumstances where I will tolerate a ukelele. Twee pop music (recommended for fans of, say, Belle & Sebastian, as are many of the bands at Indietracks) with beautiful singing, occasional big choruses and a lovely, summer vibe. They had a large crowd, the songs to entertain it, and a general demeanour of being real headliners. As MJ Hibbett (more on him later) put it: it's like one of OUR bands has become a PROPER band, but is still OURS.
We chatted to Simon for a long while - or, rather, listened to him expounding drunkenly on an amazing variety of topics - then went off to the "indie disco". Briefly, as someone reminded us we needed to be on the last train at midnight :)
Saturday
Ace City Racers, [Skeletal Shakes], The Royal Landscaping Society, MJ Hibbett and the Validators, [Thee Ahs], ONSIND, [Linda Guilala], [Dorotea], The Blue Minkies, Alpaca Sports (acoustic), Spook School, [Joanna Gruesome], The Popguns, Dean Wareham, Gruff Rhys.
Having made the absolute most of the buffet breakfast our hotel provided, we rolled onto the festival site in time for Ace City Racers. They turned out to be... OK, and we left to go and have a look round some of the museum-y bits instead. Against a pleasant background of Skeletal Shakes, we pottered round the Power House, a museum of stationary engines, then joined the 2pm tour of the main (I think) railway museum. (There are surprisingly many bits of the museum. I may have missed one which is main-er.)
We ducked out of the tour slightly early (leaving after the very interesting explanation of the "travelling post office" carriage) and went to see the The Royal Landscaping Society, who were all right but a bit plagued with technical difficulties. ChrisC had been commenting that, given the magnitude of the bands playing, he was surprised that they were mostly fairly stage-competent. TRLS got themselves into gear eventually, but didn't live up to promise.
As we were working our way through the Indietracks 2014 compilation, ChrisC had been most taken with MJ Hibbett (and had already seen him walking about in the wild, and claimed celebrity-spotting points[**]). He'd described Mr Hibbett as "an IT worker who knows he's never going to be cool", and I'd been expecting a fairly small crowd. As it was, the engine shed was pretty full, with plenty of people singing along to every word. I strongly suspect that the Validators were not the most credible band of the weekend, but they're great fun. And if you'd like to hear songs about time-travel, about love triangles between office workers and computer support, or about the two best bands to come out of Manchester[***], I suggest you check him out.
ONSIND are 2/5 (or possibly 1/2, I'm confused) of Martha, a band I rather liked last year. Two blokes with guitars being angry and vegan and political, but also quite funny. I enjoyed them, and indeed bought a CD. The merch tent is quite a dangerous place. We may have, err, come home with some new albums.
For reasons that were never fully established, I was absolutely knackered on Saturday afternoon. Also, it was very hot. So I snoozed on the grass outside, snoozed in a handy chair in the engine shed, and err, generally didn't pay as much attention to a lot of bands as they probably deserved. Hence all the []s up there in the list. I woke up for Spook School, who appeared to be three 12 year olds and someone's dad. Actually, the four of them are approximately the same age - it's just that (as Zenithed's friend Johnny put it) "three children have formed a band with the BFG". Their stand-out song (which got played two nights running in the indie disco) is probably I'll Be Honest With You.
I'm a big fan of both the one Popguns song I knew anyway, and the one they'd put on the compilation. On stage, they were slightly disappointing. Nothing specific, just less exciting than hoped. Leaving Dean Wareham's set, we found the (scheduled) indiepop singalong in full swing with a particularly raucous version of the Just Joans' If You Don't Pull. I like a nice bit of community singing, so stopped and joined in. And moved on to Aztec Camera, and then MJ Hibbett took to the floor to sing his take on Will Smith's Boom! Shake the Room!. And then someone started on the rather ill-advised choice of Blitzkrieg Bop (no one ever actually knows the words), and we finally made it over to the headliner.
I wasn't terribly excited about Gruff Rhys as a headliner. I mean, I don't mind a bit of SFA now and again, but he wasn't likely to be doing Super Furries' songs and was almost certainly not going to end with The Man Don't. Approaching the stage, he was talking between songs. For a really long time. In fact, he was doing an extended slide-show-with-lecture with occasional songs. About an ancestor of his who set off to America seeking the legendary lost Welsh-speaking native-American tribe. As tales go it is above average height, but incredibly entertaining. The crowd lazed around in the cool of the evening, sitting on the grass, and enjoyed the story. I actually wish I'd been there since the beginning, but even arriving mid-tale I was totally sucked in.
I managed a more credible quantity of dancing at the disco, although I am (a) sadly out of touch with current indiepop and (b) in awe of Zenithed's knowledge of musical trivia.
[*] Very necessary. Once Allo Darlin' came off stage on Friday night, I'd exhausted my supply of knowledge about the bands playing. A few listens through the compilation is a good way of picking out possibles.
[**] Indietracks is both brilliant and terrible for games of "Today, I Celebrity Spotted...".
C, shortly after arrival: Today, I celebrity-sp...
Me: No dice. I just saw the bloke out of Lardpony as well.
I only guessed MJ Hibbett after the question "Is this person in any actual sense an actual celebrity?" (no).
[***] The Smiths and Take That, for the record.
Sunday
[Axalotes Mexicanos], The Swapsies, The Thyme Machine, [No Ditching], The Wendy Darlings, Bordeauxx, The Hobbes Fan Club, Cosines, Flatmates, Martha (acoustic), [Sweet Baboo], The Just Joans, [Mega Emotion], Withered Hand, Hidden Cameras.
On Sunday morning we arrived at Butterely just in time to miss the train. Wait 25 minutes, or walk? For some reason, I thought it was about 3 miles. It is not. 10 minutes, or 15 if you do what we did and get on the wrong side of the railway and end up sneaking into the back of the site down a disused branch line.
Axalotes Mexicanos were kicking off on the main stage but were, frankly, a bit too much for that time of the morning. We watched the Swapsies, who were lovely but very possibly the twee-est band of the weekend, all light, soft voices and a xylophone. I wanted to see The Thyme Machine on the strength of the amazing The Amateur Taxidermist's Bird on the compilation. The Thyme Machine turned out to be four people, probably best described as "endearingly shambolic". OK, three of them could pass for a band, but the singer (ropey voice, one-chord guitar, furry leopard onesie, habit of throwing Tunnocks tea-cakes into the audience[*]) is enough shambles for them all.
We got snared by the merch tent again, and then got a run of good bands. The Hobbes Fan Club were spectacularly miserable, and The Wendy Darlings were just not quite as exciting as I'd hoped, but everyone else was great. The Bordeauxxx, in particular, massively outstripped the promise of their one compilation track. My one disappointment was missing Mega Emotion - the final song (which we heard from outside the church they were playing in) sounded awesome.
We also had a good run of covers, making it hard to pick cover-of-the-festival. Allo Darlin' had done a Just Joans cover (though possibly negated their right to consideration by getting two of the Just Joans to join in), and then managed to squeeze a sizable chunk of You Can Call Me Al into the middle of Kiss Your Lips. I don't remember any covers on Saturday, other than MJ Hibbett's Will Smith effort. But Sunday... we had the Wendy Darlings covering The Ramones, Bordeauxx covering All Saints, Cosines covering Rod Stewart, The Just Joans covering Dolly Mixture and Pulp... (plus of course any covers I didn't spot...). I'm quite spoiled for choice.
Withered Hand closed the engine shed - I infer Withered Hand is really just one man, but he had a sizable band with him. I didn't know any of the songs, but found myself completely caught up in them (I haven't yet worked out a good link to show them off, suggestions welcome). And then... Well. I'd never heard of the Hidden Cameras. I downloaded an album, filed them as 'a bit gothy', and went along prepared to enjoy. I hadn't realised that they file themselves as 'gay church music' (I hadn't realised there was such a thing as a gay church music scene), and it suits them well. Five blokes, shirtless and wearing black skirts, play guitars, keyboard, drums and cello - and easily the most professional band of the weekend. (Weirdly, the cello isn't very noticeable when they're recorded). A great way to close a festival.
And then it was a bit more dancing until the last train home :-)
[*] The gentleman sitting next to me carefully removed his earplugs to ask me whether Tunnocks tea-cakes were vegetarian. I said I thought probably not.
