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Summercase 2007
2007-07-13 Parc Del Forum Summercase 2007 Last year’s inaugural Summercase festival at the forum was the highlight of my gig-going year. The line-up for this year was bigger, better and in everyway improved but could it still provide the intimacy and entertainment that I had fallen in love with so much on the previous outing? Friday 13th July It’s always nice to get to a festival early when there aren’t too many people around and you can really get a chance to enjoy the wonders of some quality bands without getting totally crushed by the hoarding masses. Of course, as I was attending this year’s festival with about fifty friends we never made it there early. So, in the end, first up on our programme were a true favourite and a group who know how to conduct themselves at a festival. The Editors are band who for some reason I prefer at festivals to their own gigs. I hadn’t been such a huge fan before last year’s Benicassim but the anger and intensity of their performance there totally converted me and I have become a true devotee. Again tonight, despite the surprisingly early slot, their music seems imbued with real clarity and understanding of their typically dark subject matter. “You don’t want this disease,” they sing, maybe not, but I can’t help loving whichever band gets to play as the sun goes down. The Guillemots seem to reach new levels of loud, fun, sentimental pop music when they get to add a whole load of extra musicians and instruments to their core of four. Catchy and dancey whilst somehow equally screechy and “experimental” they’re always a unique band to see and when they play songs like Redwings and “Made up Love Song #43” it’s hard not to love them back. One eternal festival problem when hanging out in big groups of people is that you’re somehow expected to see music that you’re not really interested in – like Lily Allen. I heard that the last time she played Barcelona not many people turned up but there were plenty people there this time, singing along to “Smile” and her brand of reggae-light pop music. I was made to leave Guillemots to see her so it was never going to be my favourite performance of the evening and, though her catchier tracks might have got my toes tapping, her nasty little anecdotes and bitchy witticisms left me cold. But who cares, cos there’s music to thrill over and enjoy. There’s so much music playing all around me that I’m hoping I’ll find a way to split myself into several versions so as to experience it all. Sadly I can’t and I have to make the decision between a living legend and a band I’m really into at the moment. I chose Phoenix – the super fun, loungey, French, guitar pop band – over PJ Harvey and it maybe a decision I will regret one day but for the moment I feel fine. Phoenix were easily as good live as on record. They delivered the kind of music I wanted right then after my fourth or fifth plastic cup filled with lukewarm beer. They got me dancing in a large space at the back of the crowd with people I barely knew and they got me waving my hands in the air and no doubt they got me singing along even when I didn’t know the lyrics because they’re that sort of band. Merci beaucoup. With nothing much else on at the time the Flaming lips stage was totally swamped with, seemingly, every single person attending. Still they delivered the stage show, the spectacle and the sounds of a great band that those in the crowd who had actually heard of them were there to witness. There were balloons, animals, and a giant inflatable ball for lead singer Wayne Coyne to walk across the audience in, not forgetting some absolutely incredible music. Sadly my friends started playing up again and I had to leave in order to care for those who had already had a little bit too much to drink – bad people! Of course, we all know this was just the build-up to something much bigger. Something so anticipated and dreamed about that had some silly little punk of a drunken friend made me miss it I might have gone on a murderous rampage, wielding death wherever I went. I love Arcade Fire. No… perhaps you don’t understand, I loooooove Arcade Fire and through some sick twist of fate I have never been present in a city they were playing in for the last two years that I have been obsessed with them. So seeing them at Summercase would just about be my dream, except that last night it became a reality. And seriously, I have never seen a group of people with such passion and conviction towards their music. Watching them makes you believe they know something about life that you could never understand but would happily spend your whole life hoping they will teach you. So many amazing tracks over two albums make singling out songs difficult but in my mind it was the truly anthemic “No Cars Go” which will always stay in my memory. These kids know. Oh Bloc Party, how do you do what you do to me? I wish I knew. Yes they’re one of my favourite bands, yes they’ve also had two great albums (the first obviously outshining the second by about a million light years) so why didn’t I feel particularly desperate to see them? Well to be honest it’s because I never think they’re that good live. Yes they rock and yes they deliver their songs in a fitting manner, but perhaps it’s the slightly too polite tones of Kele or the ever so crisp production of their live sound so the kick-ass drums sound like they might actually be coming from a computer somewhere backstage. So it was a bit of shock when they turned out to be pretty damn awesome. Perhaps without the ego of a headlining show they made the promise of their dance-rock sound come true. Through the dreamy little lenses with which I watched them, “Banquet” may have been the greatest song ever written. So what’s left? Well more waiting about for my drunken friends. Half an hour stood by some toilets waiting for people who had forgotten all about me whilst listening to the Scissor Sisters do what they do, so that I end up missing all but the last slow number, “New York I Love You,” of LCD Soundsystem. AND NOW I’M ANGRY! So what’s left? I’ll tell you what’s left: only Belgium’s greatest export 2manyDJs. And even though I don’t want to talk to the majority of my friends ever again, I still get to dance till dawn to some of the best mashed up, mixed up music this side of heaven. And it all starts again in a few hours. Saturday 14th July So I learnt my lesson. I wasn’t going to be tied down to any slow needy friends. HA! Who needs em? I went solo. I even managed to get to The Forum to see the first band I wanted to. The Hours act a bit like think they are The Rolling Stones and even though they aren’t, they’re still a decent band who are well worth listening to and have some stand out tracks like “Ali in the Jungle” and “Murder or Suicide” and I feel kind of privileged to be one of the couple of hundred people there to see a band who look like they’re really trying and not doing badly as a result. And I’m still on my own to see Badly Drawn Boy’s meandering set as he spends time, chatting with friends in the audience, attempting to catch a cigarette in his mouth and getting more and more drunk. Of course he still delivers his trademark slices of skilfully forged pop jewellery, which wrench the audience from laughs to tender sadness in the space of a few tracks. Rather underrated, certainly under-purchased, if people still remember Damon Gough’s name in twenty years he will surely be remembered as a bit of a genius, won’t he? I guess some of my friend’s are acceptable and I was feeling a little lonely so I joined back up with the posse to clap our hands in time with Tim Booth and co as we relived our happy memories of Britain’s one time wunderkinder of indie pop. Oh James, why doesn’t music as good and instantly likable as yours still get into the charts, why do bands like yours really only surface for best-of album tours? I want to turn on the radio and hear tracks off Laid playing away and not find it a novelty. I want to see you all on the front of NME, I want you back on TOTP! Oh well no chance of that, but I can still feel grateful to watch you in all your quirky, nervous glory and think, damn I should listen to more James. Though to be fair I did skip out for a couple of songs in order to see My Brightest Diamond, who I had assumed would be kind of slow and dry and was really only hoping to here the one song off her album that I really loved. But what the hell was that? A punky, discoed up version of “Tainted Love” complete with strobe lights and dry ice. This is the joy of Summercase, discoveries and revelations, changed perceptions and simply great music. What a pleasant surprise! Despite a good mix throughout the festival between dance and rock music, tonight, for me, has certainly got an electronic bias. What better way to kick off the proceedings then with a master class from the king of the cut, DJ Shadow. Despite sometimes being prone to sombriety and obscurity in his live performances tonight Shadow basically plays everything good he has ever done, mixing, as he tells us, tracks from his classic Entroducing, Private Press and UNKLE project LPs. He even offers small insights between tracks and tells us something of his pride and process. It’s a slow burner of course, like all his best work, but when the screens are lit up and Shadow finds his form there’s really no experience like it. Oh so much going on. Should one feel guilty about whorishly skipping from one great act to the next? Oh well, who cares? Jarvis was already at full speed by the time I arrived on the scene. Pouring forth wit and rhyme like a cut price Oscar Wilde. Though his solo album might not quite live up to the glory of Pulp, Jarvis’ profile and charm are still undeniable. Tracks like “Black Magic” also have plenty to get the crowd going but it’s really the spectacle of watching the bespectacled one in action that we were all there for and such brilliance is never highlighted quite so impressively as with a cover version of “Eye of the Tiger.” Whilst last year’s festival introduced me to about ten great bands that I have since come to love, for me at least, this year feels more about the headliners and the big names. It’s nice therefore to see a new band decidedly on the up. Of course they’re already not the newest kids on the block and their trademark showmanship and the familiar site of their bigger than big front-woman have given The Gossip a real following. Their equally immense, indie-soul sound kicks off with album highlight, “Yr Mangled Heart.” The sheer strength of Beth’s voice and her fairly shambolic stage presence make the band totally mesmerising and a definite hit. Still, when you are totally synonymous with one particular song which you haven’t played all evening, there’s not much tension in your potential choice of an encore. Though when that track’s as good as “Standing in the Way of Control,” such things don’t matter. The song sent the place crazy - it’s surprisingly infrequent that you actually hear Spanish people chanting Olé, but this was such an occasion. It was nice to chill out for a while to the dulcid tones of French band, Air. "Moon Safari" is pretty much the ultimate chilled out album and whilst they may never have equalled the record since, the duo are never less than interesting. So elegant was their performance this evening in fact that I found the whole experience both beautiful – with a stage of tiny fairy lights glittering behind them – and moving. Hearing “All I Need” there in the flesh after being familiar with the song for so long, was almost enough to make me cry. I catch a snatch of !!!, ask the woman I love to marry me, have a brief ceremony in the crowd, performed by one of my soberer friends and then realise there’s only about half an hour left till the Chemical Brothers come on, and get all excited. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt quite so totally involved in a gig. The video screens are clearer and bigger than any I’ve ever seen, the images far more involving than at most club nights, we are surrounded in an arena of pure sound and every track feels like it was written for us alone. They play everything you would want them to and in the midst of it all, with your friends all around you, maybe you decide that there is order in the world after all. There is light and sound and laughter and when it’s all done it’s time to go home. Summercase remains the bright shining star in my calendar and clearly no matter how big it gets it will retain that magic. We can only be thankful that there’s less than a year to wait till the next edition.