Hove Festival - Tromoy, Norway - 23-27/6/08
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
DAY FIVE - 27/6/08 (pix to follow)
We'd been told earlier in the week that Norway is privilege to 250 days of rain a year. Amazing then that we've had a whole week's worth of near total glorious sunshine (I've even got something that resembles a tan, if you squint), even for most of the night(!), apart from on this the final day. Now, a few drops of water to begin to rain down, albeit gently, from on high. Fitting that it would commence the downpour on the day chock full of the best in Norwegian metal, but even with that in mind, we're still treated to periods of blistering sun soaked loveliness (and a few cracking bands) ensuring we leave the island of Tromoy with nothing but fond memories.
Ridiculousness, intelligence and deft skill should combine in musical endeavours much more often, we reckon. As often as they do in the work of the rip roaring Ungdomskulen, if you please. They're the best homegrown band we've caught at Hove so far, a band who love in equal measure cowbells, huge pop choruses ('Ordinary Son' being their finest), mentally ill guitar solos, wearing shorts, having ideas, stupid haircuts, bow ties, Rick Wakeman-worthy prog rock and fitting every silly bit they can come up with in to a song and playing them all in one exhilarating, unfathomable row. Please do tell me one thing about this that isn't brilliant, because I'm really struggling. True, you might, as we did, not quite know what to make of it if this is the first time you've encountered the bizarre antics of Ungdomskulen. But trust us when we say that upon seeing them a second time, every suspicion you had that they might be totally brilliant is confirmed.
I don't tend to think of Hove as a metal festival during my time here - the sun's too bright and everyone's too lovely, and Silje Nes is playing. But maybe it is one, in a pretty disguise. If you're a metal band, like the hilariously named Purified in Blood, you're guaranteed a crowd. If you're Yeasayer, as we found out, you're not. Purified in Blood sound like a billion other metal bands (and there are a billion playing), which is precisely why, I assume, the kids love it. Yet to us, having two singers (their one defining feature) isn't quite enough to set them apart from the pack, and what's more comes across as slightly unnecessary, even if it does up the 'fun' aspect of this as a visual spectacle. Sonically, not a lot to report I'm afraid.
She isn't one, but something about Ladyhawke just feels like it's a fiendish front for some kind of pop svengali. These songs, those moves, they just don't come across like they're originating from Ladyhawke herself. More weight would be added to this flimsy theory of mine if the songs in question were belters, born of an evil genius, but I'm afraid they're not (apart from that one which sounds a little bit like the Pet Shop Boys, which totally is). Too much of it relies on tape loops, and though that isn't always a criticism - it is after all a pleasure, for example, to watch Le Tigre put on a DVD and just shout to it for an hour - there's not enough energy to the performance to make it feel like you're even watching a live band. They certainly aren't using those tape loops because they're too busy going crazy, or because they contain anything that's too difficult to pull off live. A 'meh' sums it up.
I do appreciate however, far more, the complete lack of machismo to Converge's distinct brand of metaaaaaaalllll (grunt that word, that's how it was intended) - the lack of posturing, the sincerity with which they address a crowd, the sheer normality of the way they dress. I admire the relentless dedication to atonality, the unsurpassable technical skill to it all, the way it does nothing but pummel and will never do anything other than pummel. Converge have found one thing that they are the best band in the world at and they're not changing for no one. But that doesn't stop every song they play today sounding exactly the same.
Chrome Hoof come across like Grace Jones fronting the Butthole Surfers, and are clearly a bunch of wonderfully troubled individuals. Clad in cloaks adorned with silver pentagrams and various takes on the classic shiny space suit, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when this really, really weird looking group of people first met. How on Earth did they decide to form a band? How on Earth did they come to a consensus that this bizarre alt-synth metal sound is what they should sound like? Perhaps these things didn't happen on Earth at all - this planet is nowhere near interesting enough to play home to a band that sound like this.
Satyricon arrive, their faces painted white with their eye sockets dark black to play - metal. And though they loose points for the continual posturing, you can at least differentiate between songs here. We consider ourselves blessed by some of the synth parts too, which are genuinely hilarious. Yet with each note of this kind of metal that I subject myself to, trying with each fibre of my being to take it as seriously as the kids at the front whose young lives are currently defined by it, I find it more and more difficult to regard it with anything other than varying degrees of humour (from smirks to full on belly laughs). And that's starting to grate a little. They have a song called 'My Skin Is Cold', to which my reply would always be 'would you like to borrow a jumper?' And the point of realising that is when I finally decide that valiant though my effort was, this stuff isn't for me.
It seems that even though I had assumed the world had stopped caring about them once your singer lad had stopped doing the horizontal tango with Kelly Osbourne, The Used are massive in Norway. It's true that the songs are still rubbish, but they're playing them with panache, getting a lot back from an adoring throng of fans, and after all that heavy music it's actually something of a relief. Didn't expect to end the review that way, let me tell you.
Say what you like about Norway (and I like a lot about Norway, as you might have gathered), but they do know their rock. I don't think the band even notice it, but BlackMountain's guitar solos get individually clapped as if they're a jazz act. I think that's a fitting reaction, because this is an immense group, one who instil each note with enough passion to ensure their often slow music doesn't plod, rather the blues dawn on a listener more heavily, and rewardingly, with every chord, wail or soaring bent string. It is truly blues as hell, which I imagine is quite a bluesy place. But I imagine them cracking out 'Evil Ways' in heaven - it's too good a tune for anywhere else. Band of the day by a fjord and a half.
Odd how Goldfrapp and Animal Collective can sound nothing like each other, but both find a spiritual home in the middle of the night on the Amfi stage (Animal Collective on Monday night being our band of the festival, if you were interested). AC's sky was an oily bright green, Alison Goldfrapp's treated to a bluer, more stained glass feel. I've suggested a few times to our gang of music hacks that we should just review the skies at Hovefestivalen because they're the real stars of the show (excuse the pun), but a consensus is reached that we should stick with the music, and we're enjoying the style and surprising amount of substance to Goldfrapp's set far more than we thought we would at this very sleepy point of one hell of a week. Even if she does come on about half an hour late. Maybe I'm on a metal backlash. Maybe I'm just reminiscing a the end of a bloody good week. Or maybe she is indeed truly as good as I remember it being after all.
DAY FOUR - 26/6/08 (pix to follow)
I feel pretty bad now. I've since heard a rumour that Beck isn't particularly well at the moment, and there I was yesterday bemoaning him for not doing backflips and getting nekkid or nothin'. Get well soon mate.
This country's next big thing, we're reliably informed by our ever so friendly minder, are Lukestar, and it instantly becomes apparent why. It's not because they're overwhelmingly brilliant, but they're just a very, very marketable band who stand to sell a tonne of records. They make a soaring, gently roaring kind of emo that has a lot in common with Rival Schools and Jimmy Eat World, but in their artistic peaks they're closer to the likes of Mew. They dress like normal guys making no effort at all, which further endears them to me, other than the guy who wears nothing other than a t shirt and underpants. I'm not so keen on that dude.
Over in the only actual tent stage at the whole Hovefestivalen, Silje Nes is doing her thing. It's Norway's answer to whatever question it is Laura Marling was asking, and the answer seems to be one long 'shhh!'. Not a 'shhh' to Laura herself, as this Fat Cat signed siren and her are very much kindred spirits. Lovely stuff, this - her band are a masterclass in subtlety, effortlessly ignoring how difficult it is for four people to play anything all at the same time and not make a loud noise, they play as if the music they're making is so fragile it could crack at any moment. Five songs in and the drummer finally releases the tension and hits the snare drum - 'oooh, that's a bit much', you think. Yes, it suffers from the same entrapments that all looping pedal based artists do, but this doesn't seem to bother her, so we don't let it bother us. People sit down and shut up for it, because to stand up would seem incredibly vulgar, given the delicate beauty of the soundtrack. You might as well take a big poo in the middle of the floor.
The stages bands are chosen for at Hove often leave us scratching our heads. That tent we were in just now for Silje Nes would have been more than adequate for Yeasayer, but instead they're playing on the main stage to next to no one. It's clear from the oddness of the music they make that this band are never going to play to mammoth audiences (imagine that, an audience of mammoths...), but this is a shame, because their sound suits the outdoors and sunshine surprisingly well. I've had arguments with close friends in the past over my struggling to see what it is about Yeasayer that's particularly unique, but it dawns on me during this set that there needn't be anything unique about them at all for them to be a brilliant band. Which is what I'm beginning to think they might be after all.
Sadly however our enjoyment of Yeasayer is cut short as I am to be interviewed at baffling length for the festival's daily newspaper about what I think about the environment. "I think the environment is good", I tell them, in my best Norwegian. Quite why they think I'm any kind of authority on the topic is beyond me, but it's nice to be asked all the same. To be fair to Hove, its concern for the environment is totally laudable. It's meant to be the world's first carbon neutral festival, and a big emphasis is placed on recycling, not littering, and generally making sure you clean up after you've got carbon footprints all over the lovely pine cone forest. There's even a conference where the Norwegian minister for the environment comes and has a chat. You don't get that at Reading. Well, maybe Latitude...
Back to the music mate. "Come on John, we'll do what Mary and Joseph did, without the kid", sings the charming St. Vincent. "It's a joke", she tells the audience in case they take her seriously. I understand the need for clarity, as things getting lost in translation have nearly got various members of our party both beaten up and laid over the course of the week. Not quite sure if I get the joke, though. What I do 'get' is this beautiful music she's making. I've used that 'b' word a lot these past few days, and for the repetition I apologise, but I guess that's just Norway for you. A particularly impressive guitar player, St. Vincent is not the front woman here, she's more like a conductor. The sounds is sporadically fascinating, and in the moments where it isn't, it's never less than thoroughly pleasant. There are worse things to be than that. Shit, for example, which this is the polar opposite of.
They not only cannot spell 'helicopters' correctly, but Norway's own Hellacopters also can't appropriate the rock of Guns N Roses as well as they think they can, or should. From a country that offers so much that's unique to the world of heavy metal, this borders on parody. But it's reportedly one of their last ever gigs before calling it a day, and the crowd are digging the celebratory air to everything. We leave them to it.
The Raconteurs are just a solid band playing ruddy bloody rock music for men to nod to. I'm a man and I like nodding, so this finds some favour with me, even though it really isn't spectacular enough to be headlining a European festival, and certainly would not exist if it weren't for the prior-found fame of the people who make up its members, Jack White in particular. What you notice when Jack's playing with a drummer who can, you know, actually play the drums (despite the fact that Meg White's inability to play is one of the best things about the White Stripes) is how less fun it is - there's no edge to the Raconteurs whatsoever, even if his solos are out of this world, but there are one or two corking tunes. That's enough justification for their existence.
And Rockfeedback doesn't remember anything after that.
DAY THREE - 25/06/08 (Pix to follow)
Day three is usually when your average festival goer is either winding down and contemplating returning to the real world or getting ready for one last hurrah. Not so at Hove, which goes on for a whole five days. This baby is only just getting going.
So, let's go see something we've never heard of for the sheer heck of it, yeah? Charlotte and Co Stars is a funny name for a band. There are very few good names for bands (other than Pavement and Super Furry Animals, and they're taken), but that's actually a bad one. Hardly screams ambition, does it? Perhaps the perceived lack of drive is what's keeping the crowds away? You could fit the amount of people in front of the main stage in the Barfly, and it'd still seem spacious. I presume that's our Charlotte up front, and not the guy with the beard on the drums. What she plays is pretty nice, if a little sleepy and derivative, a brand of the Pretenders meets Roxette rock that's difficult to hate but impossible to love. The main problem is later defined by the fact that even though I remember feeling quite content for the whole set, I can't recall what any of the songs sounded like. Still, having room for improvement is no real curse, and I hope eventually Charlotte and Co Stars command the big audiences that these songs are so clearly written for.
If ever there was a band to perfectly soundtrack sitting on some grass in the sunshine with a beer at a festival, it's the f**king lovely Band of Horses. They display a masterclass in how to deliver what would be otherwise uninteresting indie pop well - simply, you've got to ensure the songs are built out of charm rather than arrogance, and relate them in a way that shimmers to this dazzling an extent. "Sorry, here comes another sensitive one..." they lie to us, and needn't apologise anyway, as the crowd, finally here in their droves, lap this up like nectar.
Yeah, so Bad Religion are for the kids and not for me, and make no effort at trying to convert me either. Good - I'm not in the mood for being preached to. Oddly however, I am quite in the mood for this - relentlessly energetic pop punk that's far more anthemic and jaunty than angry (though it believes itself to be the latter over the former). Lordy, I wish I was a child. I find myself feeling very nostalgic for music like this which defined my life as a 16 year old, even though I think I was only pretending to like it at the time. The love for this band from those who are of that age here is unfathomably strong - just ask the guy at the front banging his crutches together in the air as he crowd surfs towards his ageing heroes.
Beck's gotten skinny, and hairy. And a new band, in which he takes musical control far more so than on tours of late. He's playing lead guitar almost all the way through the set, and for the most part pretty well - the boy can wail. However, having to take this much of a musical responsibility means that we don't get to see Beck the showman, Beck the dancer, Beck the sex beast (there's nothing at all off'a 'Midnite Vultures' tonight - perhaps his Scientologist masters banned the sexy stuff?). This works spectacularly well for the likes of 'Lost Cause', 'Paper Tiger' and 'Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime' (good GOD yes), but on songs like 'Where It's At', 'The New Polution' and 'Loser' (which he fluffs the entire first verse of - how many times must he have played that song?!), it leads to them feeling a little tepid. From the look on his face, you can tell Beck senses it too, and might have to rely on a little more charisma rather than just the magic of the songs if the rest of this tour is to kick off. It's still a pleasure to watch Beck, one of only a handful of genuine geniuses active today, do whatever he wants - including a slew of very strong new material - even if we've seen him do it better on other occasions.
What is it about these beautiful fjords, beautiful blondes, beautiful beaches and never ending sunsets that makes Norwegian people so bloody angry? How can the Icelandic landscape birth Sigur Ros, but Norway gives rise to Dimmu Borgir? I don't get it. I will never get it. But that guy's dressed up like a viking and there are fireworks going off on the stage every four bars and the drumming is like a woodpecker tapping on my skull amplified by a billion times and this is FUN alright, if impossible to take seriously. It's Disney metal, all about the theatrics and not the music and completely unsuited to the life affirming natural beauty in which it takes place. It's largely awful, too. But I'll be damned if I wasn't nodding my head to every stoopid bit of it.
DAY TWO - 24/6/08 (photos to follow)
We've not had many better starts to a day than being taken on a boat ride around the island of Tromoy, confirming all our suspicions that we might have died and gone to heaven. This place is truly beautiful.
Our day threatens to continue at this startling level of loveliness also, given that the first band we're due to catch are none other than the so-hot-right-now MGMT. However, in a festival of alarmingly consistently good sound quality so far (we've never heard massive outdoor sound systems this fine before), they're the first band to suffer from the 'Festival Drum Sound' - you can hear the drums, and pretty much nothing else. This really hurts a band who are as staunchly melodically based as these chaps. You're a couple of beers in to the day, you're sitting on some scorched grass, straining to hear a melody - just momentarily, you think you could be at... gulp... Reading. But the feeling doesn't last long. You cast your mind back to the boat.
Ahhh.
Yet the feeing remains that perhaps MGMT aren't all they're cracked up to be. Perhaps they've just got two great songs after all (they play them though, and they're top). The chances of them starting this accessibly and then progressing in to the weird and wonderful later in their careers, doing an anti Flaming Lips, isn't huge, but it's exactly what they hope they do. There's a great band in here somewhere, and it's in their most blissful psychedelic moments that this potential resides. Run with this, boys.
People in Kooks T-shirts are literally running away from Deerhunter. Maybe this is because The Kooks are on. I like to think though it's because Deerhunter are cracking out one of my favourite types of racket, equal parts white squall and melodious mess. And it's causing a funny feeling in kookier ears. Derhunter have learnt a lot from My Bloody Valentine, but bands who don't want to learn from them are dead to me. Three guitars might seem excessive, but it's something born out of a concern for volume as much as music. It works just as they intended. They're bloody loud, bruised and brilliant, but not at all macho. If any of the thousands of kids who are here purely for Friday's impending metal extravaganza had been here, there might have been a few ears opened. Deerhunter don't put a foot wrong, rather, they kick us in just the places that needed to be kicked after that slightly lacklustre MGMT set. However, nobody seems to know who they are, and the audience is bafflingly thin. Bloody Kooks.
Them Kooks, right, they're so bad that they make you wonder whether bands you already hate, like Oasis, might be good just because they're so much better than The Kooks. The Wombats are so bad they make you wonder whether The Kooks might be good. But yeah, these are easy targets, and we'll assert that there's a place for everything - even this, yes - as these are gateway bands, and we all know how important they are. If a kid at the Hove festival hears The Wombats singing about Joy Division and because of that picks up 'Closer', then maybe it was all worth it.
Those two sets are received rapturously by everyone other than us, it seems, and they are also responsible for splitting the Hove audience, a difficult to figure out bunch at the best of times, right down the middle. The pop kids have their 'doo doo doo's and 'ooh la la's, the metal kids who make up the other fifty percent of the audience (and Norwegian population, it seems) are provided with the ridiculous but hugely, undeniably enjoyable Avenged Sevenfold, who are like a cross between System of a Down and Right Said Fred. They do a Pantera cover and sing a song about how hard it is to be a man. They incite circle pits. They drop dual guitar solos every few bars. They're hilarious. I love them. They seriously suck. They're much better than The Kooks.
Hercules and Love Affair have improved a little on the one flaw of their self titled debut album for their live set. This feels less like a project, less like they have to hand it in on Monday, more like they have to hand over the best they can do RIGHT NOW. The urgency becomes them and incites movement of both the feet and corners of mouths. However, they naturally suffer when songs that rely so much on Antony's vocals, like 'Blind' are tackled by a lesser singer (the big man isn't in attendance). That ladyboy ain't Antony. But f**k, who is?
I am on a backlash backlash at the minute. Jump on to my bandwagon. I still think Flight of the Conchords is very funny. I liked the Simpsons movie. And most of all, I maintain that Vampire Weekend are as utterly brilliant now as they were the first time you heard them, and you've all gone a little bit doolally if you think otherwise. These songs are marvellous, my friend, each and everyone one of them! They might even be a better band than the one you first encountered (and loved, remember?) now that they've added two additional, brand new concotions to their set, which are already standouts in a collection of songs that never dip below the level marked 'exmplary'. Album number two - mmm. These songs are connecting on a mass level, too - they've never played in Norway before, and these blonde, blue eyed beauties are singing along about Oxford Commas and Blake having a new face, Peter Gabriel being so unnatural, the lot. Vampire Weekend are heroes tonight, like they have been all along.
Ida Maria's playing to a very safe crowd - this is her homeland. Hers is angry pop, rock that isn't heavy on anything other than hooks. The songs are lapped up by the congregation not only because she's one of them and they love her for it, but because they're consistently pretty good, too. A couple of them especially will be difficult to avoid on UK radio in the coming months. You heard it, and probably ignored it, here first. I don't know how many tabs you've got going at the minute (mine are in a mess, let me tell you) but keep one on this lass if you can manage it.
I'm off to a concrete bunker to dance to techno with strangers.
DAY ONE - MONDAY 23RD JUNE 2008 (pix to follow)
We arrive at the second Hovefestivalen after being whisked from Oslo Torp airport to the festival site all the time with our mouths wide open at the beauty of the Norwegian countryside (not to mention the log cabin we're staying in and it's fridge full of local Pilsners - we're being looked after very, very well here). It seems dear old Norge is a land where if it's not got a tree growing out of it, it's probably a lake.
And after being personally escorted round the picturesque forest of a site by Hove's equivalent of Michael Evis, Pierre, shown the literature tent, the idyllic beach, what all the names for things on the recycling bins translate to etc., we actually get round to watching a band.
And it's The Cool Kids who greet us to Norway. They're a rap band who break up rather than incite crowd scuffles and rap about having no money (dilemmas such as only possessing five dollars when you could have sworn you had ten plague their songs), which is refreshing, as are most things about this band's take on the whole De La Soul-patented party hip hop thing that Clipse and Cadence Weapon are also kncking out so well right now. Whether this grin-hop will stand up to particularly hardy analysis once Jay Z comes on stage tonight is another matter, but for now the infinitely likeable "new black version of the Beastie Boys" (as they christen themselves over the top of a short megamix of tunes by the 'Boys in question) have made the already wide smile on our face even wider.
The next band we see play in a sort of natural ampitheatre - great sound, great views, great band, too - it's Les Savy Fav. It's nice that everyone who's ever been to a gig has their own Les Savy Fav story, and it further warms the heart that each person in attendence for this set now has a few hundred more. It starts off with frontman Tim Harrington delivering to us a lesson in Mathematics via a long and hilarious monologue, continues to become a frantic lesson in poptastic math rock, and ends up being a lesson in love and friendship. The likes of 'ROME' and 'The Sweat Descends' aside, they mostly play combinations of notes from their most recent LP, which is fine as time is revealing it to us to certainly be their best. We could bang on for a while about how sonically intelligent and tight a band of musicians the members of Les Savy Fav who aren't Harrington are, but what you'll really want to know is what crazy stuff he got up to, right? Well, to fulfil this obligatory part of a Les Savy Fav live review, we're happy to tell you the Timster was on form, stealing a child's bike and riding round the ampitheatre, getting underneath the tarpaulin that covered the ground and becoming a singing, slowly sliding grey lump, humping a child, pouring a beer over another's head, dressing up in a leotard before changing in to a dracula costume, sending a flight case crowdsurfing... There was a discussion amongst our assembled throng of journalists as to how much ker-ay-zeee Les Savy Fav antics one could take in a gig before it a little tired. Turns out, loads. If only I'd seen this band when I was 16, this would have been one of the most important and formative experiences in my life. At 23, I'll have to cope with it just being one of the most important moments of the festival.
Such is how he rolls, Jay Z is delivered to within milimetres of the main stage in a shiny black BMW four wheeler, just as the island of Tromoy's specific brand of what might be perpetual (we don't know yet - it's only night one) twilight is beginning to set in. He's on time, believe it or not - the first sign that this isn't going to be a normal hip hop show. It's a pop set through and through, we're in the presence of a real pop superstar, and we're not allowed to forget it for a beat. Though there's been controversy about his suitability to headline Glastonbury in a few days time, the anticipation for tonight's set is both huge and highly contagious. Never mind Glasto, Hove can't wait for Jigga, and it's hard not to get swept along with the love. Even casual admirers like myself become a bit giddy, and note that we've perhaps not been at a gig that's had this much potential to kick off in, possibly, ever. And when Jay Z does kick off, he's quite astounding - '99 Problems' hits with so much force it pushed the island a good mile or so futher out to sea, 'Hard Knock Life' is similarly stunning. Just as we're having a conversation about how infinitely improved the set would be if Jay stole some moves from Les Savy Fav's Tim Harrington, Harrington himself bounds past us, dressed in a tweed suit, jumping up and down, waving his hands in the air because he honestly DOES NOT care (not because someone on a stage coerced him to), necking whiskey, having the time of his life. It confirms something to us, but we're not sure what. Maybe it just makes us feel a little bit more at place at a big hip hop show. Jay SHOULD steal Tim's moves, and Tim is certainly learning something from the man who's set he's adoring, but Tim certainly shouldn't say the 'n' word as much as Jay does. Neither, probably, should the adoring gaggle of 14 year old blonde Norwegian girls - even if he is requesting they shout it back at him. Something about that feels a bit wrong, though much about the rest of the set - even the bits where it all got a bit like a rally for Barack Obama - felt pretty great. Glastonbury should stop whinging and count itself lucky. And practice saying the word 'motherf**ker' a lot.
Long time Rockfeedback favourites Black Kids play when it's as dark as the sky here gets, which isn't very dark at all. Fitting, because the music they let out isn't dark in any sense either - at its best, it shimmers, like this sky. Black Kids aren't here to be taken particularly seriously, despite the fact that many more will try. They're here to be enjoyed on whatever base level you wish to be tickled. This is especially true live, when they're stripped by circumstance of that horrible Bernard Butler varnish applied in the studio, songs like 'Hurricane Jane' and 'I'm Not Going To Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You' benefitting greatly from the opportunity to breathe and indulge in the presence of the negative space their record sorely lacks. As a live band, they now sound like the finished article, not just some haphazardly talented children. We emplore you to give them time - bands like this thrive off it.
It's now reached 1am and the sky is bright green. Animal Collective should not only never play anywhere else, they should probably shoot all their videos, album covers and press shots here too, so fitting is the peculiar natural beauty of the ampitheatre in the middle of the night to their always a little supernatural musical magic. Often, when one first hears a record, a process begins whereby you picture and look forward to the moment you might hear these new songs in a live setting. With Animal Collective, whose sets often consist of mostly, if not all, new material, this process is reserved. These virgin songs are very memorable, thanks to their largely cyclical and icreasingly melodic way of working as a band (there are only three of them tonight, not the usual four), and I can't wait to hear them next, which will be on an Animal Collective record. They do tease us though. Is that 'Peacebone'? No, it's another new one which ends up sounding really nothing like it, but, as it turns out, pleases us just as much. During it, my nose fills with the smell of a billiion trampled pine cones. My ears fill with the sound of a billion trampled pine cones. The sky has gone a melancholic shade of purple, and I've gone hippy for the first time in my life. Part of the fun comes in being ignorant about what the buttons they're pressing are doing, and what they might do with them next. Wait. That IS 'Peacebone'. F**king wonderful! They do like us after all! And I don't have to keep pretending that it doesn't annoy me a little that they rarely play anything anyone's heard of! And wait, that's 'Fireworks' too! I can tell, just from that atonal whirring noise! Animal Collective love me as much as I love them. Ahhh.
INITIAL PREVIEW:
You might notice things being a little different around Rockfeedback.com way in the coming week, (23rd - 27th June). More of a Scandinavian air to proceedings, perhaps. Put this down to our temporary relocation to the Norwegian island of Tromøy for the second annual HOVEFESTIVALEN, where the likes of Beck, Animal Collective, Les Savy Fav, Jay Z, The Raconteurs, Deerhunter, Black Kids, Foals, The Raconteurs, Santogold, Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer and precisely 3,798 more bands (or so) will be doing their best to keep us entertained in an idyllic lakeside setting where the sun reportedly only sets for a few hours each day.
Every opportunity we get to prize ourselves away from the aforementioned shenanigans to report back to the Rockfeedback readership will have full advantage taken of it - check back here for as it happens, note by note coverage of what promises to be one of the best European festivals of the summer.
This is the second Hove festival to have taken place to date. The first set quite a precedent, operating under the commendable idea that masses of revellers gathering to watch incredible bands of international importance in a beautiful location needn't leave the place looking like a bomb containing a mix of cider and bonfires has hit it - in fact, every camper in attendance will have to sign a contract promising to leave the island looking as lovely as it did when they arrived. Rockfeedback will be on its best behaviour as we watch this formidable line up drop beats, not litter.
For more details, visit the festival's website HERE.
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