Leeds Festival DAY THREE 30/8/09 Bramham Park, Yorkshire
4/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
After sleeping for six hours in three days it takes a certain kind of band to wake you first thing in the morning… a band with, say, two drummers, two guitarists and two lead singers. Thank heavens then for Dananananaykroyd who have more punk high-spirits at 11am than most bands do at the deep end of a swimming pool full of Jagermeister.
[DANANANANAYKROYD - COPYRIGHT JAMIE BOYNTON]
Always been a fan of these Scottish upstarts, with ‘Black Wax’ being a Los Campesinos-gone-punk (or ¡Forward Russia!-gone-polite) throwback chockfull of reflecting pop and as much anarchy as you can handle on a Sunday morning. Their set is topped by their wall of cuddles, a slightly new take on the ol’ mosh pit where the band divide the audience before demanding they run at each other and, well, cuddle. It’s all so precious, so whipping and amusingly unrestricted. Playing almost the whole of Hey Everyone! in their short set, they set the tone for Sunday at Leeds Festival 2009 quite dramatically.
They’re followed abruptly by Manchester Orchestra who we just can’t figure out, all Biffy Clyro-ish and the like. It’s good, but we’ve already got our sites set on The Virgins who frustrate on the Festival Republic Stage and New Found Glory who overwhelm on the Main Stage with a very tidy cover of Sixpence None The Richers’s ‘Kiss Me’, before we settle back into some new tunes.
[THE TEMPER TRAP - COPYRIGHT GEORGE COPPOCK]
The Temper Trap have become very popular of late, and with such Gawd-honest talent it doesn’t take long to figure out why. A vocal that brings The Raw And The Cooked to mind and an early Bloc Party, indie-garage sound meeting 80’s dancefloor fodder, they’re one of the more sinisterly awe-inspiring new bands at Leeds this year. Their material might be tacky in places, but when frontman Dougy Mandagi lands tracks from Conditions with such passion it’s hard not to get caught up. Their set is so, so short it hurts with no time for ‘Down River’ but all the time in the world for a full run of ‘The Drum Song’, an instrumental that occupies the majority of their set. ‘Science of Fear’ and ‘Sweet Disposition’ are among highlights of the whole festival, offered up like candles in a blitz.
[FIGHT LIKE APES - COPYRIGHT GEORGE COPPOCK]
We hear something that sounds like My Bloody Valentine, but when realising it’s only The Horrors we revisit The Festival Republic Stage where a very attractive Irish lass is fronting Fight Like Apes. They writhe around the stage, knocking sense into some shoegaze pop-punk tracks like ‘Lend Me Your Face’, paying a small homage towards the Yeah Yeah Yeahs with as much charm, character and animation with maybe not quite as much diversity… though far more emergency. It’s a raw and rock-solid set by a brilliant new band ready to take on the rock stratosphere with their Mystery of the Golden Medallion album, ‘I'm Beginning To Think You Prefer Beverly Hills 90210 To Me’ challenging a final push of energy.
[FRIENDLY FIRES - COPYRIGHT JAMIE BOYNTON]
Having already been compared to everybody from Spiritualized to The Cribs, The Big Pink land ‘Dominos’ far too early for the rest of their performance to keep interest, but nevertheless shove atmosphere into your broken Ray Bans like Glasvegas if they were good. Arguably a bit old-hat, there’s an ambience which escorts their live set which arguably the small stage just can’t get across. It’s all weirdly, inopportunely underwhelming, so we catch some Friendly Fires. Even if nu-rave was still an applaudable genre, these guys would be finding it tough to be as big as they’ve become, but as the NME/Radio1 tent is full to convulsion, they’re an unanticipated talk of the day. ‘Paris’ and ‘Kiss of Life’ have the horde in uncontrollable waves of adoration as Bombay Bicycle Club finish up a world-shattering set across the no-man’s-land of Leeds Festival.
[JAMIE T - COPYRIGHT GABRIEL GAVIN PHOTOGRAPHY]
Kaiser Chiefs have as much to say these days as Marcel Marceau, their once angsty pub-rock now a placid Mark Ronson pop din, so we find Jamie T utterly reinstating himself as a punk-poet genius. Anybody not already won over by Panic Prevention will undoubtedly find some reassurance in one of the biggest tracks of 2009 ‘Sticks and Stones’, just one of the many small pieces of epic musical lustre found on his new album Kings and Queens. ‘Pacemaker’ becomes a live anthem as ‘Salvador’ comes at us so hastily even fans in the know find it hard to sing along, while ‘Chaka Demus’ is a new favourite. He’s as an untamed obsessive as ever, but so much more confident on stage he’s become the proper frontman The Pacemakers have always needed.
[KINGS OF LEON - COPYRIGHT SIMON MOSS]
Anybody not aware that Future of the Left are one of the finest bands on the planet right now, playing our own Rockfeedback / Trangressive stage, try their luck at Kings of Leon. So overplayed it almost seems vain seeing them live, what a surprise awaited as they knowingly nail their headline set on the Main Stage. Really f**king nail it. Having cut their Reading set early due to poor sound, this Leeds Festival performance was a final ditch attempt to prove their status and as ‘Closer’ and ‘Crawl’ left naysayers swilling in their own Beatle-phobia sh*t, ‘Red Morning Light’ and ‘Fans’ just damn right dazed.
‘Sex on Fire’, ‘The Bucket’ and ‘On Call’ played in close precession earned such a crowd reaction they gave a huge, heartfelt thanks to the UK in a speech that made the huge site seem all that more intimate. “We know we’re big now”, says Caleb, “but you made us this big, and we thank you for it”.
They can’t help but play up to the crowd as every song knocks you for six, their inimitable alt-country vocals building up enormous verses as a dirty guitar riff crashes down on top of you, ‘Charmer’ crushing your sanity. They steal only the best from their four exceptional albums in the performance of Leeds Festival 2009. They close on ‘Use Somebody’ and an underrated ‘Black Thumbnail’ which rips into the panorama, asserting their reputation as one of the world’s biggest, most remarkable rock bands.
We come down with Mercury Prize nominee The Invisible, back on our own Rockfeedback / Transgressive stage, with tracks from Dave Okumu’s absurdly vibrant electronic-jazz debut record. It’s a dizzying mix of beats and bumpy vocals that sends us spinning into the infamous Leeds Sunday night riots. Tents are burned and the befuddled stand around gawping like baffled refugees as they see their belongings taken off to the giant fire before the mob declares, “Burn down the telegraph pole!”. Some scuffling and a few failed attempts later, and the pole finally falls as the sun rises over the ruined, scorched Yorkshire countryside that is once again home to probably the best weekend of rock music in the country.
LEEDS FESTIVAL DAY ONE / LEEDS FESTIVAL DAY TWO
Artists in this article: The Temper Trap, Jamie T, Friendly Fires, Dananananaykroyd, Kings Of Leon
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