Ten Years of All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival – Butlins, Minehead – 11/12/09 [PART 1]
5/5
By: Tim Dellow, Thomas Hannan
ATP Festival has been going for ten years, and I’ve been lucky enough to have been at ten of them. This is by no means exhaustive attendance, but it’s a fair few. What with this being a celebratory time, ATP have assembled a kind of ‘Best Of’ of a line up for this, the Ten Years of All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival. As such, there are only about five bands I’ve never seen before. Never mind - as my diaries throughout the noughties have shown, I clearly love ATP. Being here makes me exceedingly happy. The fact that they now have an Otter Ale stand makes me even happier - so happy that I’m genuinely enjoying the first act I catch, namely Mr Stephen Malkmus, a man clearly riding on former glories but riding pretty stylishly nonetheless. Part of me wonders whether it might border on being brilliant. Part of me thinks it’s the fact that I’m at ATP that’s got me in such a good mood, and whatever I saw first would be deemed brilliant so long as I had a pint of Otter Ale in hand. Otter Ale is brilliant. [THOMAS HANNAN]
But so are J Mascis & The Fog, who coax me upstairs and essentially play me Dinosaur Jr songs minus the influence of Lou Barlow and Murph but with even more ridiculous guitar solos to make up for it. Simultaneously one of the most laughable and impressive exhibitions of six string smacking I have ever seen, it’s sheer extravagance prompts me to later offer a £5 note to my co-author on this piece, Tim Dellow, to go up to Mascis whilst standing outside a bar and make a loud widdly noise whilst playing air guitar. He accepts the challenge like a man, and I honour the agreement. [THOMAS HANNAN]
Convention states that those offered a performance at ATP treat their slot, and audience with the respect and prestige that their curator deserves. However, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have never been one for convention and, after erecting a monstrous festival set backdrop and leaving the terse crowd waiting for over half an hour (sacrilege at this festival with such a high quality and tightly timed line up) before appearing not with an apology but a “f**k you ATP we only just got here and we’re the f**king Yeah Yeah Yeah’s F**K YOU”.
YYY’s have always straddled the line between indie underground and crossover appeal, and this Don’t Look Back performance of their artiest and most highly recorded full length album Fever To Tell was only meant to re-enforce this notion. However, their diva-ish attitude only caused this audience to think back to what would have happened to its beloved Touch and Go records if this act and TVOTR had chosen, as their influencers did, to stay loyal to their label and not chase the major option.
Politics and bad attitude aside YYY’s have always been a f**king brilliant act: both live and largely on record and once they hit their swing midway through ‘Rich’ the band deliver on this for a few songs at least – the classic ‘Date With the Night’ through to ‘Pin’ rollicking along in a flurry of glitter-guns and taught tune-age before the band seem to get tired with either the predictability of the concept or the music itself and the bottom drops out of the second half of the album. A lift around key track ‘Maps’ which is rewarding to hear in this loyal form as opposed to the acoustic rendition currently in their set, before any remnants of vim or energy falter into a forced encore.
Joined briefly by everyone’s favourite underground hero and occasional touring guitarist David Pajo for an attempt, and I stress attempt as they abandon it after a verse and a half, of ‘Zero’ before a stunning performance of ‘Heads Will Roll’ offering a glimpse of how amazing this band still has the potential to be, before a tokenistic throwback to their awesome debut EP with the song ‘Our Time’ the mantra “This is our time to be hated” echoing around the space as Karen at last plays lip service to the audience who are left, at best, confused about their feelings towards this at times astonishing act. –[TIM DELLOW]
As explained earlier, there were only five bands on this bill I hadn’t seen before. As also mentioned, this is my own fault and I’m not complaining (this weekend I will, after all, watch both Shellac and Sunn O))) twice). But one of the fun things about past ATPs has been discovering a band I’ve never heard of and them then becoming lifelong obsessions (Wolf Eyes and Lightning Bolt for example). It was with this in mind that I had high hopes for Six Organs of Admittance, and subsequently had them dashed by some pretty easily ignorable psychedelic but nowhere near psychedelic enough folk. Instead of a new obsession, I add them to the small but significant pile of artists I’ve seen at ATP who were neither good nor bad, rather just a bit... whatever. [THOMAS HANNAN]
One of the brilliant things about ATP is that it provides a forum for passionate music lovers to meet, discuss and form bands: nurturing and supporting acts such as Foals, Youthmovies and Blood Red Shoes through demonstrating that there is a space and desire for distinctive and challenging music and encouraging this to form into something real. The latest returning champions are Fuck Buttons who have been patrons of the festival long before it could offer them this set, a set that screams we have arrived atop a giant mirror ball. Any suggestions that Fuck Buttons were a noise band have been exploded in a entactogenic eruption of euphoria. With bells on. Uniting the core factions of the audience (old beard-strokers who have been coming since the Bowlie Weekender vs. newbies entranced by Bon Iver and Health) in a blissed up appreciation of musical possibilities. [TIM DELLOW]
I, however, don’t like Fuck Buttons. There, I said it. Feels a lot better. In the spirit of keeping an open mind I watched the entirety of their set nonetheless. Maybe it’s for this reason that when Tortoise take to the stage after them, it’s like they’re in a different league entirely – a league that has as an entry requirement that you need to have more than just one endlessly pummelling idea. Tortoise have got loads of ideas. Loads of ‘em. In the set they play tonight, I wager that there are a thousand ideas in it. It starts off pretty exhilaratingly, but like a few of their recent records, fails to be that consistently exciting all the way through. Such is the problem with an abundance of ideas – getting them to a point where they’re coherently, consistently interesting is nigh on impossible. But long may Tortoise continue to give it a bloody good go. [THOMAS HANNAN]
THIS IS PART ONE OF THREE
Artists in this article: Tortoise, Fuck Buttons, Six Organs of Admittance, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, J Mascis & The Fog, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
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