Guest Column – Dan Michaelson of The Coastguards/Absentee Reviews End of the Road 2010
4/5
By: Dan Michaelson
Generally considered to be “the best festival of the year” by almost every band member and music nerd I know, End of the Road 2010 further bolstered the event’s already impeccable reputation as the festival of choice for music obsessives who tend to spend longer in the aisles of Rough Trade than they do in the bath.
Founded in 2005 as an unbranded boutique festival for 5000 alt country and folk loving fans, I’ve played this festival every year so far, and have watched it transform from a celebration of the lo key and lo-fi into a hot ticket for anyone who likes their music packed full of heart, booze and doom, but their fields small and their tents not too far away. Pitched up in a Dorset suntrap that also doubles as a peacock sanctuary, Larmer Tree Gardens plays temporary host to this annual celebration of beards, banjo’s and casual parenting.
[CATE LE BON]
All set then, until realising we’d fallen at the first hurdle by leaving our sleeping bags at home. Luckily there’s an onsite shop dedicated to this kind of behaviour and it wasn’t long before our minor setback was forgotten, replaced by Cate Le Bon. A fair swap. Her welsh wizardry wooed an early Friday main stage crowd, and with fellow wizard Sweet Baboo on bass and backing vocals, their buzzes and hums tripped over each other so create some seriously wonky wonderful pop that set the mood for the first day. There were quite a few middle-aged men in the front rows for whom she seemed to set an entirely different mood but that’s another story.
[EDWYN COLLINS]
After slipping in and out of stages for the duration of the day, I finally settled on Edwyn Collins as my headliner of choice for the first night. Much has been made of his amazing return to performing and recording after heath problems that would have left most mortals ruined, but all that really needs to be said now is that these were great songs performed impeccably and energetically to an audience of grateful fans.
[PHOSPHORESCENT]
Phosphorescent gets my vote as this year’s band of the festival. Playing to a Saturday mid afternoon sun baked and happy crowd, they showed easygoing enthusiasm and effortless cool as they slipped through a set of songs mostly from the new album Here’s To Taking It Easy, Oh hell, I think we could be friends if we ever met... Is that going to happen? Probably not. I’ve seen both Bon Iver and Richard Hawley play the same spot at this festival and claim the same weekend defining experience.
Here’s some other thoughts that I can’t remember where they fitted in:
Black Mountain - mental health workers taking a little sick time to deliver heavy prog rock medicine. The audience were grateful, it all made sense.
Caitlin Rose filled the gap left by Steve Mason after he pulled out due to illness. She’s good, people liked here, she didn’t do any Beta Band songs though.
Don’t try to dance to Caribou if you’ve never heard them before. Practice first.
The Low Anthem can be enjoyed from any distance within the festival boundaries… it’s really up to you.
Back to the clearer stuff…
[IRON AND WINE]
Headlining the main stage on Saturday night was Iron and Wine, performing solo for most of his set, he played flawlessly lovely songs but Horse and I felt the need for an emergency shot of excitement and so joined friends to witness the musical equivalent of doing hand brake turns in a Tesco’s car park when you’re 15. Brakes. They did the job…
After all this and given the bars were still open, it seemed only right to entertain a man who was convinced he was a bull. I played along as the matador. Started well but ended bad, less said, soonest mended. No future plans to follow up. Bedtime.
On a hot tip from a man who felt the need to admit to me he really liked massage, our first date on Sunday was with a couple of youngsters by the name of Jonny Kearney & Lucy Farrell. They play lovely traditional folk with short breaks to chat about teacakes. Despite the recurring thought that children must be having their legs chopped off somewhere in the world to counteract how sweet this is, I still enjoyed it and went to sit in the sun for an hour or so before seeing Steven Adams new band.
Given that I’ve toured the UK at least twice with The Broken Family Band and have been in a band with Melinda (their drummer) for 5 years, its fair to say that I’ve already succumbed to the charms of Singing Adams, but that in no way numbed the thrill of seeing them play tracks from their forthcoming album to a packed tent on the local stage on Sunday afternoon. Culminating in Steve presenting Melinda with a trophy for Best Drummer In The World, they seemed to embody the sense that the right people had found the right band at just the right time. We whiled away an hour or two playing scrabble after that… here’s a free tip, don’t take on any word based games after heavy drinking. You’ll appear as an idiot.
[WILCO]
It feels like the last 5 years have been building up to the point where EOTR could host Wilco as headliner of the festival and the sense of anticipation in the crowd made the cold evening air throb, which isn’t immediately a pleasant idea. However, everyone loves Wilco, Wilco seem to love the crowd but maybe don’t want to stay the night. The sheer beauty vs. ridiculous guitar noodling provided the perfect ending to the best festival of the year.
Artists in this article: Wilco, Singing Adams, Jonny Kearney & Lucy Farrell, Brakes, Iron & Wine, The Low Anthem, Caribou, Caitlin Rose, Black Mountain, Phosphorescent, Edwyn Collins, Cate Le Bon
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