list.co.uk/music
D N A L E C Y R B N A C N U D
: O T O H P
SCOTTISH FESTIVAL GOLIATH T IN THE PARK Balado, Kinross, Fri 8–Sun 10 Jul ●●●●●
A city-sized piss-up spread across seven stages, T in the Park has grown to almost incomprehensible proportions. With the territory comes an obligation to please everybody some of the time, something which inevitably has a habit of leaving fans of relevant and vital music cold most of the time. But such an enormous event has to be judged on its broadest strokes, and in that sense 2011 was a great year for T.
The festival welcomed arguably its most impressive headliner yet, and she didn’t disappoint. The weather saved its worst mercifully until the last day, and there was occasional sunshine. The atmosphere was good- natured almost to a fault. And Jarvis Cocker mimed doing something filthy with the last edition of News of the World. Beyonce’s Saturday appearance was an undeniable
star turn, packing all the punchiest bits of her celebrated Glastonbury show – a deliriously fun ‘Crazy In Love’, a sassy ‘All the Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)’ and a super-slick Destiny’s Child medley. Take nothing away from the other headliners – Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay and Foo Fighters’ sets delivered everything you’d expect for from such seasoned big-name bill-toppers – but unlike Queen B, they’re nothing this festival hasn’t seen before and probably won’t see again.
Standouts from the less glamorous end of the bill included Lady North’s power-prog heroics in the T Break tent and British Sea Power’s rousing gossamer indie turn ending with a fight between two BacoFoil robot men. Indie-ravers Friendly Fires’ frontman Ed Macfarlane disco-danced breathlessly in his Hawaiian shirt looking like he hadn’t got the memo about the torrential rain. You had to love the irony of seeing Manic Street Preachers blast-out punk-rock anthems about suicide, working class solidarity and the hollowness of modern consumer life on the same stage to which game gal popster Ke$ha had minutes before invited a man dressed as a giant willy.
Pulp were led charmingly through all their best bits –
‘Do You Remember The First Time?’, ‘Babies’ and ‘Common People’ included – by a frontman in good mood to speak his mind. ‘Do you remember the last time we saw this piece of shit?’ sneered Cocker before pretending to wipe his backside with Britain’s hitherto biggest-selling Sunday tabloid. If there’s one thing T has a good instinct for, it’s when
to roll out an unlikely veteran for a so-wrong-it’s-right singalong. Tom Jones in the Friday teatime slot got the party started to the point of inspiring one drunk fat bloke to do a striptease in the mud during ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On’. If that didn’t somehow sum-up T in the Park in a nutshell, then surely nothing did. (Malcolm Jack) ■ See list.co.uk for more of our reviews of T in the Park.
Music LIVE REVIEWS
INDUSTRIAL/ ELECTRONIC A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT DREAM 2011: CHRIS & COSEY WITH ARTHUR’S LANDING Tramway, Glasgow, Sat 25 Jun ●●●●●
Reinterpreting the music of the late Arthur Russell is no easy feat, but thankfully Arthur’s Landing is more a celebration by friends than all-out tribute. Their show is loose in the loosest sense, but the sheer amount of fun the performers are having transcends even Arthur’s own meticulous live and recorded perfectionism. Finishing with his proto- house classic ‘Is It All Over My Face’ with Leigh Ferguson (from Glasgow’s Muscles of Joy) on vocal duties – the crowd can’t help but smile. Unlike the busy Throbbing Gristle show in the
same space two years ago, ex-T. Gristle members Chris & Cosey’s Tramway return is a far less attended ordeal, but for those brave few souls, it made the night even more personal. From the get- go, the first couple of industrial music are utterly thunderous. Chris [Carter]’s sound waves bounce about the room like sonic ping pongs, aligned with soothingly dark low-end pulsations – whilst his partner Cosey [Fanni Tutti]’s guitar patterns and delayed horn swamps the space. A calculated attack done with utter precision. (Nick Herd)
COUNTRY ROCK KINGS OF LEON Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, Sun 26 Junl ●●●●● Kings of Leon, once the hard-partyin’, country- rockin’ good ol’ boys that your Regular Joe indie fan liked, have gone over to the other side. There’s no coming back – cult success has given way to rugby stadia and thousands of hardcore afternoon drinkers left bereft since Oasis shot their long overdue bolt. This, at least, was a show that lived up to the expectations of their sea of new admirers. Adulation greeted the songs everyone knows (a football match ambience was recreated with red signal flares during ‘Fans’), and the ones they don’t sounded agreeably like all the rest. Highlights included singer Caleb – rocking a Thor beard and ponytail – dedicating ‘Birthday’ to brother Nathan on his own birthday, and looking genuinely stunned by the ‘awesome audience’ after ‘Notion’, the turning point between pleasing build-up and pounding race to the finish via hits like ‘California Waiting’ and, of course, ‘Sex on Fire’. Inevitably their new, populist appeal will attract sneers of derision, but this was a show that revelled in delivering a likable group to new heights on their own terms. (David Pollock)
ELECTRONIC POP MEMORY TAPES The Arches, Glasgow, Fri 8 Jul ●●●●● POP PAUL SIMON SECC: Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow, Fri 24 Jun ●●●●●
Chillwave: an apt descriptor of an entire musical movement? Or conveniently coined faux genre for a few bands with loosely similar influences? Whether you approve of such pigeonholing or not, Memory Tapes is regarded as one of the key purveyors of such disco-tinged shoegaze and been punted by blog after blog as such.
The New Jersey-based musician (real name: Dayve Hawk) is here to promote latest LP, Player Piano, the sequel to 2009’s Seek Magic. Sound issues plague the first few tracks, understandably unsettling the band, but they soon find their feet, while Hawk shows his knack for a shaky but endearing vocal and a fuzzed-out guitar line.
Envisioned as homemade, Mac-produced pop, the live show is essentially a blissed-out backing track augmented by a live drummer and bassist, with warm, hazy melodies and percussion complementing the thick underlying electronic layers. Recent material is interspersed with older tracks, ably translated to a live setting by Mr Tapes and band. Although at times lacking much to distinguish between certain mid-set songs, theirs is a formidable representation of what chillwave might really be. (Lauren Mayberry)
‘Glasgow – I once got into a lot of trouble in this town,’ Paul Simon told the full-house. Simon didn’t elaborate. He scarcely needed to: the grittier details of his five decades as poet laureate of the bittersweet life lesson, as pop’s premier poet of the heart’s moving toyshop were etched into the songs with loving precision. Without exception, no popular tunesmith has created a songbook as deep and broad as Rhymin’ Simon’s and he unfurled it here with dazzling generosity. It was an evening of skyscraping standards; from song choice (all the classics except, bafflingly, ‘You Can Call Me Al’ and ‘Graceland’) to musicianship, his band recreating songs known to us as intimately as our own reflections in the mirror. The South African and Brazilian flavours of recent albums marinaded plainer arrangements of earlier songs such as ‘50 Ways To Leave Your Lover’. ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’ remained the exquisite anthem of anyone who’s ever split their record collection with a departing other half. A bravura performance buoyed with reminders of the altitude to which pop music can ascend. And how many songwriters can feature as exit music Sinatra singing one of their own songs? (Allan Brown)
21 Jul–4 Aug 2011 THE LIST 67