All Tomorrow’s Parties vs. The Fans Part II: The Fans Strike Back

ATP

Friday, May 8

Ah, ATP, the coolest and most indie of all festivals. You can shower, there’s a kitchen, it’s on the beach, there’s even a video arcade. There’s also nothing quite like watching an experimental noise band play in the entertainment hall of a Butlin’s.

Anyway, after a relatively pleasant train journey down to the South-West coast I am well and truly ready to see some bands. Unfortunately I miss Grouper due to the absurdly early time she was on (before people were officially allowed into their chalets, no less) so the first band of the weekend turns out to be Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. Owen Ashworth’s trademark lof-fi, downtempo electronica turns out to be a suitably relaxed start to the festival, and his songs greatly benefit from having a full band perform them in the second half of his set.

Afterwards we immediately rush off to see Jeffrey Lewis, amusingly clad in a Devo energy dome, at the Pavilion stage. Alas the limited atmosphere of the main stage doesn’t serve his songs terribly well, and the sound is muddy and unclear. However, the version of ‘Arrow’ we hear is suitably impressive, and I’m told the second half of his set improves greatly. We don’t get to see it, though, as we are watching HEALTH put in an even more stupendously insane performance than when I saw them the night before, thus rendering the previous gig pointless in terms of clash-avoiding, not that I’m complaining.

I then, with much regret, elect to miss M83 for what turns out to be the strangest performace of the weekend – the solo show of Mr. Andrew W.K. What begins as a sort of motivational lecture-cum-group seminar quickly turns into an outrageously fun mass-kareoke session as AWK invites a group of oddballs from his record label onto the stage with him, including Bad Brilliance, a man with a giant balloon for a head. David Tibet, of legendary British experimental group Current 93, even comes on stage wearing corpsepaint to shout along to ‘Party Hard’. Only at ATP…

Up next is Devo, who deliver the finest performance of all of Friday, and one of the best performances of the whole weekend. The band sound as vital and as downright weird as ever, despite their increasing years. They even still have their sense of humour, as demonstrated by the pre-concert film they show which explains acceptable attire to wear at a Devo gig, and the strange appearance of Booji Boy (their mascot) during their encore. Excellently, we get a hits-heavy set: there’s a stretch in the middle where they play ‘Girl U Want’, ‘Whip It’, ‘Satisfaction’, ‘Jock Homo’ and ‘Uncontrollable Urge’, and I almost die from happiness. They close with ‘Beautiful World’, and is certainly is one when Devo are in it.

After that I somehow lose the entirety of my chalet and thus wander around aimlessly for a while, sadly missing Pink Mountaintops in the process. Luckily I happen to bump into two of my friends and we go and check out the surprisingly brilliant rhymes of Antipop Consortium. There’s then just enough time to run back to the chalet and have a drink or two before we run back to catch the last act of the night, the hypnoticly wondrous Fuck Buttons. I was promised that the new material was good and I was not disappointed. ‘Bright Tomorrow’ is predictably brilliant but the new stuff is hip-shakingly, mesmerisingly awesome. I don’t think I stopped dancing for the whole of their set. Finally we dance some more to Edan’s DJ Set, which won my undiluted approval for its inclusion of ESG’s ‘Moody’, Pigbag’s ‘Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag’ and Yellow Magic Orchestra’s ‘Firecracker’. Thankfully, the sweet embrace of sleep follows shortly thereafter.

Saturday, May 9

The music starts earlier on Saturday, although our party decides five minutes into Nico Muhly‘s 2pm slot that his compositions are a little bit too much for our sore heads, as interesting as they are. Thus the first proper band of the day are Lords, who are an entertaining, unabashed rock band. They are a wonderfully fun, rifftacular (you’ll find the word in any good rocktionary) start to what was to prove to be the day of serious ROCKING.

Unfortunately, I miss the first half of Retribution Gospel Choir‘s set due to buying merch and dealing with a miniature crisis at home, but the 20 minutes or so that I see are very impressive. The side project of Alan Sparhawk from Low, they tend towards the more rocking, edgy stuff of his main band, and that’s fine by me. Towards the end some dick in the crowd makes a reference to the guitar-throwing incident at last year’s End Of The Road festival but luckily Sparhawk doesn’t hear it, or chooses to ignore it, and it doesn’t spoil what was a very promising set.

After catching the relaxing, if unremarkable, beginning of Cave Singers, I go to check out Qui, the side project of David Yow from The Jesus Lizard. Comparisons will inevitably be drawn with his more famous band but I was most impressed with their dissonant, stripped-down charms. Yow put in a somewhat subdued performance, but he was most likely saving himself for the madness that was the two Jesus Lizard performances.

Next up were one of the bands I was most looking forward to seeing over the weekend – Young Marble Giants, performing their classic (and only) album, Colossal Youth. Some have expressed disappointment with their performance, but I think one needs to be familiar with the material already. Admittedly it’s slighty surreal to see the music being performed live: on record it almost sounds as if it spontaneously came into being, but the band do a good job at recreating its warm, late-night sounds. Unfortunately a technical problem  with their keyboard means we don’t get ‘Final Day’. Boo.

The first 15 minutes or so of Grizzly Bear‘s set that I see is not enough to convince me what all the fuss is about, although they throw ‘Knife’ out very early, which was nice of them. Upstairs Harvey Milk take about 5 seconds to prove that they were the right choice in this particular clash. Beautifully, crushingly heavy, yet intriguingly complex and well at home with the a variety of differenbt styles, they are a true highlight of the weekend. I even bought their excellent latest album the next day, partly out of a sense of obligation.

Back on the main stage Beirut proves equally as good, if not better, than Georgia’s finest. Although his set is a little front-heavy (‘Nantes’, ‘Elephant Gun’, ‘Postcards From Italy’ and ‘Scenic World’ are all played in the first half-hour) Mr. Condon plays with a maturity far beyond his years and ‘My Night With The Prostitute From Marseilles’ is fantastically, achingly beautiful.

Though I had been advised to go and see Sleepy Sun, I turned out to be too transfixed by the magnificent synth-rock of Errors, who come across like an insane collaboration between Foals and Holy Fuck, to be bothered to leave. Chalk that one up as a surprise success of the weekend, as apparently their live show has improved immensely in the past few years.

About half an hour later, in the same venue Marnie Stern brings her guitar-tapping virtuoso skills to the stage. Frenetic, good humoured, and featuring possibly the most attractive woman I, and most other people, saw that weekend in the shape of her bassist (it’s all about the bassist), she was definitely worth missing the first Jesus Lizard performance for. Plus we got to hear a story about how she rejected John Cusack at age 17, told during a technical problem at the end of the set.

The last band of the evening are stoner-metal legends Sleep, who perform their titantic opus Holy Mountain in its entirety. Jesus, and I thought Harvey Milk were loud. Sleep are quite simply the heaviest thing I have ever witnessed in my life – their riffs are crushingly heavy and completely enveloping, with tracks such as ‘Dragonaut’ and the 15-odd minutes of ‘Dopesmoker’ they played sounding absolutely enormous. It’s also the most intense moshpit I’ve ever been in: an hour and a half of being thrown around by massive guys in Goatsnake and Sunn O))) T-shirts leaves me exhausted and sweaty to the point of near delerium. Band of the weekend, no question.

Sunday, May 10

Much to our relief, Sunday has a slightly gentler start. Out of curiosity I decide to pay a visit to the Lydia Lunch-curated spoken word stage to check out the woman herself. Surprisingly, she proves to be more interesting and less crazy than I was fearing, as she recites some dark, twisted beat poetry/story combo from her latest book. But by God, does she ever swear a lot.

The first band of the final day, though, are Shearwater, who blow pretty much everyone away with their gentle, heartfelt songs. Okay, so maybe I was a little tipsy at the time, and maybe I spent some of the set talking to the bassist from Parts & Labor, but I was definitely awed by Jonathon Meiburg’s angelic voice and wonderfully crafted songs.

Deciding against catching the last half of Grails, the next band I see are the brillantly funny Future Of The Left, who provide the quote of the weekend in describing ATP as an “alternative festival of beards and flannel shirts”, before throwing sweets into the crowd and making fun of a guy in a Skins-esque multicoloured hoodie for about five minutes. Oh, and the songs are pretty good too.

Annoyingly another difficult clash means that we have to dash upstairs for !!!, whose singer displays the best moves of the weekend. The new material sounds really promising, and when the band lock into a groove they are unstoppable, and almost absurdly funky.

Parts & Labor; aside from having an incredibly nice, and fantastically beardy, bassist, deliver a pretty epic set back on the main stage, as they work to overcome the sound problems that the pavilion can bring. Thanks to another scheduling nightmare, though, I have to duck out early (but thankfull after their best song, ‘Nowhere’s Nigh’) so I can see Killing Joke. As irritating as it was to miss the second half of P&L the ‘Joke are on fine form starting with an impressive salvo of ‘Requiem’, ‘Wardance’, ‘Change’ and ‘Primitive’, all taken from the classic first album. The band sound absolutely immense, with Jaz Coleman maniacally stalking the stage, and guitarist Geordie Walker drinking out of a bottle of red wine between songs (rock n’ roll). Other early tracks ‘Madness’ and ‘Pssyche’ are equally impressive. a brilliant set all around from another aged post-punk band who still have plenty to give.

Spiritualized are next and, though they have their moments, including the 15 minute wig-out at the end, they could’ve been a lot more exciting and many, including myself, felt that they sounded a lot better during their soundcheck earlier. Thankfully, The Mae Shi offer much more in the way of fun, delivering what was certainly one of the most energetic, and insane, performances of the weekend. ‘Run To Your Grave’ is almost lifechanging in its intensity, and I doubt it leaves a single unsmiling face in the audience.

At last, I get to see The Jesus Lizard. And whilst David Yow doesn’t end up shirtless and in the crowd quite as quickly as he apparently did in Satirday’s show, we do get a full complement of his stagedriving as the band build up to an explosive finale. TJL could certainly teach something to bands half their age, and are another definite highlight.

I catch another half-hour of Sleep (the band) but elect to end the weekend dancing with a load of indie kids to Mike Diver’s DJ Set, in which I scream myself hoarse to ‘Debaser’ and other indie classics. As I stumble back to my chalet, the sound of Grandaddy’s ‘A.M. 180′ still ringing in my ears, it strikes me again that there really is no festival quite like ATP.

No related posts.