Indietracks, Midland Railway – Sunday
Teenage Fanclub
What more could a girl want than a tiny little festival on the Midland Railway, a little tram/train hybrid to and from the campsite, talks by Fortuna Pop and a little marquee with an ever-changing timetable of Tatty Devine rarities, band merch, brooches… ? Essentially, it’s heaven.
The site is so small that it becomes an existence. You see Boy With Christmas-Wrapping Cardigan again and again – there’s only about 1,000 gathered here, after all. There’s a level crossing between the Elefant-sponsored stage and the indoor stage, and the third and fourth stages are a Church and a moving steam engine respectively. Soulless corporate junkies, rip your brains out; this is how to do a festival from scratch.
The Marshmallow Kisses are the first stop of the day, and it’s tweepop in the form of wannabe themes for children’s TV. In some rough order, other wondrous musics caught over the course of the day initiate with Portland’s Eux Autres, who recall Sleater-Kinney and The Vaselines without even a second to think. It’s gutsy and it’s fuzzy and it’s great.
Hong Kong In The 60s are blessed with Mei Yau Kan’s buttery vocals in the mix of their understated twinkly pop, and the church stage is the perfect place for it. Shame there’s only time to catch the last couple of songs…
Nick Garrie on the Elefant stage is a delight. Playing some new material as well as songs from his extremely hard to find 1969 album The Nightmare of JB Stanislas, his between-song chat is simply adorable. The arrangements are described by Wikipedia as “baroque”, and his set is just another example of both (a) the use of the internet post-festival and (b) the astonishing quality of artists in the Indietracks line-up.
Lucky Soul are absolutely in the ’60s, all smouldering waltzes and world-sized besottedness. Ali Howard’s stage demeanour feels forced though (look, I can be mean…) but the songs are toe-tappingly Spectorish enough to pull through (…but only a little bit).
Indietracks has this way of transforming its attendees into saccharine-coated versions of their formerly caustic incarnations; everything I see is now coated in murray mints, cinch belts and oversized hair-bows. It can’t be right. Pocketbooks are exactly how this has happened, their songs sounding like my mind felt when I was 12.
My find of the weekend are Help Stamp Out Loneliness, a striking six-piece (I think) with a phenomenal singer in D. Lucille Campbell. Her superb metallic asymmetric dress concoction: wantwantwant. Back to the music, it’s simply huge. There’s two keyboards with the Smiths-recalling melodies, and happiness oozing and scratching to escape, surround, overcome the room. The rhythms drive in a way I can only remember Electrelane succeeding at, and it’s for that reason that I fall.
Art Brut are up next and Eddie Argos is on striking form. At first, he mockingly(/lovingly) questions how they’ve come to be at such a twee festival, but then recalls his Milky Wimpshake namedrop and other such indieboy classics. ‘Modern Art’ is made over (“DC Comics make me/want to rock out”), ‘Nag Nag Nag Nag’ is suddenly even more gloriously off the cuff. Last time I saw Art Brut, I decided that the novelty had worn off but that’s because (a) I’d just decided I wasn’t a huge fan of the latest album; (b) I wasn’t drunk; (c) I certainly wasn’t at a festival. And I’m not one to go back on my word so publicly. There will come a day when ‘Rusted Guns Of Milan’ and ‘Formed A Band’ lose their still-fresh charm but I was wrong ’cause it certainly isn’t now. Especially when Argos proves his worth like this, mic wire sweeping past my noise and can and back again about 15 times. Resoundingly Top Of The Pops.
The end approaches as the rain drips from the sky, and Teenage Fanclub enter the stage. Playing a set of old and new, fears that it would just be tired nostalgia are thrown away instantly. There’s one new song in particular (possibly called ‘The Fall’) that has this janglier, denser edge to it; it’s up there with ‘Mellow Doubt’ and ‘Sparky’s Dream’ on first play. It’s not quite as crisp as it could be, but it’s certainly still tight. The harmonies at their surfiest are are microtone-perfect, and their mic/guitar-swapping is reverable. The music is timeless and it’s only fitting that TFC close Indietracks, one of the most influential bands of their field (and this field [ka boom cha]).
This here festival is a model. It’s not so much anti-careerist, more just there because of the love. No queue jumping, sinks in toilets (!), a hog roast comprising an actual massive whole pig being carved into, the odd trainspotter and his dog, a llama staring at me in the face, spotting Gareth Campesinos! running around with a massive smile on his face for the duration, friendly quipping about band T-shirts… general adorableness and a warm fuzzy glow. Intangibly massive niceness. Is it that indiepop fans are so lovely that it was always going to be that way? Is it that a 50-band festival with a capacity of 1,000 must, by rights, comprise of mostly performers? The only sadness is finding out later that Talulah Gosh (almost) played a mini-set in the merch tent.
See you next year!
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