Lounge On The Farm, Merton Farm
Lounge On The Farm
Festival season’s truly in, so here’s another in our comprehensive series of reviews before we swan off to Latitude tomorrow morning…
Friday July 10
Lounge On The Farm is a small festival but there is no mistaking that it is a real festival. Within two minutes of arriving I’ve seen a large man in a pink t-shirt playing slide guitar blues, used a fresh air urinal and been assaulted by street-teamers promoting the next young band. I’m only in time to catch the very end of Casio Kids but even a short blast of their high-energy positivism is enough to set me up for the weekend.
The Sheepdip tent hosts most of the rock action for the weekend and its here I head to watch It Hugs Back. It takes them a good while to set up, they have 15 effects pedals, a macbook, a synth and a sampler to organise. However, despite all the technology, when they come to take the stage the sound is straight ahead indie guitar inextricably stuck in the mid-90s. “When are they going to play ‘Kill Your Television’?”, my friend asks.
Ghost of a Thousand, Brighton based screamo upstarts, play the sheepdip tent next and generate far more energy in their soundcheck than the preceding bands managed during their actual sets. They then play an unrelenting set of hardcore with zero pretensions towards being ‘math’ or ‘tech’, they are all about the straightforward thrust of kick drum to sternum. They whip the young crowd into utter frenzy; until you’ve seen a hundred teenagers with asymmetrical haircuts slamdancing around a circus tent then you haven’t lived.
There is a similar circus tent further along hosting the weekend’s folk; I pop in and catch the Jonquil set as it disintegrates, ‘I think we’ve run out of things to play’ the singer admits mournfully before they salvage things with a stirring version of ‘Magdalen Bridge’.
A new addition to the festival this year is the Furthur Field, which is where the older festival-goers congregate to watch the acts aimed at a more mature audience. It even has a purpose built stage and a light show, although the endearingly amateurish atmosphere is maintained due to the fact that the sound-crew’s area is made out of hay-bales. It is here that we watch Gong, 1970s psych-freak survivors, on Friday evening. They certainly put on a show: the singer arriving onstage in a mirrored wizard costume making mystical benedictions at the audience. It almost compensates for the fact that he can’t actually sing terribly well. Almost. The band pump out meandering solos and quirky instrumental passages, you can imagine Mercury Rev listening to this lot 15 years ago and making lots of notes.
Back at the Sheepdip tent there’s time to catch Joe Gideon and the Shark. As they are a duo comprising a male singer-guitarist and a female drummer pedalling raw bluesy rock they are always going to struggle to escape comparisons to The White Stripes. They use a sampler, layered vocals, songs that tell stories and some very theatrical drumming and do end up convincing you that here is a band with its own identity.
The headline acts play in ‘The Cowshed’ which is exactly that. In preparation for the festival they’ve moved the cows out and decorated it with dishevelled Victorian chic. Tonight a packed cowshed crowd watches The Horrors loom out of the dry ice. They play a Primary Colours-heavy set that the majority of the crowd laps up although I am unconvinced. The vocals have so much reverb on them that Farris sounds like Brendon Flowers trapped down a very deep well. As the set continues you are left with the impression that The Horrors really only have one song and that is a song that has a stamp saying “if found please return to The Jesus And Mary Chain” on it.
The Headliners at the Folk tent are A Hawk and A Hacksaw, and tonight they’ve fleshed out their violin and accordion with trumpet and other strings to give themselves an engaging full gypsy folk sound which meanders across Europe and beyond in its influences.
Saturday July 11
Before their set I catch up with The Wave Pictures and chat to them about the festival (bit of a panic relating to equipment they didn’t bring and found out they needed, Jonny had a pie, it was good), the reaction to the success of Instant Coffee Baby (apparently there has been more of a gradual increase in their fanbase than a huge leap in popularity) and their recommendation for a pre-Instant Coffee record for their new fans to check out (eventually they settle on ‘The Airplanes at Brescia’). It’s then time for them to take to the stage and The Wave Pictures proceed to shred face. Well, at least as much face as a trio of skinny white boys playing indie rock can be expected to shred. Their audience is mostly static, neither moshing during the faster numbers nor (despite David’s insistence) slow dancing to ‘If you leave it alone’. It’s hard to see what else they could do to move the crowd: bass and guitar solos are traded amidst some frantic drumming and sing-a-long choruses about marmalade and sculpture. Maybe everyone is still exhausted after Ghost of a Thousand yesterday.
The Wave Pictures are followed onstage by The Temper Trap. This lot do get the crowd moving to an extent but then they have the advantage of a three guitar assault and a charismatic frontman prone to joining in with the drumming. Equal parts earnest, sweaty and fast: it’s not hard to see them getting huge.
Over in the folk tent there’s 6 Day Riot a six piece folk ensemble who (despite the guitarist’s gold lamé braces) demand to be taken seriously. The folk audience have been sitting on Hessian mats for the preivous bands but get to their feet straight away when invited to by the charismatic singer. Their last song also gets us singing along and almost morphs into ‘Teen Spirit’ at one point; quite a way to go out.
The Aliens play over at the Cowshed and they could show Gong a thing or two about cosmic pych-rock and how it’s done in the 00s: faster, louder and with a wall of sound. Even the wackiness is more streamlined: the singer disposing of his comedy headgear a few songs in. He’s got the tunes. He doesn’t need it.
They are followed by the Dub Pistols whose sonic chaos attempts to put the trombone at the heart of a rap/rock crossover and almost succeeds. We are exhorted to “make some fucken noise” and we do. Everyone is happy. Happiness could well be a theme of the festival; perhaps due to the excellent weather almost all the bands seem to be bringing on the good times and playing with smiles on their faces. This is not the case however with S.C.U.M, they revel in misery as they wade through 80s goth sonic sludge of their own creation. I’m left wandering how flattered the Horrors must be to have already spawned their own tribute band.
There is some angst and insecurity also in evidence in the folk tent with The Sargasso Trio. The guitarist announces that the last song ‘my microphone’ is ‘about Emily’s stage fright. She craps herself before she goes onstage. Not literally, well sometimes it’s touch and go’. Nice. The song starts and it’s clear that she has the powerful voice that makes these insecurities totally unwarranted.
The weather has been good consistently during the weekend but it starts to rain in earnest just in time for the entire crowd to decamp to the shelter of the Cowshed for headliner Roots Manuva. On the way I pause in the rain to check out Figital, a violin and turntable duo whose cover of the theme from Knightrider is well worth getting wet for. Roots Manuva fits the headline spot perfectly. Despite starting slowly, a few songs in and Rodney Smith has us exactly where he wants us: chanting along to ‘Too Cold’ “Sometimes I hate myself/ Sometimes I love myself” . Roots Manuva certainly knows how to put on a show and we forget our fatigue and the rain outside for the length of the set.
Sunday July 11
Despite the meteorological doom-mongering, Sunday turns out to be the hottest day of a festival already blessed with (mostly) very good weather. Lounge on the Farm is proud of its accessibility to families and children so I bring my pair of under-five daughters along with me to put this to the test. First up we see Monday Street, a band they both declare are ‘too noisy’. They play straightforward bluesy indie rock and, yes, it is noisy. It has passion and energy, but it does not get the toddler vote. The kids retreat to the Little Lounge area where the eldest gets a princess painted on her face and the youngest does some abstract art and clay modelling; they both have a good time. Note to self, next time bring some mini ear-protectors. Or breed tougher kids.
Because of the relatively small size of the festival it is easy to do a quick circuit of the main stages and dip in and out of what they are offering. Delicious venison burger in hand this is exactly what I do. Today The Woodentops are chugging away pleasantly enough in a mostly empty Cowshed, while the Soundcasters rock away at the Sheepdip. With their cheery guitar led melodies, matching outfits and cello bodied guitars the Soundcasters look and sound exactly like a 60s boy band, for better or worse. Meanwhile in the folk tent Chris TT brings a more sinister edge to proceedings. Alone with an acoustic on stage he intones: “I broke her ankles/She was leaving me/Coming back to you/What else could I do?” The Lounge on the Farm festival doesn’t really do dark though and so he quickly cuts through the gloom by pointing out ‘I didn’t really’. He then sings a song about a hedgehog.
Bent also have a trombone but they don’t use it to the same effect as the Dub Pistols did on Saturday; mid set they are plagued by technical problems and sound more Limp than Bent. The singer salvages the set with some dreamy languid pop vocals towards the end. Trombones could be the closest that the festival comes to having a theme, Yearner Babies also employ one over in the Sheepdip tent. Although they could be backed by a 50 piece brass ensemble wearing fluorescent jackets and they still wouldn’t distract your attention from the singer for a second. During songs full of passion and energy she combines shape-throwing charisma with genuine singing talent. Worth missing Billy Childish for? Damn Yes.
My daughters are fast succumbing to the festival fatigue that is setting in across the site and it’s time to go home. It’s been enjoyable; I’ll definitely be back next year. As you’d expect from a venue that normally plays host to cows it doesn’t always smell that good, but with the combination and variety of bands on offer, not to mention the superb local food and beer, it consistently looks, sounds and tastes good.
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