Playlouder - Music is the Network

After the disappointment of finding out that Mystery Jets would not be performing due to illness, the final day got going slightly later with the appearance on the main stage of the wonderful Wild Beasts.  The quaint and curious Kendal four-piece rushed through their set to play nearly every track from recent album “Limbo, Panto”, barely acknowledging the existence of the small but attentive crowd and not looking like they were enjoying being in Leicester very much at all.  However, they performed professionally, and less chit-chat meant more of Hayden Thorpe's ridiculously good falsetto frolicking over exquisite pop songs that tick along like clockwork, but musical clockwork.  A carousing performance of “Cheerio Chaps, Cheerio Goodbye”  looked set to end their slot perfectly, until they realised they still had some time left.  

As the sun finally broke from behind the clouds, and the Guardian stall switched from giving away free rain macs to free bottles of sun screen, the Swedish-born, presumably also Spanish, solo guitarist José Gonzalez sat himself down and played an hour of slight variations on a theme.  The look of disappointment on my companion's face as he realised he had confused Jose with Chilly marred the event slightly. Crowd reaction varied from polite ripples of “that's nice, but please play 'Heartbeats'” applause to ecstatic cheers born of relief when he finally indulged his greedy fickle audience and played 'Heartbeats'.  He then played the 137th cover version of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” followed by the 43rd cover (and counting) of “Teardrop”.  But no-one cared; they'd got what they came for. 

Forced to leave early on Sunday, effortlessly cool Swedish girl four-piece  Those Dancing Days represented the final night headline act of my festival weekend, and it was a bizarre note to leave on.  They drew a large crowd, although the front two ranks were nearly all old men with long-lensed SLRs.  At least one of them (or someone else) obviously has a talent for writing good pop songs, but one gets the feeling that if they weren't young and female and Swedish then they probably wouldn't be getting away with it.  The vocalist took a long time to warm up, the keyboardist hammered away single-fingerdly in the style of a five year old playing chopsticks, and the guitarist played the whole set with a ridiculous grin on her face that suggested she hadn't been practicing the guitar at least 2 hours a day like she'd promised her parents she would.  But what does that matter?  The sum of its parts produced a pretty darn enjoyable 45 minutes, and their infectious songs stuck in my head all the way down the M1 home.