Playlouder - Music is the Network

Reading 2008 was the year of “no trend.” Where, for instance, 2006 was the year of Emo (Panic! And MCR bottlings etc) and 2007 was the year New Rave peaked with bright colours, Klaxons, and loud outfits the vibe, this year possibly saw dance and rock going head-to-head more than any other year, but otherwise was a kaleidoscope of different genres mashed in to one perfect weekend.

Walking in to the arena on the Friday, you find an annoyed mass desperate to see Anti-Flag bursting through the gates. Is there anything worse than being miles back in the arena and trying to race forward to try and catch a band's set? In any case, Anti-Flag were one of the best opening bands Reading has ever seen, getting huge singalongs and circle pits at a ludicrously early timeslot. Of course, “The Press Corpse” was the set highlight, the entire field singing “We don’t want to talk about it” was an amazing sight.

Get Cape Wear Cape Fly were typically perfect for a hot summer’s day, playing a near flawless set, with “War Of The Worlds” first verse, and indeed, chorus, soaring way, way high over the main stage and in to the summer sky. Deliriously amazing. The crowd is still as thick as gravy when Taking Back Sunday stroll on, and should take full advantage of the gigantic crowd who have been well warmed up by two great bands. The bad news is they are probably the biggest disappointment of the entire weekend. The sound is terrible for at least half their set, and being that they’re playing nearly all of unerappreciated third album “Louder Now,” no-one is singing. Add to this the fact that their new guitarist doesn’t have the nuts or the lungs of last guitarist Fred Mascherino, and doesn’t sing half the backing parts he used to, and suddenly whole chunks are missing from their songs. On top of this, they only play about four songs which connect with the festival crowd. They close with the excellent “Make Damn Sure,” but it’s too little, too late.

Dizzee Rascal pulls the biggest crowd of the weekend (I’m serious, it took me twenty minutes to get out of the crowd after, a girl literally had a panic attack in front of me and another guy fainted from the heat and claustrophobia during the set) and is an astonishing act that goes down amazingly well at Reading. Bloc Party called Reading fans “some of the most open-minded and intelligent in the world” and year-on-year they’ve embraced this grime kid from the ghetto, amongst other non-rock acts prejudiced creeps will tell you don’t “belong” at a rock festival. My god, does he have the tunes though, with “I Love You” taking the field back five years to when grime was just kicking off. The crowd groove and stare in amazement as his watertight flows (sorry Jay-Z, you’ve just become the 2nd best rapper to play the festivals this year) loop in to stadium-sized choruses. He was also the loudest act of the weekend, possibly half the reason the council complained about the noise. The bass was louder than a rudeboy’s car playing Pendulum through eight sub-woofers.

Biffy Clyro pull a large crowd, and when they get it right, it’s amazing, but a lot of their intensity is lost somewhere along the airwaves of the vast main stage. With all due respect, they would have been much better in one of the tents.

The Enemy are a great festival band, but unlike at Glastonbury , they don’t quite have the crowd roaring like a football stadium, but knock out some fantastic Indie-punk anthems all the same. Opener “Away From Here” in particular brings the field together today. Goldfinger are the best band in the lockup tent for the entire weekend, the type of band the Punk stage was invented for. You know they’ll open with “Spokesman,” arguably the best pop-punk song ever, but can you resist counting with your fingers when the lyric “Still counting the days I’ve been without you, ONE TWO THREE FOUR!” echoes around the tent? It’s like trying to suck a fruit pastille to death without chewing it. Impossible. Their songs literally rock the crowd into a bouncing frenzy of bodies. People are climbing the ropes, guys with dreadlocks are vibing with huge spliffs, and singer John Feldmann splits the crowd for a wall of death and stands in it singing as the wall comes in on him. It’s like an explosion of happy. Then 4,000 people sing the last verse of “99 red balloons” in german. Superb.

Late Of The Pier are astonishing tonight. If you don’t know who these guys are yet, shame on you. They’re probably the most original, catchiest, craziest, utterly insane band playing at Reading or anywhere in the world right now. Every time they play they seem to arrange their songs in a slightly different way or with new breakdowns or dance elements. It’s literally like stepping in to another world every time you see these guys live. If David Bowie formed a punk band as a teenager, this is what they’d sound like. We then get to see a bit of self-indulgent noodling with Queens Of The Stone Age who, as usual, seem to be having more fun than their audience. They even butcher the brilliant “No-one knows.” Why can’t they just play their songs?

Anticipation is hanging in the air as the stage goes black, and puts a spotlight on four men in orange jumpsuits with black bags over their heads, Guantanamo inmates silent and still. When roadies surround them and give them sticks, guitars, and mics, it’s hard not to feel excitement bubbling up inside you like the rush of a good pill when Rage Against The Machine saddle up and rock us in to the next millennium. They open with Bombtrack. Ouch. They play “Bulls On Parade.” They play “Know Your Enemy.” And so on. A band no-one thought they’d ever see playing better than anyone could possibly have imagined. It’s nothing less than a treat to hear these songs, and yet you always knew they’d be one of the bands of the weekend before the festival had even begun.

Saturday

Everyone seems to have squeezed in to the Radio One tent for Kids in Glass Houses but the truth is, “Saturday” aside, they haven’t written a good song since their E.P. came out two years ago. Their set isn’t helped by some muddy, inaudible sound for large parts of their set, but their performance hardly seems unauthentic.

The Gaslight Anthem typify the unimaginative, uninspired Lockup stage. A mid-tempo punk rock band, who could’ve appeared at any time in the last 10 years, completely unoriginal, no stage presence, like so many bands on this stage, appearing courtesy of an unwarranted amount of hype in the music press. When their singer enthuses his love for The Killers, it's easy to see why-they both shamelessly plagirise Bruce Springsteen. For the third year in a row The King Blues play the lockup stage, and where for the last two years they’ve pulled off an amazing, anthem-filled set, their new material leaves most cold here. It sounds promising and intelligent, but at a festival, it’s best to play to your strengths (i.e. Get Cape yesterday).

Editors are an amazing band. Probably the most beautiful song played this weekend was “Smokers outside the hospital doors,” one of those bands where everyone is watching in a hushed reverence, but walks away knowing they’ve witnessed a truly special performance.

You Me At 6 are this year’s “breakthrough band.” Where the likes of Arctic Monkeys and Klaxons have made names for themselves on the smallest stage at Reading , You Me At 6 follow suit by packing out the tiny festival republic tent with ques of people ten deep dying to get in. Those who did make it in experienced something approaching pop punk perfection, with the crowd drowning out the Weybridge five-piece and turning the occasion in to some sort of Pop Rock musical, where the choir know the songs better than the band. A true “I was there” moment.

Walking from YMA6 over to Justice makes you realize why Reading really is the best festival in the world. On one stage you’ve got a soon-to-be-massive rock band, 30 seconds away you have one of the world’s most forward thinking dance acts. Watching Justice is like discovering music again. Their set was (for want of a better word) a religious experience. You would get high just watching them. About halfway through the set, the thousands raving under their spell are probably thinking “band of the weekend?” and it’s not a bad call. Meanwhile, across the field, Bloc Party are firing out lasers and playing “Flux.” It looks amazing, and their new techno/dance vibes could really bump them up to the next level. It works so well in fact that the songs they play after Flux sound weak and aged in comparison.

Alkaline Trio play an amazing greatest hits set, possibly one of their best ever sets. “Goodbye Forever,” “Armageddon,” “Time To Waste,” and closer “This Could Be Love” are sung by one the biggest crowds ever seen at the Lockup stage. It’s also one of the few times that even they look like they’re enjoying playing. A joyous triumph.

SUNDAY

Bring Me The Horizon drop in at the last minute to open a confused and disointed mainstage, stunned by two major pullouts (Slipknot and Avenged Svenfold) in a matter of days. BMTH do their best to save the day, which isn’t easy considering they’re probably the heaviest band to ever play the main stage, stunning and shocking the crowd with riffs and vocals so low and dirty even Metallica wouldn’t go near them. Their circle pit for set-closer “I used to make out with Medusa” is the biggest of the weekend. People were literally coming out of their set shaking.

The Whip are a great dance rock band, and have some amazing songs (especially set closer “Trash”) but you can’t help thinking they’d be so much better if they were more experimental and less obvious.

The crowd's packed in so tight for Crystal Castles, people are having to tear up the blue walls of the dance tent and literally crawl under to get anywhere near the Canadian noise bandits. They’ve seemed to get better and better throughout the year as they've grown in popularity, and “Alice Practice” probably gets the best crowd reaction of any song the entire weekend, less of a gig crowd and more like a football crowd raising the roof when this little gem kicks in.

Dance is absolutely running rings around rock music today, and so on to Pendulum who turn the Radio 1 tent in to the fattest, happiest rave in the history of the world, ever. “Slam,” “Fasten your seatbelt”, and “Hold your colour” have everyone humming those amazing synth lines, and it’s Sunday’s biggest party.

Tenacious D? More like Tedious D. I catch most of their set and again wonder why they are co-headlining beneath the biggest rock band in the world. Are they meant to be singers, comedians, or actors? If they’re singers, the only really have one song everyone knows. Why not put them on lower on the bill? If it’s because of Jack Black’s high profile acting career, why is the entire show a hammy, poorly scripted, uninvolving borefest? After Avenged Sevenfold pulled out under typically vague terms, that for me was confirmation that the Main Stage on Sunday was a complete joke, other than bringing in Bring Me The Horizon, it was a mess of mismatched bands, long waits, and strange choices. But everyone’s here for Metallica right? So why is no-one singing? James Hetfield is begging for the crowd to get involved during opener “Creeping Death” and I was expecting the crow to belt out the chorus, but most just stood and gazed. Was everyone tired? Unispired? Next, “For whom the bell tolls” should’ve torn Reading a new one, but it was the same legions of nodding fans just standing there in awe of the huge screen (that was pretty cool I must admit.) It would have been interesting to hear some of their superfast thrash stuff, but you can’t really fault one of the world’s biggest bands playing a festival they truly love.

Finally, there’s just time to catch some of The Cribs euphoric closing set, where tracks from “Men’s needs” are screamed back at them, while everything that isn’t “hey scenesters!” from the first two records is met with an almost underwhelming response, such as the quality of their newest release. Ryan Jarman's Anti-metallica party proves the diversity of a typically strong Reading lineup, without even mentioning the carnival confetti-fest party C.S.S. are throwing next door on the dance stage...could you nask for more from your festival headliners?