David Emery Online

Reading Festival 2007: Friday

29 August 2007

Welcome to the first of 3 posts reviewing this years Reading Festival. I had a great time – and saw really quite a few great bands – and, as is seemingly common for me these days, took lots of pictures. 1121 pictures, to be precise, which in retrospect seems slightly excessive.

Anyway – on to the bands! Here’s a quick roundup of Friday, which probably turned out to be the weakest day line-up-wise but was still goof fun:

12:50 Radio 1 Stage: The Sounds

I’ll be honest: The Sounds were a fairly uninspiring start to the weekends festivities. Their uninspiring generic indie was pretty dull, and they weren’t helped by the pretty poor sound quality that would plague the Radio 1 Stage the entire weekend.

13:35 Main Stage: The Long Blondes

Second band in and we’re getting slightly better – but only slightly. The Long Blondes have a couple of ok songs, I’ll grant you, but they just don’t manage to work on such a large stage. Also, I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that they’re just a tiny bit full of themselves – a common trait for a band, but you really need to have the songs to back it up and The Long Blondes just don’t.

14:15 Carling Stage: Manchester Orchestra

Manchester Orchestra were the first pleasant surprise of the weekend. I’d never heard of them up till this point, but they were really pretty good. Bringing a slice of Modest Mouse tinged American indie to the smallest stage is always a good thing – they’ve certainly jumped straight onto my ‘investigate more’ list.

15:00 Carling Stage: Blood Red Shoes

Another pleasant surprise followed in the shape of Blood Red Shoes, who I’d written off some time ago after hearing a not particularly inspiring track but they seem to have raised their game. I’m a big fan of 2 person bands, as you get a certain dynamic that gets lost when you add more people, and Blood Red Shoes marry that dynamic perfectly with some really good songs. Consider me converted.

18:25 Carling Stage: Reverend and the Makers

Luckily I only caught one and a half songs by Reverend and the Makers. I say luckily, as they were dire.

19:25 Carling Stage: Cajun Dance Party

Now this is more like it; Cajun Dance Party were definitely one of the festival highlights. While really surprisingly young (they’re all still at school) they’re incredibly musically accomplished, and have the songs to back it up. And balloons. Lots of balloons.

New single Amylase was the highlight, but that wasn’t much of a surprise as it’s one of my favourite songs of the year so far; there’s a bit – just after the ‘Amylase’ chorus near the end – where the song changes speed and the guitar warms up for a brilliant closing riff which gives me the goose bumps every time I hear it. It has exactly the same effect that Paranoid Android had, just before the guitar solo, all those years ago. Check it out in the balloon themed video.

20:25 Carling Stage: Jack Peñate

For anyone that doesn’t like Jack Peñate, maybe thinking he’s too ‘pop’ – just go and see him live. It’s impossible not to be won over as he’s one of the nicest, most genuine and most talented performers out there. He also has a wealth of material that is really quite different to the pop-ey songs released as singles so far – on his forthcoming album he mines a much more soulful grove for many of the songs, giving him an edge the separates him for the rest of the pop pack.

Sadly at Reading he was obviously having problems with his voice, meaning he had to cut the set short and his vocal performance suffering as a result. However, this lead to probably the highlight of the day – if not the whole weekend – with the entire crowd in the packed out tent singing along to every single word to ‘Torn on the Platform’. It was a truly amazing experience.