All Tomorrow's Parties

I haven't posted in a few days because I was at a music festival called All Tomorrow's Parties (ATP).  It was an amazing weekend, and there is much to tell.  This is going to be a long one, folks.

I undertook this adventure with a group of my King's friends.  They've been planning the trip for months.  I wasn't originally slated to go, but a number of people dropped out and I hadn't left Cambridge since the end of January, so I decided to go at the last minute.  One of the reasons that I didn't sign up initially was because I wasn't terribly excited about the line-up.  The only acts slated to play that I knew anything about were Nick Cave, Cat Power, and Yann Tiersen.  I listen to some of their music, but I wasn't necessarily a big fan of either of the first two acts (more on  Yann Tiersen later).  This particular staging of the festival was curated by the Dirty Three, an Australian band with connections to the Bad Seeds and some other bands.  So a lot of the acts were in some way related to them, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, or Australia.  Even so, I decided to go along and have a nice weekend with my friends away from town.

The festival was held in this really bizarre place called Butlins in Minehead, Somerset (in the southwestern tip of the country).  Butlins is a chain of holiday camps, and this particular one was built on the seaside in the 1960's....and looks to have changed very little since then.  It consists of a huge number of bungalow/motel type buildings all spread out around the central entertainment complex, most of which is housed underneath a massive tent/pavilion/building.  LOADS of bars, some restaurants, a bowling alley, a bungee trampoline, shops, and other things are all housed within this structure.  The main stage was here as well.  Outside they also had pirate mini-golf, a climbing tower/ropes course, carnival rides, a movie theater, laser tag, go carts, and a small water complex.  It's a neat place, but very creepy at the same time.  The sort of place you might expect some sort of slasher film to take place.

The trip down was an adventure in and of itself, but I'll just jump right into the bands (I tagged everything I saw either in whole or in part, including those I don't describe here).  Praveen, Liz and I finally got down there at about 11 PM on Friday, much later than everyone else, and the first act that we saw in its entirety was this guy named Josh Pearson.  He hails from Texas, and he looks like Rasputin.

All of his songs were about Jesus and the devil, very interesting stuff.  Real crazy dustbowl Texan stuff.  Not really country though.  He has a very haunting voice, and he does a lot of interesting stuff with effects pedals.  He was very good, and his onstage persona was awesome.  He showed up when I went to the water park on Sunday.  He was floating around the lazy river letting out rebel yells, and got everyone else to join in.  He especially liked the wave pool, and when they turn it off he instigated a small insurrection.  We screamed loud enough for them to turn the waves back on early, and then there was a huge splash war.  It's amazing to see what a guy with a huge beard and a guitar can get a crowd of people to do.

The first act of note that we saw on Saturday was Félix Lajkó.  He's a Hungarian violin/zither virtuoso.  He played some incredible folk music, very fast.  Especially impressive on a zither.  I don't see how people can pluck anything that quickly, he was just as crazy as any bluegrass banjo plucker I've ever heard.  The next good show was the Low set.  Their music is beautiful, very slow and simple.  The husband and wife on guitar and drums harmonize nicely.  They also seem to be very down to earth (they hail from Duluth, and still live there).

Yann Tiersen was the next big show that I saw.  Now going into the weekend, this was the only act that I had planned on seeing no matter what.  He's the guy who wrote the score (and performed many of the instruments) for "Amelie."  This is one of my favorite movies and soundtracks of all time.  "Amelie" was my only prior exposure to him, so I was expecting some whimsical arrangements with violins, accordions, and pianos.  Mellow, yet beautiful.  So I was sort of surprised when he came on with a five-piece band (one of which was an ondes marenot, very cool) and started rocking out.

What do you get when the composer of the "Amelie" score decides to write rock music?  The answer is pretty freaking amazing rock music.  I was absolutely blown away.  Yann Tiersen is a musical genius, and a violin/guitar/accordion virtuoso to boot.  He and his band played some one of them most dynamic sets that I've ever heard, really heavy stuff. 

I knew things were going to be interesting once the other guitar player started playing his instrument with a drill.  And Tiersen played the violin in ways that I didn't think were possible.  Once I realized what sort of show it was going to be I began hoping that he would take some of the "Amelie" pieces and turn them into epic rock monsters.  And he did.  He started playing "L'autre valse d'Amelie" on a toy piano and built it into something fierce.  He did it again with "Le Banquet," which displayed his accordion chops.  He transitioned between these instruments right in the middle of the songs without missing a beat (when he started one song with his guitar around his shoulder and a violin in his hand I was secretly wishing for a Spinal Tap-esque solo, but it didn't happen....though I'm sure he could have pulled it off).  The set was definitely my favorite for a number of reasons....it took me by surprise in a way that few other things have, they were all great musicians, I hadn't rocked out like that in a while....wow, it was awesome.

We checked out some more shows throughout the evening, and they were all good, but the next show-stopper came at one o'clock in the morning in the form of Einstürzende Neubauten.  These guys are one of the godfathers of industrial music, and I mean real industrial music.  They've been around since the early 80's.  These guys make STOMP look like a bunch of kids running around in a junk pile.  They are German and they are loud.  Their drum kit consisted of a huge piece of sheet metal surrounded by circular saw blades instead of cymbals, a big steel kettle, and a really long, thick spring.  They had another percussionist who beat on metal gratings, plastic gas canisters dampened with towels, and other items.  Aside from this madness, their music was actually pretty interesting.  It wasn't really metal....a lot of it did rock pretty hard, but it wasn't deafening aside from when they were beating on the sheet metal.  Their lead singer was pretty funny, a bit creepy at times, and he busted out a piercing shriek two or three times that was higher than anything I've ever heard.  They had some cool electronic tracks too.  And a bunch of other percussive tricks.  One of my favorites was the plastic tubes that they beat with mallets.  It created sounds you'd expect to hear from a drum pad, but it was live.  Two moments from the show tied for the title of Greatest Spectacle for the entire weekend.  The first was when one of the percussionists brought out a really long lead pipe and set it up on stage.  During the crescendo of the next song, he slowly marched toward the pipe with a toolbox held over his head and then dumped a piled of wrenches on the pipe.  This was matched later on when he came out with a huge plastic bag filled with styrofoam packing peanuts.  He continued to run his fingers through them with a very intense look on his face for the next song, creating a weird crackling sound.  Every now and then he would sprinkle a handful of them around.  It was amazing.  That show was a lot of fun to watch.  I probably wouldn't listen to the music on my own, but it was great to see in person.

The next day was dominated by main stage shows.  Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra (a bunch of members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor) were pretty good, and after they played I jockeyed for a rail position for the Cat Power show.  I almost made it, there was only one person in front of me for that one.  I liked her show a lot.  I like her studio stuff and she has a nice throaty voice, but the band she played with yesterday was really good.  It lightened the mood quite a bit.  She threw me a cigarette when she was lighting one for herself (that's how close I was), but I gave it to a Dutch woman who was standing next to me.  Of all the things for me to catch at a show.......later they played a weird yet neat mashup of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" and Patsy Cline's "Crazy."  Interesting.

The guys in front of me left after Cat Power, so I had to hipcheck one of the Dutch people in order to get  a coveted rail spot for Nick Cave.  I gave Evan the spot though because he's a Nick Cave fanatic.....and I must say that after hearing him live, I'm quite impressed.  He is a great showman.  I've only heard his Bad Seeds stuff, but he played a lot of his solo stuff last night.  He was just taking requests the whole time, it was really neat.  He's a funny guy.  He admittedly couldn't remember all of the lyrics (he's been making music for thirty years), so he had a big stack of lyrics sheets with him.  The stuff he played was a lot mellower than I expected it to be, and some of it was downright beautiful.  I was quite pleased.

After the Nick Cave solo show the extra guy came on for his new Grinderman configuration; this is his new musical project with the violinist from Dirty Three and some other guys.  It was incredibly loud, and I didn't like it as much.  They played both nights, and I guess they were sort of the headliners with the Dirty Three.  I went upstairs to catch some folky acts (Joanna Newsom, Tara Jane O'Neil) to close out the festival.  They were both excellent.

Whew, that was a lot.  But what a weekend.  LOADS of good tunes, a bunch of surprises, and a relaxing, fun time with friends.  Now back to work.