Day 1 Highlight , The Maccabees (pic) R. Johnson
As the sun rose on the first day of the 2009 Leeds Festival, expectations were high on site with an impressive afternoon/evening Main Stage line-up. However, by the end of the night, it was hard to shake off an over-riding feeling of disappointment.
Manchester band The Courteeners took to the stage in the late afternoon to a very respectable crowd on the Main Stage. The band have forged a devoted following in the north of England and everything looked to be in place for a strong set. “This festival starts now!” declared the ever modest frontman Liam Fray, but the crowd weren’t ready to follow his lead. Ultimately the performance fell flat, songs from 2008 debut ‘St. Jude‘ now seem overly familiar, and the band and fans seem to have grown tired of the songs which were delivered with real power and passion 18 months ago. Any casual fans or critics were unlikely to be bowled over by what was a 5/10 performance at best.
Next up was Ian Brown, who continues the slow start to the evening with a performance which blew hot and cold. It’s a strangely paced set: playing Stone Roses classics is all well and good, and when the opening bars of ‘Fool’s Gold’ come in after a set exclusively of solo work up until that point, it’s an almost religious experience to hear the man playing such a classic live. However, as the setlist takes shape, it begins to feel like an erroneous decision, as ultimately the song only serves to make his solo work, which is in general average at best, seem even more pedestrian. It comes out of nowhere in the set and only whets the crowd’s appetite for more Roses songs, which means the solo work that comes after is met with a lukewarm response as the crowd hopes the end of the track will lead to another Roses classic. When no more arrive it means ironically the rendition of ‘Fool’s Gold’ has only served to weaken the set. If he’s going to play Stone Roses songs in his solo sets, he would be advised to deliver a decent amount, as he did at Glastonbury a few years ago, or leave them out altogether. It really is a case of all or nothing. The setlist problems continue at the end with the surprising decision to play ‘F.E.A.R’ second to last, before new single ‘Stellify’. The crowd is re-engaged with ‘F.E.A.R’, and the track would have at least ended the performace on a real high, but while ‘Stellify’ gets a decent enough reception, it ends the gig on a rather muted note.
After Ian Brown, a quick trot over to the Radio 1/NME Stage finds The Maccabees reputation as one of the biggest cult bands in the UK in evidence as the crowd spills out of the large tent. They deliver a set full of favourites from their two albums ‘Colour It In’ and ‘Wall Of Arms’, which are met with a rapturous response from the huge gathering. As a large section leave with smiles on their faces to go catch the Prodigy on the Main Stage, they miss one of the weekend’s stand out performances by the band that follows.
White Lies have had a hugely successful festival season, gaining widespread acclaim from their appearances across the country. It’s easy to see why as the songs which already sound epic on debut album ‘To Lose My Life’, are given even more gravity as the band play with a huge passion and frontman Harry McVeigh’s impressive vocals carry the songs to another level. It’s a brilliantly structured set, starting with a huge singalong for the single ‘Farewell To The Fairground’ before finishing with an epic rendition of ‘Death’ which confirms the gig as one of the stand-outs of the weekend.
Friday Headliners – Arctic Monkeys
Back on the Main Stage, Friday’s headliners Arctic Monkeys seemingly had everything going their way. On home turf, with a new album just out, the band would have to work very hard to be a let down. Unfortunately that’s exactly what they were.
After producing some of the most exciting, memorable gigs imaginable in their earlier years, Arctic Monkeys have generally struggled with the leap to stadium and festival headliners since. Often the band’s sound has failed to adequately fill the much larger venues, and frontman Alex Turner has found it difficult to command the large crowds. However, their 2007 Glastonbury appearance seemed to indicate a growing ease with their headline status, and expectations were high for a performance which would truly cement them as a premier headline act.
Instead, the mood of the gig was dictated by Alex Turner’s surly, charmless display, punctuated by an occasional, barely audible interaction with the crowd. He presented the demeanour of a man who’d rather be elsewhere, and before long sections of the crowd have made their minds up to take the same action.
An interview shortly before their headline appearance indicated they were intending to leave out many hits from their early work and focus on new material. It’s an approach best saved for the band’s own gigs, and starving a crowd that thrives on a sing and a dance is a fatal error. It’s a decision which would be echoed by Saturday’s headliners Radiohead.
The new songs are not ideal for first presenting to a festival crowd, and they are not helped by a sound system that sounds like it has been nicked from a 1970s Austin 1800. The new tracks which thrive on a heavy sound and strong bass are simply lost to the speakers which fluctuate in volume and eventually cut out altogether during ‘Brianstorm’. The sound shows no improvement when it stutters back to life a few minutes later and Humbug’s songs are left sounding flat and lifeless.
The few classic tracks which are played are delivered with the air of a band who have been forced to play them by a third party. “Fine here’s ‘Dancefloor’, but after that we’re back to the new stuff” seems to be the thought process. Songs such as ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ do get a decent response from the sections of crowd who are still paying attention, but the desire for a good time from the Main Stage crowd means a tape recording of the track would have got a similar response.
Overall, it’s an utterly charmless, soulless performance that, judging by the comments from people who stuck around till the end, left many of the crowd feeling cold. Just three albums in, the Arctic Monkeys performance suggests they are a band who have started to take themselves far too seriously, and a re-evaluation of what made them such a phenomenon a couple of years ago would seem to be in order if they don’t want to find their status as a headline act diminishing before their eyes.
(Dave Smith)
Here’s some BBC footage of Faith No More’s appearance on Day 1 at Reading and Leeds Festival:
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