Miscellaneous - Camber Sands, Sussex, 12/5/2006...14/5/2006

  by Anthony Dhanendran

published: 25 / 8 / 2006

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Article

Last year’s All Tomorrow's Parties was curated by Slint and Vincent Gallo, each of whom had a whole weekend to themselves. This time around, the number of curators has tripled to six, over a pair of weekends, each of whom gets just a day to showcase those bands that made them what they are today. The other change is that the dates have been changed, and the weekends are now both in May, avoiding the February and April rains that blighted last year’s events, making the Camber Sands Pontin’s look so much like some kind of ghetto. Not this time, though: the sun is out and shining, and the crowds are pouring in – although it’s tiny in scale, just 3000 visitors to Glastonbury’s 150,000, the dimensions of the holiday camp make things seem just about right, crowd-wise. The sun and the smiles don’t sit right, however, with Friday’s curators Mudhoney. The disadvantage of having so many bands involved in programming the festival is that each only gets a small sliver of time for their own bands. What with the way the crowds start small, peaking at night, that means that each curator has at most six slots into which to fit the bands he or she wants everyone to hear. The sets, of necessity, then tend to sound a lot like the band doing the curating. That means a lot of distorted guitars and throaty vocals tonight. Before that, however, the day kicks off with Holly Golightly and Country Teasers, both of whom know how to make a party. It’s a fitting start that sees two relative old-timers show everyone how to get things going. The rest of the day is predictably grungy, with the highlights being Mudhoney themselves, last thing on the main stage. The Saturday sees the Yeah Yeah Yeahs take the helm. Over the last few years, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have slowly built themselves up into one of the biggest rock bands around, and their choice of music emphasises that, although there are one or two surprises thrown in. TV on the Radio, for instance, are relatively well-known at home in America, but not so much over here. The Radiohead comparisons are overdone – TV on the Radio sound like no-one else. There are echoes of Radiohead, as well as U2, the Rolling Stones, and all sorts of others. The sound is echoing, rapturous, and thoroughly captivating, so much so that the main act, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs themselves, almost feel like an anti-climax. Other hits include the Liars, whose thrashy noise-rock reverberates round the downstairs stage to good effect. It’s not until Sunday that the real gems start to appear, however. Sunday is curated by folk-weird-beardy Devendra Banhart. Just by listening to his music, you can tell it’s going to be interesting, at least. He’s picked two true legends of British music for starters, in Bert Jansch and Vashti Bunyan. Jansch’s impossible guitar technique is never anything short of beguilingly beautiful, while Vashti Bunyan’s welcome return from 30 years of self-imposed musical exile is greeted with awe by the hushed crowd. The Watts Prophets sadly had to pull out, so Vashti’s been promoted to the main room, in which the silence wraps itself around her voice, making people strain to hear. Downstairs, Rambling Jack Elliott, an old white blues-man, is creating a similar stir. Although he doesn’t offer much that’s new, his delivery and sheer stage presence is captivating, and his runaway renditions of 'Rock Island Line' and other standards brings the house down. Devendra himself is the highlight of the weekend, however. He’s now fully with band, and the sound they make compliments the vocals terrifically. It’s a spectacle, and the euphoria coming from both stage and crowd is unmistakable. The one-man approach to curating last year paid dividends in the number of smaller unknown bands who were there for the listening. This year, the condensed format meant that All Tomorrow's Parties was more a matter of confirming what we already knew about most of the acts, whether they were legends, or just becoming well-known.

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