The Lucksmiths – Fortuna Pop! Festival – The Luminaire, Kilburn

Had another great night at The Luminaire in Kilburn – which is fast becoming one of my favourite music venues in London. It was the second night of a three-day Fortuna Pop! Festival – but I mostly went to catch up with my old friends from Melbourne The Lucksmiths.

Unfortunately we missed first band Fanfarlo – but did arrive in time to catch some low-key indie-guitar pop from Airport Girl. Apparently they hadn’t played a show in almost 3 years – but they still sounded pretty tight.

Host for the night was Darren Hayman (formerly of the band Hefner) who proved to be very entertaining – introducing bands, running an impromptu quiz on the history of Fortuna Pop!, but best of all was his one-song serenade on ukulele.

I wasn’t familiar with the Would Be Goods sounded pretty good – but I found singer Jessica Griffin’s voice a bit same-same. Still the crowd seemed to love it so they must be doing something right.

The Lucksmiths bounded onstage and burst straight into “Young and Dumb” from ‘Warmer Corners’, quickly followed by ‘Sucesslessness’ a great song from the ‘A Little Distraction’ EP. I’ve only seen The Lucksmiths a few times since the addition of second guitarist Louis Richter – and gee it fills their sound out nicely and gives them a lot more grunt.

It was also fantastic seeing them play to a clearly adoring audience – many of whom have waited over 3 years since their last UK tour to see the band live.

Viva la indie-pop!

The Dandy Warhols – Bar Academy Islington

Slow-building opener “Godless” was quickly followed by a rough “We Used to Be Friends” and either by design (it was a stripped back 4-piece line-up sans bass and any horns on this tour) or through inspiration – the band seemed to move away from the psychedelic noodling of their last couple of albums, and were more touch with their retro-pop heritage. As a result, more recent songs like “All The Money Or The Simple Life Honey” were stripped back to their pop-roots, so it nestled in comfortably with a set laden with slacker pop anthems like “Bohemian Like You”, “Cool as Kim Deal” , “Get Off” and “Not If You Were the Last Junkie On Earth”.
For a small show – the band certainly spared no expense on the production with impressive sound, and great lighting that included projections behind the band from old cartoons, psychedelic patterns, and movie clips – some even loosely related to the song being played suggesting some thought had gone into the production.
“The Last High” worked well stripped of the synth-pop over production that I felt marred the recorded version (particularly the vocal effects) and a busking-style run-through “Everyday Should Be a Holiday” was played as a crowd request. Also interesting was a version of the barely over a minute long “Welcome to The Monkey House” which Courtney described as one of his favourite songs.

The spanking new “Have A Kick Ass Summer (Me and My Friends)” – i-tunes only single and preview of the new album the group are currently recording - is a pop gem. Figers crossed this means The Dandy’s are embracing their pop heritage on record as well as on stage.
Courtney still insists on not leaving the stage for a break between the main set and encore – which I think is admirable, however the crowd still gets confused. So when he announced “Country Leaver” as their closer, I suspect most people didn’t believe him, so would have been surprised when the band didn’t return. Although I'm guessing they still left happy cause it was a great show.

V Festival - Hylands Park, Chelmsford

We were a bit late getting started for our Saturday at V so unfortunately all we heard of The Magic Numbers was the sounds of "Forever Lost" drifting across the car-park and camp site as we made our way in.

Fortunately we got positioned at the Channel 4 Stage (the second largest) in time to catch most of The Cardigans set. Mostly familair with this Swedish combo from their pop-orientated material - I was suprised at how diverse their sound was, from pretty hard rocking to an almost country lilt at times. Highlights were the 'Gran Turismo' double of "Erase/rewind" and "My Favorite Game".

Next up on the same stage was American indie trio We Are Scientists, whose major-label debut 'With Love And Squalor' has been on high-rotation on Kim's ipod. Their stage entrance was one of the highlights of the day: the speakers blasting the sound of a Harley revvving louding - only to have the band members, in full racing driver helmets, peddle themselves on stage on childrens tricycles. Their set drew heavily from 'With Love and Squalor' from opener "Lousy Reputation" to highlights "Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt", "It's A Hit" and set-closer "The Great Escape". Their set was also the first time I noted the strange British custom I dubbed "toasting the chorus". As the name implies - the crowd raise their drinks in toast (in the same way Americans punch the air) to particularly anthemic choruses. I ended up encountering this a lot through-out the day.

We then slipped across to the main stage to catch the last half of Keane. I've been enjoying their new album 'Under the Iron Sea' quite a bit - so it was good to hear live versions of the U2-esque single "Is It Any Wonder?" (more toasting the chorus for that one) and "Cystal Ball", plus the closing ballad "Bedshaped".

The change-over between bands on the main stage is around three-quarters of an hour, so we used the break betweek Keane and Beck to slip back to the Channel 4 stage to check-out ska-ish rockers The Ordinary Boys. Only saw a few songs from them but the bouncy "Nine to Five" sounded pretty good.

Beck's set on the main stage kicked off with marionette puppets, styled to look like every member of the band (right down to matching stage costumes and instruments), miming to the album version of "Loser" - with the band entering mid-song and finishing it live. Quickly followed by "Devil's Haircut" it was actually a hits heavy set that was very well received by the festival crowd. From last year's 'Guero' we got "Black Tambourine", "ePro" and "Girl". A few new songs from his forthcoming album 'The Information': "Cell Phone's Dead", "The Information", "1000BPM" and "Motorcade" sounded closer to older 'Mellow Gold'-style than more recent dance-orientated material. "Sex Laws", a crowd request, was played at half-pace which worked really well. A midway acoustic set had Beck playing solo versions of "Lost Cause" and "The Golden Age" while the band enjoyed some food on an onstage table - which they slowly started tapping and drumming out a rhythm on, leading Beck into "Clap Hands" and "One Foot In The Grave" to close the main set. After a pretty funny onscreen display of the puppet bands festival behaviour - including peeing in the outdoor urinals - the band returned for an uptempo encore: "1000BPM", "Where It's At" - which got the best response of his set - and closer "E-pro".
Again, with an almost hour changeover between Beck and headliners Radiohead - we nipped back to The Channel 4 stage to see some agnsty rock from The Editors with "Blood" and "Bullets". They had the members of We Are Scientists guest on backing vocals for a rivetting take on REMs "Orange Crush" that was one of the highlights of the day. Set-closer "Fingers In The Factory" was pretty tasty too.
We came back to the main stage - together with around 70,000 of my closest friends - for a squishy but impressive closing set from Radiohead. Playing a suprising number of their better known songs - including an opening "Airbag", and a wealth of songs from my favorite Radiohead album 'The Bends': "My Iron Lung", "Just", "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" and "The Bends". Three new songs were also included: "Bodysnatchers", "Nude" and "All I Need". More recent material included "The National Anthem", "2+2=5", "Pyramid Song", and "Everything In Its Right Place". A set closing "Creep" brought the first day of V, and our festival experience - to a fitting singalong finale.

Tim Rogers & Tex Perkins – Bar Academy Islington

A packed Australian-centric crowd greeted Tim Rogers and Tex Perkins at the Bar Academy for their early Saturday night show. And although the two stools and two acoustic guitars set-up on stage might have had you thinking this would be a night of two Australian music icons strumming through their hits – you would have been pretty disappointed as the set kicked off with, and for the most part was comprised of, material from the pairs recently recorded ‘My Better Half’ album.

It’s an interesting collaboration that they still seem to be coming to terms with – from the sketchy harmonising on opener “Someone Above” to trading competing verses on “Semi-Auto-Duo-Bio”.

They even poked fun at the work-in-progress nature of their collaboration, with “Half Of Nothing” trialling closing harmonies in the style of The Eagles (MOR west-coast rock), The Bee Gees (campy high disco) and finally Kiss (an impromptu run-through “Beth”). Their new material is clearly established in a roots/blues vein and, on initial hearing, “Everybody Hates You When You’re Popular” stuck me as one of the stand outs.

Considering Tim Rogers is often cited as one of Australia’s finest contemporary songwriters (something I subscribe to) – it’s surprising the Tex and Tim album features 3 covers – all of which were given an airing tonight. Their flamenco style reading of Loverboy’s “Turn Me Loose” was pretty catchy – although I’m not sure it would stand up well to repeat listening.

After featuring close to two-thirds of their new album – the pair did delve into their respective back-catalogues for some unexpected, and a couple of fairly obvious, selections.

The sombre “Whenever It Snows” and “Paycheque” came from ‘All Is Forgiven”, the second Tex, Don & Charlie album. While from last years Tim Rogers & The Temperance Union double-header ‘Dirty Ron/Ghost Songs’, we got “Ghost Songs” with Tex more than capably taking on the Missy Higgins harmonies from the record.

One of the highlights of the night was You Am I’s “Damage”, quickly followed by “Can’t Say No” from The Beasts Of Bourbon’s ‘The Low Road’ – both of which worked well in the acoustic format.

The main set closed with the two other covers from ‘Half Of Me’; Kiss’s “Come On and Love Me” with Tex doing an impressive Gene Simmons impression (his tongue reaches the end of his chin!) and Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s The Night”. The latter a little too cabaret for my liking with Tex exaggerating the lyrics for comic effect.

Tim Rogers returned solo for the first encore, playing a touching ‘Dinosaurs’, which sounded like one of the highlights from the Tex & Tim album, dedicated to his 5 ½ year old daughter Ruby. Tex re-joined him and took lead-vocals for a great run-through The Cruel Sea’s “This Is Not The Way Home”, before finishing the encore with a fantastic verse-trading version of “Heavy Heart”.

Tex and Tim returned, perhaps ill-advisedly, for a second encore with “Cunnalingus” a mock tudor-style ballad (and unlisted final track on their new album) in the style of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s Sir Robin minstrels (“it’s a mystery where the ancient art comes from / you use you lips and your mouth and your tongue”) and although it seemed to be well received by the crowd - personally I would have preferred things to end on the musical high of ‘Heavy Heart’, rather than end on a low-brow comedy note.... although it was Saturday night.