I think that if you looked up 2010 on the Chinese calendar, it would be the year of the Groundhog. With Libertines, Guns N’ Roses and even Limp Bizkit, it’s the year of comebacks and nostalgia. But have we seen it all before? We sent number one Bill Murray fan ANDREW TRENDELL along to his sixth consecutive Leeds Festival to find out.
Branham Park, Leeds, 27th – 29th August
Reading and Leeds have always added up to be the big daddy of festivals. From Nirvana’s era-defining performance to Radiohead’s seminal 1994 appearance, it’s always boasted the greatest acts of its day. But recently, Festival Republic have been delving the line ups of yesteryear to create a festival that stinks as much of nostalgia as it does of burning tents and overflowing drop-toilets. Is looking back really the way forward?
Well yes, yes it is. Because all of Melvin Benn’s festivals have this perfect knack of blending the best new music with the treasures of the past, and no band evokes this sense more than Chief. From the Festival Republic stage they blind the Leeds audience with a hazy smokescreen of that old school Californian sound and dreamy classic American rock.
Chief @ Leeds Festival 2010, by Andrew Trendell
Over on the Main Stage were the mighty Mystery Jets. Although better suited to a tent or smaller venue, they still seize the opportunity and dominate the main arena with their vast, star-reaching pop-anthemics. They succinctly infect the crowd with their ecclectic but consistent back catalogue, as moments of addictive indie euphoria such as Young Love and Two Doors Down are delivered with as much aplomb as more celestial and epic classic rock numbers from their latest album Seratonin.
Villagers @ Leeds Festival 2010 by Andrew Trendell
Then to the Radio One Stage for Frank Turner. Say what you will about Dave Grohl and Guy Garvey, but could Frank Turner be the nicest man in rock? Either way, Turner’s delivery of Springsteen-tinged punk-folk romanticism far transcends the limits of this tent. Our generation is long overdue a British singer-songwriter who can articulately voice our frustrations without watering down their performance in the name of M.O.R stupidity. Maybe Billy Bragg’s reign is over. It is time to roll over and abdicate the British throne of political folk to King Turner. Meanwhile the heir to the universal throne of gentle but powerful poetry has been abdicated by Conor Oberst and inherited by Mercury Prize hopeful Villagers. He’ll go far, that lad.
Then it came. The moment every NME reader and member of the Converse generation had been waiting for: The return of The Libertines. So, what indeed became of the likely lads? Well I’ll tell you. They grew up. Gone are the days of shambles and drug-addled chaos. The Libertines of 2010 are a polished and professional outfit, they’re almost a REAL band. As a result, that magical sense of anarchic chemistry between Carl and Pete is almost lost – but not quite. Anthems like ‘Up The Bracket’ and ‘What Katie Did’ are still both delivered and recieved with as much fervour as ever before. Will they keep it up? Time will tell, but if tonight was a time for heroes, The Libertines certainly claimed their moment.
The Libertines @ Leeds Festival 2010, by Kate Booker
How do you follow that then? I’ll tell you shall I? With some genuine class. With some Arcade Fire, who delivered what must have been one of the most epic and mind-meltingly beautiful sets that Leeds Festival has ever seen. With brute force and poetic tenderness in equal measure, Win Butler and co. truly soared. A brutal 100mph rendition of Month of May from recent magnum opus The Suburbs sets Yorkshire alight, while the sheer heavenly ovation that overtakes the Leeds masses during Wake Up and We Used To Wait simply cannot be matched. “Sing so loud that they hear us in a space station,” exclaimed posessed troubador Win Butler. It went further than that, for Arcade Fire’s set was nothing short of biblical. It’s just a shame there weren’t more there to witness it.
Arcade Fire @ Leeds Festival 2010 by George Coppock
Saturday kicks off with a dose of sweetness from the very formidable…Joy Formidable, which would soon be interrupted by a harsh and frantic dose of wife-beater music. “Alright, partner, keep on rollin’ baby, you know what time it is…” threatened the world’s most talented egg Fred Durst with the mighty Limp Bizkit. The Main Stage was alive with anticipation, which is quite strange, because Limp Bizkit were the reformation that nobody asked for, but everybody clearly wants. Despite their well-documented crimes against music, Limp Bizkit’s set is one of the most rapturously received of the weekend. Donning a white Kappa bucket hat, which PJ & Duncan thought they lost in Byker in the early nineties, Durst, alongside terrifying guitar freak Wes Borland, is every piece of the showman he ever was, as the Nu-Metal kings remind the Leeds masses just what it means to be 12 years old, and very, very p*ssed off. “Now I know why you wanna hate me” screams Durst in Take A Look Around. But we don’t Fred, come back to us, all is forgiven. Maybe they’ll change our lives again. “You gotta have Faaaaith,” bellows Durst. I’m a believer.
Limp Bizkit @ Leeds Festival 2010 by Tony Woolliscroft
If you always thought that Fred Durst always seemed the unlikliest of rock heroes, think again. If you saw Rivers Cuomo walking down the street you’d be much less likely to ask him to play My Name Is Jonas and sign your tits than you would be to shout “FIX MY PHOTOCOPIER.” Either way, the Weezer frontman was clearly born for this. He succeeds in making the vast arena seem incredibly intimate by scaling the walls and invading the crowd, and I’m fairly certain that donning a blonde wig for a punk rendition of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face will go down in festival history. So perfect are they at the art, that when they cover Wheatus’s seminal geek rock anthem Teenage Dirtbag, you can’t help but ask why Weezer didn’t write it in the first place. The disenchanted masses go wild for 90′s rock staples like Buddy Holly and the brilliantly dumb Sweater Song, but it takes Island In The Sun to remind you of the true pop genius of this band. New single Memories from upcoming album Hurley suggests that more of the best is yet to come.
Weezer @ Leeds Festival 2010 by Jake Seal
The party atmosphere is soon disrupted however, by a dull set of flat, self loathing with little dynamic and no highlights courtesy of Paramore. “It’s such an honour to play between Weezer and Blink 182,” chirps singer Amy Williams. By ‘honour’ I think she meant ‘disgrace.’ There’s an 8-year-old emo girl next to me with little to no self-esteem however, who assures me that it was fact “dead amazing.”
Now, on to big, big comeback number 3, by those fine dick-joke auteurs Blink 182. Many approached the Main Stage quite apprehensively, for Blink were once kings of sub-moronic teenage antics, but the band that stand before us this evening are matured middle-aged men. Will Blink have grown old gracefully, or has this become that long-running joke that just isn’t funny anymore? Strangely, it’s a mixture of the two. During their hiatus, Tom De Longe went on to show his wiser, more artistic side with Angel And Airwaves (*COUGH-pretentious-wank-with-too-much-reverb-COUGH*) and blasted his former band for the immature legacy they left behind them. But it seems he got over that quite easily. “You want to fuck your own father?” quips Tom towards Mark, his partner in phallic banter. However, their set is quite Springsteen-esque in that it tends to lean more towards their esoteric grown up material like Feeling This, Adam’s Song and Stay Together For The Kids. But the beautifully fitting ending of Carousel, Dammit and Shit, Piss, Fuck, C*nt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker… remind you of what Blink do best: well-crafted, juvenile pop-punk.
Blink 182 @ Leeds Festival 2010, by Ryan Mason
Sunday began for many with the frenetic math-rock of the aptly named Pulled Apart By Horses and the sickly sweet lo-fi of Avi Buffalo who dominated the Festival Republic Stage in quick succession, each in their own eccentric and unique way. Festival-whores Yeasayer also impressed a modest but animated crowd with a hypnotic half-hour of electro-psychedelia, with new single Madder Red locking the wasted and wired Sunday afternoon crowd locking the crowd in a steady otherworldly trance, before being freshened up by a typically majestic rendition of Ambling Alp.
Yeasayer @ Leeds Festival 2010, by Andrew Trendell
In 1992, Nirvana played the Reading performance that would set the standard for all future festival gigs throghout recorded time. To tap into such of this legendary magic, Biffy Clyro frontman not only appears to have turned blond, but also to be channelling the spirit of Kurt Cobain (via Santa Claus). The resemblance is most striking when Neil tosses his failing amp from stage – you had to rub your eyes to be certain it wasn’t a living, breathing, bat-shit mental ghost. An exorcist is certainly needed, for tonight Biffy are a band possessed.
Biffy Clyro @ Leeds Festival 2010 by fictionalfuture.com
Biffy are by and large, the most hard working band in the world. Having haunted the live circuit since time began, they have fought through playing toilet venues to tens of fans, to being a tried and tested stadium act. Tonight’s performance is testament to that success. Their hairy-Scot exuberance sends their massive adoring public into a frenzy, as the volatile math-rock brilliance of That Golden Rule sends a wave of realisation throughout Branham Park. Biffy have worked their beards off to get here, and they show no signs of stopping. Their early evening set is headline-worthy. Come back in ten years for the Biffy Greatest Hits Tour. “I am a mountain, I am the sea” sings frontman Simon Neil; “You can’t take that away from me.” That says it all. ‘Mon the Biff. ‘Mon them forever.
The last time Queens Of The Stone Age appeared at Leeds Festival back in 2008, they purposefully played a mellow set heavily laden with Era Vulgaris tracks, because they knew Rage Against The Machine would shortly follow and cause a riot. But tonight, they know for a scientifically proven fact that it could be anything up to six years before Axl Rose and backing band actually wake up to make it to the stage, and Josh Homme knows all too well that he needs to give the audience reason to live. Only America’s finest could kick off their set by maintaining the debauched chant of “Nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol, c-c-c-c-c-cocaaaaine.”
Queens Of The Stone Age @ Leeds Festival 2010, by © Tony Woolliscroft
“I want this loud, so turn it up for these motherfuckers. I’m sick of this quiet shit,” gurned the fiery ginger Elvis, before launching into a relentless barrage of awesome desert-rock hedonism. Their flawless greatest hits set came to a brutal climax with a sucker-punch rendition of A Song For The Dead. Dazed and abused, the crowd were left agasp in what they’d just witnessed, and then the wait kicked in. And the wait. And the wait.
Decades later, glorified tribute band Guns N’ Roses graced the public with their presence. Those who hadn’t already passed into a coma soon did, at the sight of a dreadlocked tool masturbating his own ego in a diluted attempt to recreate former glories. Those with sense made their way to the Radio One Stage to see LCD Soundsystem before G N’ R were justifiably cut off. James Murphy and his LCD cohorts however, were simply on fire.
LCD Soundsystem @ Leeds Festival 2010, by Andrew Trendell
Opening with the eight-minute dance-punk-funk odyssey Us vs Them, LCD Soundsystem successfully breathed one last breathe of life into the flailing Leeds crowd. If it truly was Us vs Them, THEM being Axl and co, you can guess who won. “Hi, we’ve played Reading, Paris and then came here which is not clever,” said Murphy before adding: “Thank you, because you’re probably cold and tired but we’ll do our best.” Before kicking into a wildly energetic rendition of Drunk Girls. LCD truly made the most of their short one hour set, meandering between the miasma-fuelled trance hypnosis of Get Innocuous and the hook-laden disco splendour of Daft Punk Is Playing At My House, and back again.
It may have indeed been the year of reformations and nostalgia, but as the old saying goes “you’ve got to go there to come back.” Those few old timers that made the most of their comebacks this weekend, did so a manner which justified their existence in the first place, demonstrating what it is that we’ve always loved about them. The new kids on the block however, showcased talent will inevitably lead to eventual greatness. That’s what Leeds Festival is all about.
Review By Andrew Trendell
Tags: arcade fire, avi buffalo, axl rose, biffy clyro, blink 182, carl barat, chief, festival, frank turner, google, guns and roses, guns n' roses, james murphy, lcd soundsystem, leeds, limp bizkit, melvin benn, mystery jets, paramore, pete doherty, photos, pulled apart by horses, queens of the stone age, reading, the libertines, villagers, weezer, yeasayer
For me the Libs really were the stand out of the weekend at Reading, a gig we’ve all waited for so long for. As opposed to thinking of the magic as gone away from their much tighter lineup, I would simply say they have matured to their full potential at last – the potential that their guerilla gigs once suggested, finally realised. They were utterly superb.
Aye, I thought they played solidly. I was just expecting something messy and we got something more professional. I hope they develop from here and become great again.
biffy were the best thing of the whole fest. i agree they could headline one year.