Every year ‘The Great Escape’ festival for new music comes
to my home town of Brighton .
With 350 artists playing in over 30 venues, the element of choice can seem overwhelming.
If you are too brassic to buy tickets for this 3 day event, there are still
some top bands playing for free as part of the ‘Alternative Escape’. So if
you’re in town next May there’s simply no reason to miss out.
If there are artists you really want to see, my
advice would be get there early for the band that are playing before them.
Queues can form round small venues really quickly. If you just fancy drifting around without a
plan, it can be fun just to take your chances on an artist based on a great name or a intriguing
synopsis in the programme. Hows about a gamble on ‘Bombay Show Pig’ or ‘Huskey
Rescue’ for example. Whatever happens you are bound to come away discovering a
few bands you will definitely follow in the future.
First up, the band I really wanted to see (bit of a girlie
choice) – Wolf Alice. The music they have put out so far has been so varied:
from guitar driven Pop Rock that takes me back to the 90s, through to the
chilled out and serene. Their leading lady's vocals have a natural way of
evolving through each track. Despite a sketchy first song and an unforgiving
sound system I can tell they will be a really good live band for the future. I
am already hearing that they are playing lots of festivals and have occasionally been appearing for free.
Giggin in Brighton (or
anywhere) is all about atmosphere and this doesn’t always go hand in hand with
the bigger clubs along the seafront. Sometimes you are better off going for a fun
band in the basement or the backroom of a small pub. It’s all about the sticky
floors, the joking around from over confident singers and girls
dancing with the same grace and elegance as cigarette smoke on the night air.
There’s also the fellas bouncing around, hopelessly drunk on the occasion and
a days worth of reveling. I don’t care how practiced they are, a guy will
always look terrible dancing beside a girl and I find gently rocking with a
constant beer in my hand avoids any embarrassment.
Venues are as diverse as the music on show. There are
artists playing stripped back sets in some of the Churches in town. You can
even creep around Brighton museum and listen
to people playing acoustic guitar and singing amongst the exhibits inside. The
scratching noise of fingers as they scrape across a fret might not be the most
pleasing sound; but it will always remind me of being little and sitting by the
bedroom door, while my Dad thought he was practicing his guitar on his own. You
may come across some people’s music you think is absolutely terrible, but there
is generally something interesting you can take from everything you’ll hear.
Sometimes its good enough just seeing other people enjoy the show or the smile
on the artists face when they finish to rapturous applause.
Friday was a great night! I missed out on the chilled out
Swim Deep due to queues, but a friend suggested we check out Mikal Cronin a
songwriter from California .
Now don’t call me a Racialist but I wasn’t confident I would like seeing a band
where all the boys’ hair cuts were longer then the girls, but they were Ace! It’s not often you’ll see four guitarist standing in line, belting out
tunes with as much Awesome power as if Michael J Fox had linked them up to one
of Doc Brown’s Amplifiers. We then headed down to the Haunt to watch
‘Merchandise’ a band NME have been raving about recently. They were good but
afterwards the Palma Violets showed up as mystery guests and took things up an
extra notch.
The Palma Violets can definitely put on a show and kept the
crowd hungry all the way though. Even base and lead guitarists got involved
with the crowd surfing, still playing as they rolled across the excited waves
of fans. I would definitely recommend their album, there are echoes here of all
the 80s punk and Mod classics I learned from growing up. Another band of the
moment - Bastille also played the Great Escape. The success of their debut album and
anthems like Pompeii
and Laura Palmer have granted them passage to the big festivals this summer.
But when the drums stop beating you’ll hear them sing the kinda songs you might
wrap around someone who is hurting; when a slow dance in the lounge seems
better then anything you can think of saying.
I guess I will always be more of a lyricist then a musician.
Hopefully one day I will write something as emotive as a song. What
I wanted to find at the Great Escape were interesting and believable lyrics;
stories from the everyday. Songs about the elation of meeting someone so special
that you have to tell your mate about her over a pint or the things someone may
talk about while sitting on their best-friend’s bed. I definitely found these
things as well as great tunes about getting embarrassed or just riding the bus!
Stepping away from the mainstream the people I saw have no
arrogance. They sing about sex and relationships as a form of connection rather
then just brag about it. I often listen to the UK Top 40 and I’m not saying ‘I
don’t enjoy it’ but it’s nice to get away from people describing love in a very
2 dimensional way. Or just silly people who think they can actually fly ?!? It’s
because of the honesty of their lyrics and sense of discovery that I really
like the '1975’ at the moment and I’m always on the look out for a great new Indy
band. To me the best tracks are the ones where the guitar playfully wanders off the
main flow of the song, as a little kid may skip around their parents and run away as they walk along. Some of the artists appearing at the festival will have a great
career ahead of them some may not get what they hoped for. But its good just
to share in the snippets of their lives.
Saturday night, it’s late and a few of us are heading down
to Blind Tiger Bar to catch the last few bands and maybe a dance after. Passing
by a restaurant I see a waitress singing and strutting around as she is
clearing the plates away. The place is empty so she can crank up the volume as
load as she wants. Its not easy to talk about music without the old clichés
but it is definitely the best way we have for expressing how we are feeling or how we
want to feel. Maybe she will get the night off so she can go next year : )
