what i did on my holidays pt. 2

On another day I might have stuck around for Howlin' Rain, and on another day I might not have thought Los Campesinos! were try-hard (perhaps a bit of GBNWTH was involved too), but it was this day that Dirty Projectors and Les Savy Fav were playing, and so little else mattered. Neither band failed to live up to expectation (i'm not unaware of my double negative). I couldn't resist a peek at the Dirty Projectors set-list to reassure myself that it would be mainly stuff from Rise Above; it was. I have listened to that album so many times since I last saw them, and enjoyed it so much more as a result. They have such incredible technical skill, and although I see where people are coming from when they say it is unemotional, I find them really quite moving. Others in the audience were equally transfixed, and I was a hair's breadth away from sharing a spontaneous high-five with the guy next to me (I don't mean that we went for it but missed :-) )

I'm pretty sure Les Savy Fav are incapable of being bad, even in the kind of heat that wilted the crowds of other bands. Okay, so it's 95% because Tim Harrington is crazy, boiling over with energy, and using every inch of whatever venue he is in to entertain the audience. Last year at ATP, he sat down for a haircut and a chat before the set began. But the songs are great too. In short, they were totally rocking. Tim serenaded the girl who was for some reason or other being made to sit in the middle of the stage, spotted a guy in the crowd with a pink panther costume (later seen wearing it with pride in the Queen Vic) and took it from him, then ripped all the stuffing out of the head and put it in his pants, and at the end of the gig took the snare and lead a procession down to the second stage. Killer.

After all that, Hot Chip felt quite boring. They did not get me in the mood to party. That was left to the DJs in the second room, playing pounding dubstep. It was quality. Then we went to the Queen Vic and danced an indie disco into the early hours. I bumped into my friend Chris from school on the dancefloor, it was cool to catch up. The only time I've seen him in the last few years was when we bumped into each other watching Pelican in Barcelona at Primavera. It like we're friends in some parallel music-utopia world, but not in real life, which is a shame. He gave me a copy of his record, which is good - it's sort of like a more industrial-noise-y Birthday Party, punctuated by really mellow Bonnie 'Prince' Billy numbers.

Watched Big Lebowski, it had been ages since I saw it so it was brilliant. We went to some chalet party where Jay Reatard was supposed to play. I saw Al Youthmovies and said something ridiculous like "You're in Youthmovies aren't you?". I spoke for ages to the really nice guy from Times New Viking, before I discovered that he was in a band I thought were overrated. It was all fairly tame. Actually that may have been Sunday night...

Sunday was kind of average. A Place To Bury Strangers were good, I think you'd like them, lecabinet, sort of a middle ground between The Cure, My Bloody Valentine and Jesus And Mary Chain, although obviously not quite as good as that would be (I think that's exactly what the description was in the programme except without the last bit). The following bands fell to GBNWTH fever: Jens Lekman (don't worry sports fans, i saw him a week later), Marissa Nadler, Pissed Jeans and Meat Puppets. No Age were good for one song, then shit, although they seem to have the most popular T-shirt of the weekend. In fact actually Health had the most popular T-shirt of both ATPs, despite the fact that regrettably they weren't playing at either.

I did not enjoy Wooden Shjips. I massively more did not enjoy The Hold Steady. I saw neither Of Montreal, nor Black Mountain because I thought they were bad at Primavera. Same goes for Girls V Boys / Glasgow. The tiny bit of Harmonia I saw was great, but I forsook them for Caribou. Caribou were awesome. They kick the shit into Manitoba. I spent most of Sunday night wandering aimlessly. Chatted to an Australian girl who, it turned out, lived in Edinburgh. Was knackered due to a combination of SWH and RD.

We left in good time on Monday morning. I finally got some signal on my phone and had a chat with Heather, it was lovely to speak to her. Apparently someone had brazenly stolen a till from Blackwell. I left my weary first-weekend companions at King's Cross, and headed to my sister's for the inter-ATP London stint.