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Seconds out. Round two. Ding. Ding.
So, for the second day running, apologies to the lower end of the bill (especially Spike Island. Your name intrigues me. Are you baggy revivalists? Or are you singing old Irish folk songs about the prisons of County Cork? I guess I'll never know...). Note to self; sort your domestic arrangements days before heading for a gig rather than minutes.
So, for me anyway, Sunday's opening gambit is Brighton's The Qemists. I confess, they're not a band I'm familiar with, but the name conjures up some kind of arch, high cool hipsters...I dunno, I'm thinking Avalanches, Soulwax, Beta Band. The reality is somewhere (stick with me here) pitched slap-crack in the middle of The Prodigy, Rage Against The Machine and Black Eyed Peas. Can you imagine it? Tough, innit? Well Qemists are it. A relentless barrage of riffs, big beats and exhortations to "put your hands in the air! Binnnnnngerrrrlllleeeeyyyyyy!" Twin highlights of the set are 'Dem Na Like Me' and 'Lost Weekend', but they miss the guest vocalists of their recorded incarnations (Wiley and Faith No More's Mike Patton respectively) - 'Lost Weekend' particularly lacks the sneers a Patton guest appearance would have added. Guess he doesn't do Bingley in September.
Above Bingley's stage the stormclouds are gathering pace and as The Futureheads let rip with their poppy punky angular riffs, the heavens open. Does Bingley bother? Nope, it puts its hood up and cracks on with it. Unfortunately, Futureheads' soundman must be spending a good ten minutes trying to do up his kagoul zip, because for that long, they're bogged down by an awful, awful mix rendering their first few songs redundant. Eventually, like a parting in the clouds (sadly only musical not meteorological), the sound suddenly loses the rough edges and The Futureheads are revealed in all their finery. Which is an intrinsic similarity between every song - spiky guitar riffs, tricksy backing vocals, whopping choruses. Nothing wrong with it ,folks, just no light and shade. Always got to feel a wee pang of pity for the serious band whose most famous song is a cover version - and no matter how much Futureheads have made 'Hounds of Love' their own, a cover version it remains. Still, it gives them the opportunity to provide Bingley with a 'festival experience' and the field is duly divided in two to share some of those tricksy harmonies.
You'll have to forgive me, Yorkshire (a Liverpool boy residing in Manchester), but how do your inter-city rivalries go? Should I be concerned for the Reverend of the Sheffield diocese and his Makers, bringing his sermons to the Bradford area? Or do you not bother with these things? Jon McClure has clearly considered it, neatly sidestepping the issue by instigating a chant of "Yoooorkshire! Yooooorkshire! Yoooorkshire!" the second he reaches his microphone. Kicking off with the advertising-jingle-cum-playground-chant of recent single "Silence Is Talking", it's abundantly clear that, in his world anyway, McClure is a frontman of the shamanistic shapes school of Messrs Ashcroft and Robinson (see Day One folks), with added essence of Gallagher Jnr for good measure. There are constant off-mic calls to "come on", with the occasional additional "muthaf**kas". Oh okay then, if we must. Just one problem. Whereas Gallagher, Ashcroft and Robinson are (were?) frontmen blessed with the x factor and, to one extent or another, the voice to match, McClure looks more contestant from The X Factor, with the voice to match. There are some genuine moments in the set - 'Heavyweight Champion of the World' is a right tune and no mistake - but the best bit comes when McClure dedicates 'He Said He Loved Me' to Calvin Harris, lurking backstage, next on the bill. Cue cheers. "No, no," objects McClure, "If Calvin Harris wants to slag me off on Twitter, why can't he f**kin' well come out here and do it to my face?" Gotta love a festival feud, haven't ya? Cue louder cheers from the suddenly fickle Bingley faithful who are, in less than an hour, about to go absolutely apeshit to Harris. Anyway, a final word for the Reverend. Anyone who stands in front of 15,000 people and instructs them to "f**k the BNP" has my absolute and unending respect. End of.
A postscript to the Rev's set. So there I am, waiting in the queue for coffee, considering doughnuts (rock and indeed roll) when there's a sudden influx of people. Yep, this looks like Bingley's only decent coffee stall, but why the sudden interest? When, right in front of me, Pied Piper-style, walks the Reverend himself, toting an acoustic guitar for a little après-set busking. Down-with-the-kids gesture, or attempt to take a few people away from his new nemesis' performance? Who knows...
And so to Calvin Harris himself. The inner 8-year-old in me is dying for him to retaliate, to set the scene for some handbags-behind-the-backstage-bar action. But the closest he gets is some oblique references to somebody overrunning, meaning he's got to get on with it. Shame. Anyway, you already know that Bingley went apeshit for Calvin Harris. Let's qualify that. There have been some big responses so far this weekend. Most bands have had at least a song or two that have got a fair proportion of Bingley's crowd exercised to some degree or other. But no-one has had the whole field from front to back, side to side jumping like Calvin Harris does. Bingley hasn't showed their hands for anyone else quite as much as they do for Calvin Harris. And my god, they've been asked to. A lot. The songs don't really matter (although, for the record, 'Acceptable In The 80's' benefits from a gut churning sub-sonic bass, 'The Girls' has men who are old enough to know better acting like teenagers and 'Ready For The Weekend' is probably the song of the weekend), the spectacle created by Harris' is a sight to behold. A man who, early on in his set, informs Bingley that he's not going to talk too much because "his talk's not up to much". Self-effacing usually goes with fey and indie, not 15,000 people going off their nuts, yeah? By the closing 'I'm Not Alone', with its combination of downbeat verse and Faithless-style rave chorus, Harris surely knows he has beaten all-comers. Self-appointed members of the pop clergy included.
Poor Editors, then. Even the pre-set DJ's given up, spinning 80's cheese to warm up (down?) the awaiting masses (not 80's guilty pleasures, note, actual 80's cheese). How the hell do they follow that? Here's how. By shutting the f**k up, putting their fists up and turning out the best stadium-sized show by a band of their kin since Coldplay became annoying. Seriously. I wasn't expecting this. There are synths and spacey sounds. There are four-to-the-floor bass drums. There is Tom Smith. Yes...there is Tom Smith. Was he always this engaging spectacle? Was he always more than an Ian Curtis/Paul Banks imitator? Where was I when this happened? 'Racing Rats' has nothing more than a rave coda. 'Bullets' receives a newly muscular treatment. And all the while, Smith writhes between guitar, synth and upright piano. As, around him, do his bandmates. No straightforward gloom-guitar four-piece this, the 2009 model Editors are a proper, proper arena-sized proposition. 'Munich' has the field jumping almost as much as Calvin Harris. Almost. It's clearly the song much of Bingley's stayed to hear, the crowd thinning in the immediate aftermath. Hopefully on their way out, they swayed to a monumental 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors' and maybe they turned back as the trancey outro to new single 'Papillon' blessed out overhead. Sadly, they'd have been too late. A triumphant return (and trust me, I would never use such a cliché were it not true) for Editors is nixed by a respectfully early curfew, and Editors leave the stage. There are people waiting for more. There are people expecting more (they know there are major songs from the Editors cannon as yet unplayed tonight). They won't get them.
Bingley. I have to tell you. I didn't know what to expect from your Music Live. Having spent two days with you, well, I think I'm a little bit in love. See you next year, yeah?
Tags: reverend and the makers bingley music live festival matt rynn 360 qemists editors
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