End Of The Road, Day Three

END OF THE ROAD, DAY THREE
Larmer Tree Gardens, North Dorset, 13 September 2009

Sunday lunchtime it may be, but there’s no time for The Fly to enjoy such luxuries as a slap-up roast, the Hollyoaks omnibus, and a stinking hangover, not when the festival’s final day still has far too much lined up in the way of other treats for us… And first up in the Tipi Tent, appropriately enough, are the Stars Of Sunday League, who we suspect may be quite rubbish at actual football – if nothing else, Sarah’s dress is far too flouncy for the pitch – but claim to be superb at the table variety and have silky skills of their own that’d we’d heartily recommend. They score very healthily indeed on the tweeometer, perhaps most obviously on the beautiful ‘Suntan In Scotland’, but even beyond that their accessorising accordion is tough to resist, and the fact they’ve written a song about Harvey Milk is very much to be applauded. The missing link between Sarah Records and Chemikal Underground? Very probably, and that’s an excellent notion.  

Over at the Big Top after that comes the self-proclaimed Tallest Man On Earth. Alas, readers, we’re in no position to tell you whether that’s a misnomer or not, since, cruelly, he spends much of the gig crouched, and, frankly, a tad constipated-looking. Still, he’s got the same affinity with nature that so enlivened ‘The Hour Of Bewilderbeast’, he plays guitar almost exactly like Billy Bragg, and his vocals recall the pinched exuberance of Pal from the Wannadies, all of which are pretty pleasing features. But wait – we think we may really have found the tallest man on Earth! Treecreeper’s Will Burns could certainly have a staring contest with Thurston Moore without cricking his neck, although the ‘Creeper themselves are far from towering, taking their cues instead from the shadier elements of the US alt.rock undergrowth to delightfully restrained effect, and if we didn’t get the impression that they’re playing all their own work it’d be easy to think they were wheeling out a few lost Sparklehorse chestnuts.

Providing a somewhat startling mid-afternoon presence on the Garden Stage later is the mercurial Bob Log III, and, for those of you who’ve not had the pleasure – and, to be fair, his profile’s slipped a little since his initial spike in the early noughties even if his act remains cheeringly unchanged – this is basically how it pans out: he’s a man in a motorcycle helmet and a goldfish-hued jumpsuit playing the most cotton-pickin’ blues imaginable far too fast, slightly sloppily, and with underpinning beats that Ministry at their height would have said were a touch on the ridiculous side. Sadly, the crowd here are a little too reticent to throw up any volunteers to be bounced on his knee, as often happens – or perhaps everyone’s too considerate of the fact that he says his doctor’s asked him to stop doing that, which is a lovely thought -  but he’s still brilliantly amusing company, gets rather more mileage out of a fairly limited palette than he really ought to, and, given the continual kudos he attracts throughout the day, proves to be, for many, the weekend’s previously-undiscovered gem.

Now, we’re not saying that that set us up perfectly for a singing lady drummer with a passing resemblance to early-70s Brian Eno, but we’re not complaining when that’s what happens. Yes, back in the Tipi Tent, Brighton’s Esben and The Witch are brewing up all kinds of profoundly atmospheric goodness and providing an early example of masterful drumming, which’ll turn out to be a theme as the day progresses. In actual fact, there’s instrument-swapping galore, but never in a fashion that punctures the morbid misama that envelops their work, and they leave us with the sort of consistent thrill we recall from the effects-heavy sturn und drang of those early Curve EPs. Besides, they also cover ‘Confide In Me’ in the style of the Banshees, and, yes, that is as entirely made of awesomeness as it sounds. Frankly, Steve Earle’s a bit of a letdown after that: great sold-his-soul guitar work, of course, and the voice is as comfortingly lived-in as ever, but the set turns out to be an extended love letter to Townes van Zandt – fine in itself, we suppose, and certainly manna for some of the crowd, but we were rather hoping for a little more of, well, him…

Though our disappointment does at least drive us into the loving arms of Brakes, walking the festival like they own it, which, given they’re the only band to have played here all four years, they probably sort of do. And what a celebratory call they turn out to be – they’re at their best when they fire up the punchy’n'punky cylinders (‘Porcupine Or Pineapple’. for instance, is stunning), but, as befits the supergroup status they’ve more than transcended by now, they’ve got a cavalier attitude to where they’ll come from next, genre-wise, and their rapport with the crowd’s virtually telepathic. Plus, in a set that gets terribly greatest hits about two-thirds of the way through (‘Ring-A-Ding-Ding’! ‘All Night Disco Party’! Etc!), they still manage to cram in eighteen songs – yes, ‘Comma Comma Comma Full Stop’ counts for all of the four seconds or whatever it is – and a sizable drum solo. Outstanding! Staying with the Big Top, we’re also hugely taken with the ingenuity of The Dodos. Essentially, what they play should really come across as a fine take on manly American rock, yet it’s a take that appears wholly unworkable on paper: sure, the bassless thing’s been celebratedly done before, and Meric can certainly handle his guitar to a Jack White-y degree, but his vocals often tip into feyer territory, and, while there’s no shortage of virtuoso drum wallop, there’s also lots and lots of xylophone. It’s got the makings of a disaster, which makes its soaring status all the more welcome.

And then we stumble in the weekend’s dying stages across a very real contender for gig of the year, as we’re introduced in the Local Tent to Au. Even down the front, we’re not quite sure what it is that Luke Wyland’s actually playing – it looks kind of keyboardy, but there are all sorts of lights on it that he’s obviously appropriated from the Starship Enterprise, and it’s unleashing all kinds of ethereal, positively extradimensional forces that vary from a celestial pedal steel through dramatically knockout piano and on to woozy melodica, all the while knitting what sometimes – but not essentially – work as recognisable tunes with a freewheeling disregard for logic that drummer (and, amazingly, bellringer) Dana Valatka does astoundingly to keep up with on such affable form. Moreover, lest we forget, Wyland’s vocals are almost entirely Cocteausian with a sprinkling of A-Ha, which is definitely unique in the context of this weekend, and not far off it in the wider world too. We doubt the branch of the Rough Trade shop that’s pitched up here would’ve sen such an immediate rush to snap up an album all weekend; truly, Au have struck gold.

In fact, they did leave us wondering whether or not that evening’s headliners would be able to follow them and still satisfy, but it takes very little time for us to realise that these are but petty concerns, and, really, nobody does Petty concerns like The Hold Steady. There’s still something that, in lesser hands, would be endearingly amateurish about them – Franz, for instance, looks absurdly gauche windmilling behind his keyboards while dressed as Tony Moreno, while Craig’s dancing really is of the strictly wedding variety – but their seniority gives them an infectious gratitude, while, lyrically, they both demand and thoroughly reward your attention; when was the last time anything in the upper reaches of the charts was as erudite as ‘Sequestered In Memphis’ or as idiosyncratic as ‘Chips Ahoy!’? It’s the sort of stuff that gives bar bands a better name than they’ve had in years or usually deserve, and The Hold Steady are just the sort of manly bear hug of a band that are ideal for waving adieu to a weekend this extensive and exhausting. Not to mention successful, given how blissfully chipper everyone remains well into the morning: End Of The Road may be saying farewell for this year, but, on this evidence, we can see it running some way into the distance yet…