Bergenfest Day Three

So, on to day three of Bergenfest, although day TWO if you’re going to be pedantic and suggest that my first day was largely spent flying to Norway, sourcing cheap vodka and being confused with somebody out of McFly.

Today the fog has cleared, only to be replaced by the sort of misty, murky fog inside my head that can only be the result of last night’s ‘cocktails’.

If I could give one piece of advice to people wishing to become music journalists, it would be this: When a band says ‘we’re going to stay up all night because we’ve got a flight early in the morning, would you like to join us?’ the best answer is NO. Especially if:

You DON’T have a flight very early in the morning
You DO have to be on a boat in the morning. On the way to a restaurant. That serves raw fish.

But, had I said no to Beth Jean Houghton’s kind offer, I would’ve missed out on the lasting memories of security attempting to break up a Beth/Stornoway 3am hotel-room gig; drummer man Dav answering the door to said security wearing a metal bin on his head and the invention of the sort of cocktails you only create when nobody has enough money to buy any mixers. Jagermeister and whisky anyone? Neat vodka? No. NO. That’s what I should’ve said.

So, I drag my weary carcass to the boat to make our way across the Fjords to ‘Cornelius’, a restaurant owned by a man they genuinely call Shellfish Dundee, who takes great delight in telling us the story of his restaurant while cackling ever-so-slightly terrifyingly, before slicing apart a still-wriggling scallop and giggling as he slurps up the eyes and gills of the poor creature as its life slowly fades away while he sprinkles salt and pepper onto its remains.

This sort of shit doesn’t happen at Glastonbury.

But we’re actually here as guests of Summer Sundae, the Leicester town-centre festival that’s recently pulled off a genius festival-twinning arrangement with BergenFest. That means the Summer Sundae bods get to relax on top of mountains and eat fresh fish on the Fjords, and in return the BergenFest organisers will enjoy a curry at one of Leicester’s finest restaurants. I jest, of course. They’re actually swapping ideas for bands and as a result, we get to eat at a restaurant Neil Young frequents whenever he’s in town, and the frankly-bloody-ace Megaphonic Thrift will head for the Midlands in the summer. In my eyes, that’s a fair swap, but more on them later.

Right now, we’re being treated to a platter of sea critters, washed down with one of the finest champagnes in the world, and my stomach is being an ungrateful bastard about the whole affair. Luckily, the view of the Fjords is more than enough to take my mind off the bubbling feeling down below, and I’m still feeling rather smug about this festival experience.

It’s a smugness that’s soon to be removed when The Fly makes the WRONG decision at just about every band-clash situation all night.

Firstly, I ignore The Instrumenti - two men dressed as pandas who make gleeful electronic music and dance around like mentalists – to watch CasioKids play an open-air show in the high street. Even the beautiful backdrops of the Norwegian mountains fail to hide the fact that CasioKids still make my ears want to eat themselves and vomit up the remains. And dancing like Beck doesn’t MAKE you Beck, my man – so sit yourself down and play some chords on that Casio keyboard, eh?

So, we head across town (that makes it sound more energetic than it was. It’s a two minute walk) to catch British blues-master Duke Garwood at The Garage. His muffled, cranky bluegrass numbers don’t seem to resonate as they should, though The Fly wonders whether it’s partly down to the fact a woman who’s clearly consumed her age in pints (that’s a lot of pints, for the record. I’m going for 55. It’s not a pretty sight) has leapt up on stage and, in between tenderly kissing his ear and cuddling him, spends the gig playing air-guitar next to the baffled Duke. He musters a shy smile and carries on with the show, while the audience scratches their necks nervously and shuffle towards the door.

Ila Auto are next up in the Festival Bar, and they start out with a pleasant rockabilly hop but, three songs in, decide to veer in the direction of hillbilly pop. It’s not altogether terrible, but it’s sullied by the knowledge that across town The Residents are playing what we later hear is one of their best, most terrifyingly unnerving shows to date and Manic Street Preachers are just about to bring their set to a close over at the Grieghallen.

So, we trek across the beautiful harbour to the USF Sardinien – a venue inside a disused sardine factory that’s as brilliant as it is weird. In one room, The Heavy are preaching to their fans about how heavily they ‘bring it’ and demanding the entire room howls like wolves as they crunch out heavily distorted funk tunes. But we head next door – more out of curiosity than any kind of musical recommendation – as the finest purveyors of Norewegian hip-hop, Karpe Diem are in the ‘sardine smoking house’. There are absolutely no sardines smoking inside (they’re probably very healthy with all that swimming they have to do), but there are a huge number of young Norwegians hanging on every word the Scandinavian N-Dubz have to say. I don’t know what it is they have to say as it’s all in Norwegian, but I assume it’s something to do with being firmly West-Side of the harbour, popping a carp in your ass and being the toughest gangster this side of the Bergen Leper Museum (that actually exists, you know).

Fortunately, the night is soon to be saved by the brilliant The Megaphonic Thrift, whose Sonic Youth grumbles and garage-rock brilliance are a breath of fresh air in an otherwise sweaty Garage. The rumbling distortion of ‘Exploding Eyes’ and snappy riffs of ‘Talks Like A Weed King’ are proof that forthcoming album ‘Decay Decoy’ should be a winner. And The Fly manages to finish the night on another high note, with Brooklyn’s Bear In Heaven, whose dreamy electro-pop should be poking MGMT with a big, sharp stick and demanding they explain the nonsense that was ‘Congratulations’. The creeping brilliance of ‘Lovesick Teenagers’ fills the room with shut-eyed euphoria and the Thom Yorke-esque jitter electronica of ‘Wholehearted Mess’ makes the hairs on most people’s Viking beards stand on end.

With that, The Fly make our way back to the hotel to pack our bags and prepare to leave this bloody glorious city. BergenFest is a glorious diversion from the British festival scene and, quite frankly, until there are heated floors in the Glastonbury toilets I think I may struggle to return to the ways of old…