Sometimes The Sun (part one)
Sundae on the Common, August 7th, Clapham Common.
The hog was on the spit, the ice-cream was in the fridge and the music was playing the soundtrack to sunshine. And all for just five of your English...surely this was the perfect day out on the common?
Now this is where it gets vague. It was...well, it was very nice. No more and no less. Trying to flesh out this description is not easy and I can only offer up a handful of reviews to do so. These will be put up here over a few days because my eyes are beginning to bleed after writing just one of these damn things. And for the sake of completeness it should be noted that we missed the first couple of acts, arriving as Yeti were setting up on stage. The acts we did see were Yeti, British Sea Power, Alabama 3 and The Thrills.
Yeti
With the sun sailing from cloud to cloud and the temperature up and down like a loved-up mosher, the world's worst compere bounces onto stage to almost total silence. The lonely cheers from the back fade away once they realise he is Not Important; despite this he proceeds to give it the full fella, introducing Yeti as if reading their biography from the back of a cornflakes packet. He yells that they are the feelgood band of the summer, and we find ourselves flicking through the six volume encyclopedia of feelgood summery bands of 2005 to flesh out the details. But to hell with him. He walks off stage and is engulfed again by obscurity.
Yeti are a six piece band; five human members and a wee little hype dwarf wearing a Libertines T-shirt, following them around and farting into their cornflakes. Which is a shame because the music is good enough to win over anyone who is only here for vocalist John Hassall's musical CV. Hassall, to his credit, understands the game and his first interaction with the audience is an ironic acknowledgement of the "feelgood band of the summer" motif, launching into the set with the confidence that knows the description is justified.
They are cut from a happy cloth that includes fewer bands than at first apparent...one cannot lump them in with the fading sound of garage rock a la The Strokes or even the driving, shambling force of the Libertines. They are compared to the La's, early Beatles, even the Specials...ah, but a nagging feeling remains that whilst those bands soared, Yeti remain on the ground being thoroughly unpretentious, summery and just bouncy enough to claim the feelgood tag without transcending it.
And that's the problem with any such summer band...once the sun goes down they are forgotten to all but their most faithful fans. The La's secured their place in history because they found the source of the sunshine...Yeti merely bask in its rays.
They have a varied and happy old set of songs – Never Lose Your Sense of Wonder in particular -- but they fail in one key respect. Their songs are not infectious enough. The crowd barely nodded their heads in time to the music today. So were we feeling good? Well...perhaps, but when the sun is out you want to feel great. And who wants to be remembered with the word "good" anyway?
The hog was on the spit, the ice-cream was in the fridge and the music was playing the soundtrack to sunshine. And all for just five of your English...surely this was the perfect day out on the common?
Now this is where it gets vague. It was...well, it was very nice. No more and no less. Trying to flesh out this description is not easy and I can only offer up a handful of reviews to do so. These will be put up here over a few days because my eyes are beginning to bleed after writing just one of these damn things. And for the sake of completeness it should be noted that we missed the first couple of acts, arriving as Yeti were setting up on stage. The acts we did see were Yeti, British Sea Power, Alabama 3 and The Thrills.
Yeti
With the sun sailing from cloud to cloud and the temperature up and down like a loved-up mosher, the world's worst compere bounces onto stage to almost total silence. The lonely cheers from the back fade away once they realise he is Not Important; despite this he proceeds to give it the full fella, introducing Yeti as if reading their biography from the back of a cornflakes packet. He yells that they are the feelgood band of the summer, and we find ourselves flicking through the six volume encyclopedia of feelgood summery bands of 2005 to flesh out the details. But to hell with him. He walks off stage and is engulfed again by obscurity.
Yeti are a six piece band; five human members and a wee little hype dwarf wearing a Libertines T-shirt, following them around and farting into their cornflakes. Which is a shame because the music is good enough to win over anyone who is only here for vocalist John Hassall's musical CV. Hassall, to his credit, understands the game and his first interaction with the audience is an ironic acknowledgement of the "feelgood band of the summer" motif, launching into the set with the confidence that knows the description is justified.
They are cut from a happy cloth that includes fewer bands than at first apparent...one cannot lump them in with the fading sound of garage rock a la The Strokes or even the driving, shambling force of the Libertines. They are compared to the La's, early Beatles, even the Specials...ah, but a nagging feeling remains that whilst those bands soared, Yeti remain on the ground being thoroughly unpretentious, summery and just bouncy enough to claim the feelgood tag without transcending it.
And that's the problem with any such summer band...once the sun goes down they are forgotten to all but their most faithful fans. The La's secured their place in history because they found the source of the sunshine...Yeti merely bask in its rays.
They have a varied and happy old set of songs – Never Lose Your Sense of Wonder in particular -- but they fail in one key respect. Their songs are not infectious enough. The crowd barely nodded their heads in time to the music today. So were we feeling good? Well...perhaps, but when the sun is out you want to feel great. And who wants to be remembered with the word "good" anyway?
posted by Jamie at 11:34 AM
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