One of the finest moments at this year’s Green Man Festival came not from the headliners - although Wilco on the final night were nothing short of sublime - but tucked away in the cinema tent in the middle of the night. The Memory Band, a mediocre folk collective from London performed a number of songs from The Wicker Man, completely in the dark. It was a mesmerising experience for the hazy few in the audience, and made very fitting the fact that on the final night, after that Wilco performance, a giant green man made out of branches was burnt to a cinder.
This is the Green Man Festival’s sixth year, and thanks to the weather and a line-up that was diverse and strong, this was the best ever. The last two years had been washed out by constant rain creating a muddy chaos at the Glanusk Park estate, near Crickhowell in the Brecon Beacons. This year as ever, organisers stretched the definition of ‘folk’ to its furthest point, incorporating heavy rock (Hawkwind), dance (Pivot) and outright psychedelia (Wooden Shjips).
Headlining on the first night was a clearly exhausted Animal Collective. The trio have been on the road pretty much constantly since their landmark Merriweather Post Pavilion album was released in January. Unfortunately it showed here, with the lethargy obvious as songs like ‘Summer Clothes’ and ‘My Girls’ were devoid of their usual bounce. It didn’t really matter that much, because earlier in the day Melbournites Pivot put on half an hour of loud, heady electronic noise. They were tucked away in the Far Out Tent, the festival’s secondary stage, while over on the main stage crowds witnessed a guileless set from New Yorkers Gang Gang Dance. If Wooden Shjips weren’t on later, who knows what might have happened.
The San Franciscans, still performing with their psychedelic projections behind them, have forged themselves a profile in the UK they could never have dreamed of. The middle-aged noiseniks played a set of heat and dirge, ending with a version of Neil Young’s ‘Vampire Blues’ that had little or no trace of the On The Beach classic whatsoever, and was all the more brilliant for it.
A typically patchy set from The Aliens on Saturday still contained enough moments of hilarity to fend off some Wagnerian-looking clouds creeping over Sugarloaf Mountain. With Jarvis Cocker giving an entertaining if slightly predictable headlining set (no Pulp songs = not really a great festival set, seemed to be the mood among fans), Saturday was the day of unheralded gems further down the bill. The surfer/garage/rockabilly/punk of fantastic Texans The Strange Boys should send countless towards their debut The Strange Boys and Girls Club. Songs of teenage brattishness and awkwardness at the same time, this foursome have an attitude that softens punk by worrying about playground strife and acne. Wonderful.
Better still were Golden Animals. It would be too easy to call them ‘desert blues’. But they sound nothing like Tinariwen, hailing from southern California. A boy and a girl, they shake the legacy of The White Stripes to its core, adding Jim Morrison to the mix. Singer Tommy Eisner has a drawly delivery not unlike the lizard king himself, and as he takes the stage all long-haired and tassled, one can almost forget the presence of statuesque drummer Linda Beecroft. Together they delight in psychedelic blues delirium, transforming the lethargic kids at their feet at the front of stage into a seething mass of freaks by the end of their time.
Aside from a blistering hour or so from Wilco (a couple of new songs, and the full gamut of classics from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born), the final day was something of a wind-down. Scott Matthews is innocuous and inconspicuous. And from Wolverhampton. But to pay close attention to his seemingly gentle and unchallenging songs is to reveal an artist of some considerable talent, and with his utilisation of unorthodox folk tunings, a degree of curiosity and imagination too.
At the other end of the spectrum was the Dirty Three. Warren Ellis was in particularly fine form in the banter stakes, effing and blinding about the place like the sex-god he continues to be. They were brutal, and indeed stung away the confusion at a bizarre set from he who made the ‘lost classic from the seventies’, Rodriguez. One moment stumbling about the stage needing support from his bemused band, the other regally belting out such beautiful songs as ‘I Think Of You’; it was an absorbing affair. As was this whole remarkable festival. A shout out must go to the literature tent too, which featured a talk on the history of Indian Pale Ale and a ridiculously scholarly lecture on Dylan. In fact, to be drunk and bookishly bohemian sums up the Green Man Festival pretty accurately.
