LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE The Isle of Wight Festival, along with Download, is often seen as the start to the festival season. This 500 odd mile round trip from Leeds was well worth it for the array of musical variety on show. From Prodigy to Neil Young, Basement Jaxx to The Pigeon Detectives and Pendulum to White Lies: everyone was on form. Not only this, the whole three days just seemed to work perfectly with the sun shining, despite drab forecasts, and it being well organised with there being few queues, adequate security and plenty of bars. If this is how the festival season started, lets hope that it continues with such success. Slow Club seemed to have evaded many of the ‘hot tips for 2009’ lists, but now- midway through the year- they have really started to pick up the attention they deserve. This two-piece band that hail from Sheffield played five times at Glastonbury. Impressive, huh? Their joyful Folk Pop makes them unique in today’s music scene. During live performances they genuinely seem to have a lot of fun: these two enjoy playing music, and I think you’ll enjoy listening. Their set at Live At Leeds earlier this year was rapturously received. Catch them at V, Latitude and Secret Garden Party.
David Wells The Monday night audience at the Louisiana in Bristol is a bit sparse for London three piece, The Bishops. Despite this they blast through a 45-minute set of material from both their albums including recent singles “If You Leave Today” and “City Lights.” All the way through a rather drunk punter has been shouting for “The only place I can look is down,“ but, ironically, he was downstairs in the bar when it was played. Despite some less than enthusiastic reviews of their new album The Bishops are well worth catching live. The rest of the bill is made up of local acts, Pete Stilwell formerly of Bristol band The Francos and Santa Dog. The latter are a female fronted outfit a little like the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, or even Sleeper. Singer Rowena Dugdale is prone to yelping during songs and they seem to push the sound system to the max, but the songs are enjoyable and in Rob Williams they have an excellent guitarist. I’ll be your spiderman.
It’s All HAppenIng! July 2009