Green Man 2018 - All About Far Out

Given the classic status I'd already awarded in my head to the last two Green Man festivals, there was always a fair chance that GM2018 would fall slightly short.  This it duly did, though shortfalls elsewhere were generally compensated by a truly inspiring line-up in the Far Out marquee.  Always the most energising of the Green Man's stages, this time it truly excelled itself to rescue this year's festival from what perhaps its first flirtation with mediocrity.

In line with much of this summer, it was a dry one this year, which was very welcome, though it does have its problems.  I've written in previous reviews of the danger of the festival being embraced as little more than a posh camping weekend by some middle class families and the better weather this year brought that out.  The Mountain Foot and Walled Garden stages both suffered from large numbers of patrons who downed seats, set up a picnic and didn't, it appeared, have a great deal of interest in the music that was set before them - it simply became a soundtrack to a pleasant weekend in South Wales. 

Thus the atmosphere at both of these stages became heavily diluted and only a few artists managed to cut through it.  At the main (Mountain Foot) stage, Cate Le Bon did it and, early on Sunday afternoon, a wonderful performance from Xylouris White combined majesty with discord and either made the picnickers sit up and take notice or else bugger off elsewhere.   More of this at the Mountain Foot stage and we might have driven off the sitting arseholes and reclaimed the slopes earlier in the weekend.

The challenge wasn't greatly different in the Walled Garden, though again some artists overcame it.  Stella Donnelly's performance, like Le Bon's, was fuelled by an underlying strength that belied the gentle acoustic veneer, while the riffs of Sacred Paws were genuinely uplifting.  The Surfing Magazines, late on Sunday evening, were genuinely enjoyable, although there is a problem both in terms of people getting the joke and in how they execute the parody.  Starting with a deliberately amateurish version of 'Roll Over Beethoven' might have been better had they kept it to one verse and launched into surf instrumental midway through.  As it was, only when the band left the parodic elements to gestures between songs in the second half of the set did they truly dish out the quality more than hinted at on their debut album.

Saturday afternoon at the Cinedrome dished up its usual series of quirky delights.  There was a welcome return to the Green Man for Islet and an uncompromising, percussion-driven delight of a set from the raucous and brilliant Charismatic Megafauna (left).   Accu and Perfect Body both made promising debuts at the Green Man Rising stage.  Otherwise, though, it was left to the Far Out stage to make this another memorable festival, a mission it rose to with spectacular success.

The always excellent Bas Jan made a game attempt to set the ball rolling on the Thursday night, though they were probably hindered in this pursuit by the fact that other stages don't open until the Friday, leaving them with a large audience comprising those who, like me, eagerly embrace their quirky stylings and those who appeared a little baffled and would probably have preferred the option to be somewhere else.

The Lovely Eggs (right) had no such problems early on Saturday afternoon, when a packed marquee saw them deliver on the relative polish of their recent 'This Is Eggland' album and demonstrate that the duo have lost nothing of their raucousness or gleeful DIY spirit.  The Eggs continue to expand their appeal while sacrificing nothing of what makes them so treasured by established aficionados.  They are a genuine national treasure and, thankfully, more and more people appear to be realising it.

From there, we never looked back.  BEAK> returned with a set that managed to improve on their previous GM outing, which is a feat in itself. Teenage Fanclub continue to make fine music but there was an extra relish in the performance of the classics during their Saturday night set: 'The Concept' almost took the roof off, while 'Everything Flows' was a glorious way to end it all.  Follakzoid, from Chile, delivered an enticingly hypnotic groove while Sorry confirmed their promise by showcasing the fine material that lies beyond that brilliant 'Drag King' single, although stage presence needs a bit of work - and if lack of stage presence is what they're aiming for then I'm afraid it doesn't do justice to the acerbic quality of their lyrics.   Great tunes, but they really could do with looking less like a bunch of reluctant BTEC Performing Arts students.

Then the show-stealers arrived on Sunday night without even being announced in the programme.   I hadn't seen The Wedding Present live for 27 years: before that, I'd watched them perform more than any other band and they reminded me here why I'd flocked so eagerly to their earlier gigs whenever the chance presented itself.  A late addition to the bill, as soon as they kicked into 'Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft' to start their set we knew we were in for something special.  David Gedge's arm's ability to drive that signature rhythm guitar riff hasn't declined with age and neither has a stage presence that managed, as always, to combine dynamism and what you sense is a genuine warmth for both music and audience.

In the end, I suppose it's also one of the slight drawbacks of the festival this year that so many of the artists I enjoyed were those I'd seen before, either years ago or more recently.  That said, it would be great to welcome back the Weddoes to a Green Man line-up in the future, and the same goes for the other artists listed in my top ten below.  But please can we give some thought to how to alleviate the periods of sterility at the other stages next year?

1. The Wedding Present (Far Out, Sunday)

2. The Lovely Eggs (Far Out, Friday)

3. Teenage Fanclub (Far Out, Saturday)

4. Charismatic Megafauna (Cinedrome, Saturday)

5. BEAK> (Far Out, Friday)

6. Bas Jan (Far Out, Thursday)

7. Islet (Cinedrome, Saturday)

8. Xylouris White (Mountain Foot, Sunday)

9. Follakzoid (Far Out, Sunday)

10. Cate Le Bon (Mountain Foot, Saturday)

Green Man 2017

As usual, the end of my long enforced summer absence ends with this short celebration of what was, as usual, the best long weekend of the year.

Last year Green Man managed to raise its already very high bar even higher.  If there was a concern that 2017 would see an understandable fall in quality due to those impossibly high standards, the festival managed to defy any such worries to once again meet and even exceed expectations.

The latter was certainly true in the case of the Green Man Rising stage.  My minor concern that this stage was the one area of the Green Man that could be safely ignored by the discerning festival goer was, this year, brushed aside in some style.  The inclusion of excellent bands like Saps and Hotel Lux had already ensured this was the stage's best ever line-up even before the extraordinary Madonnatron (below) stepped up on Sunday evening to deliver one of the festival's most glorious sets.

Now that Einstein's Garden's Solar Stage seems sadly more preoccupied with the gimmicky and pseudo-educational, GMR might now be ready to replace it as the place to go for quirky and innovative offerings.  Let's hope so.

Madonnatron weren't the only all-female band to make an impact this year.  Serafina Steer brought her new trio to the Saturday afternoon Cinedrome and managed to mesmerise with songs about such worldly matters as changing your Facebook photo - it's something only Steer can probably get away with, along with the false starts and 'oops I went too fast' declarations.  She'd delighted us at the old courtyard stage years ago and it was great to see her back with a new project that clearly promises much.

By that point the always wonderful Hinds had dazzled the Far Out stage on Friday night with their idiosyncratic brand of indie pop.  The 'Sexy Thing' intro and elements of mock choreography emphasise, if it needs emphasising, that Hinds are very aware of what they're about when it comes to challenging preconceived ideas of the girl band aesthetic and they pulled it off magnificently.

Indeed, by the time PJ Harvey headlined on Sunday night, there had already been so many highlights if seemed difficult to see how even Polly Jean could trump them.  Moddi's return to the Walled Garden on Friday night had been as poignant and unsettling as it had magical; Alasdair Roberts had once again made the same stage his own the following night and Michael Chapman's return to the festival to make fifty years as a performer was ever bit as special as we'd anticipated. 

Bands like WH Lung and Doomsquad had delighted us at the Far Out Stage and the fact that this most vibrant of all GM stages now appears to have no problem attracting a few thousand to its afternoon sets is yet another thing to celebrate, giving bands like the excellent Kikagaku Moyo the audience they deserve.  By the time Julian Cope wandered onto it on Sunday evening to deliver a memorable set of oddball humour and solo renditions of old songs it had already done enough to cement again its status as the jewel in the Green Man's increasingly glittering crown.  And yes, I stayed to see much of the Sleaford Mods set there but have to report that I still see them as an interesting curiosity rather than the national treasures so many appear to regard them as.

Anyway, PJ Harvey still delivered magnificently.  She's become more adept than anyone at ignoring conventions and doing things her own way and the gradually evolving mood she created through careful selections from recent albums and her now considerable back catalogue left us - again - with the impression that this was something no other artist in the world could quite have pulled off.  She left out early classics like 'Sheela-Na-Gig' and 'Rid Of Me' and didn't play anything from the 'Stories of the City...' album that brought her to the attention of so many people, opting instead for the a rendition of the understated 'White Chalk' and the naked blast of energy that is '50 Foot Queenie' before finishing off, not with the easy choice of spectacular favourite but with the beautiful, understated 'River Anacostia'.

It was mesmerising.  And yet, when choosing the festival's highlight, I'm going to say it was beaten into second place by the raw, savage attack delivered by Thee Oh Sees in the Far Out tent on the Saturday night.  As has been the case in recent years, the buzz generated by the crowd in that place at that time was very much part of it, but the LA four-piece rode it magnificently, producing a set that managed even to rival the one produced by Battles in that slot last year.

High praise indeed.  But then this was a Green Man Festival that once again delivered something worthy of the very highest praise.

Green Man 2017 - A personal top ten

1. Thee Oh Sees (Far Out, Saturday)

2. PJ Harvey (Mountain Stage, Sunday)

3. Hinds (Far Out, Friday)

4. Kikagaku Moyo (Far out, Friday)

5. Moddi (Walled Garden, Friday)

6. Madonnatron (Rising, Sunday)

7. Serafina Steer (Cinedrome, Saturday)

8. Alasdair Roberts (Walled Garden, Saturday)

9. Michael Chapman (Walled Garden, Sunday)

10. Julian Cope (Far Out, Friday)

 

Can it ever top this? A review of Green Man 2016

This being my tenth review of the Green Man Festival in the last eleven years, you'd think I'd be running out of things to say.  Not so.  Although the 'best ever' description is one I've used before, it's not difficult to find new superlatives when you get back from the exhilarating experience that was Green Man 2016, muddy and smelly but reflecting how, remarkably, this one really did manage to outstrip all others.

There are certain very rare experiences, across many fields of human endeavour and recreation, where you feel things are going your way and are about to get better no matter what happens - that fate cannot stand in the way of the inevitable upsurge of a great time.  Such was the feeling that hummed around the Far Out Stage of the Green Man on Thursday night, when the remarkable twisted sound experiments of Meatraffle drifted out into the still sunny surroundings.

Meatraffle

From there the sun frequently disappeared, giving way to thrashing showers and high winds, but the mood never dimmed and the Far Out continued to play one of its most memorable hands ever.  The Membranes delivered a typically forthright punch to the solar plexus that throbbed lovingly well into Friday afternoon; then Suuns produced a set that managed to top the one they so memorably unpacked in the same place five years ago.  Geoff Barrow's BEAK>; just about topped them both on the Saturday, their set of pummelling, winding noises encircling a crowd that wasn't so much entranced as part of the entrancement.

That's why reference to the music alone isn't quite enough to describe the particular joys of this Green Man.  I've raised mild concerns in recent years about a creeping atmosphere of sniffy cynicism discernable among certain purist elements, alongside a fear that the festival was also becoming a camping weekend for people who could afford simply to lounge around soaking up an atmosphere to which they contributed nothing, leaving their own tents only fleetingly to park their seats in front of the main stage and read the paper. 

Such elements seemed, for whatever reason, entirely absent this year.  A buzzing sense of anticipation encircled all the arenas; men and women older than me walked around in Belle and Sebastian t-shirts, while teenagers strolled about with The Smiths and Joy Division plastered across their chests.  Two kids, wearing unicorn and rabbit heads, danced manically, for ages, to the vintage disco being pumped out of one of the stalls.  Two teenage girls performed the most astonishing improved dance routine up and down the Mountain Foot stage steps as B&S performed in the rain on the last night. 

Belle and Sebastian

Excited and enthusiastic talk of what had been seen the night before reverberated with a gleeful sense of un-blinkered discovery around the grounds each morning.  A guy in his sixties conversed with me about the many wonderful manifestations of Malcolm Middleton, before bashing away enthusiastically on the steel barrier as he (Malc, that is) performed a storming set at the Walled Garden on the last night.  During the headline act's Sunday set, Stuart Murdoch invited dozens of fans up to fill the stage during 'The Boy With the Arab Strap'.  As they left, one young woman grabbed a microphone and yelled 'Fuck Brexit' to rapturous cheers from the crowd.

Perhaps that was part of it.  The post-Brexit need for communal enjoyment bringing out the best in people.   Opposition to this act of economic and cultural vandalism was certainly voiced from the stage on numerous occasions and drew rapturous waves of approval every time.

Middleton's set edged it in terms of the Walled Garden's many highlights, but there were many close challengers.  The gentle reflections of Steven James Adams offered poignancy, honesty and genuine warmth.  Happy Meal Ltd produced an astonishing set on the Sunday, taking glam rock sensibilities, rubbing them howling into brashly displayed torsos and delivering an irreverent, musical Bronx cheer into the bargain.  Throws were bewitching, yanking the founding members of Tunng back somewhere close to their magical roots.  Bill Baird and band crashed through a ramshackle set of gloriously melodic tunes, a kind of slacker-embossed wonky pop that's been so good for so long and it was great to see it performed here.

The Mountain Foot offered its own delights.  Belle and Sebastian's closing set on the last night was magical, a fully rounded romp through one of the finest back catalogues of modern times.  Yorkston/Thorne/Khan produced a lovingly crafted live run-through of what has been one of 2016's best albums so far.  Tindersticks were slickly enigmatic, with disguised musical punches popping up all over the place - everything you want them to be.  And people keep telling me they don't understand why I like The Unthanks so much: whatever it is, I grabbed the opportunity to see them for a second time here and wasn't disappointed.

In any other year, that final Belle & Sebastian set would have been the undisputed highlight of the weekend.  However, nine years ago Battles played a set here that I regarded - and still do - as one of the best gigs I've ever been to and it seemed too much to expect they'd get anywhere near it on this much-anticipated return.  They duly smashed it.  A full ten minutes before they came on the Far Out marquee was humming with expectation.  Then they arrived to deliver a phenomenal set that included, among other delights, a revised version of 'Atlas' that managed to do everything the old one did, and add, incredibly, still more.

The same might be said of Green Man.  I really didn't think there could be such an improvement on the many hours of exhilaration I've enjoyed at Glanusk Park in the past.  I was wrong.  The one cranked it up another notch, one I didn't know existed.  Highlight of the year - indeed, of any year.

Green Man 2016 - A personal top ten

1. Battles (Far Out, Saturday)

2. Belle and Sebastian (Mountain Foot, Sunday)

3. Meatraffle (Far Out, Thursday)

4. BEAK> (Far Out, Saturday)

5. Malcolm Middleton (Walled Garden, Sunday)

6. Suuns (Far Out, Friday)

7. Bill Baird (Walled Garden, Sunday)

8. Yorkston/Thorne/Khan (Mountain Foot, Saturday)

9. Happy Meal Ltd (Walled Garden, Sunday)

10. Steven James Adams (Walled Garden, Friday)

Green Man 2014: Unsurprisingly Good

I've got a guy to the left of me in a Crass t-shirt and an elderly woman to my right doing some knitting.  In front of me is a young girl with multi-coloured hair and her bespectacled and be-anoraked boyfriend.  All are nodding away to the music while thirty or so people sway and occasionally groove as they queue good-naturedly at the Hippy Chippy van.  You couldn't be anywhere else but the Green Man festival.

There's another side to the Green Man, though, and one that was all too in evidence in the 2014 event which, let me be clear, was a triumph, though with some reservations.  The relaxed atmosphere that makes it possible for practically anyone to enjoy themselves at the festival may yet, I fear, turn out to be its undoing.  At times, those festival abominations camp chairs stretched out so far before the Mountain and Walled Garden stage those who wanted to do the decent thing and stand to watch the bands found it difficult to find a space in which to do so, and were occasionally clucked at when they occupied a position in front of someone's seat: not very often, though, because more often than not the person in it appeared not to be showing a blind bit of interest in the music and all too often was in the process of spending hours with his/her back to it, his or her interest far more engaged by the contents of a Green Man Growler, Goan Fish Curry or Pieminster pie.

If Green Man isn't careful it's in danger of becoming little more than somewhere the middle classes can spend an August weekend in a relaxed liberal arts atmosphere with fine ales, superb scenery and unchallenging music.  For many who come to the festival, you sense that's what it already is.  It needs shaking up and one way to do it is to get rid of the far too many bands filling out the schedule this year who offered little more than background music to this cosy scene.

  

Fortunately, you can create your own excellent Green Man schedule by picking your way around the stages and there was plenty on offer to challenge those who wished to be challenged, and occasionally upset those who didn't.  Neutral Milk Hotel (top) played a storming set to close the main stage on the Sunday night, for example, but it was telling how many picked up their chairs and vacated the scene early in the set: classy Americana they like; the kind that NMH trade in, with its sophisticated and disjointed wooziness, clearly demanded too much concentration for those who wished to be passive recipients rather than active participants in the Green Man, which was always a big part of its point.

Slint, in the more receptive environs of the Far Out stage, found themselves with an audience largely made up of Slint-ites and therefore their characteristic refusal to make concessions was warmly and eagerly received, though their remarkable ingenuity and deftness of touch was lost on a bunch of girls behind me who disappeared complaining that they'd expected something a little more like the Foo Fighters based on what the programme had said.  Dunno where they got that from.  The sound wasn't great for their set, but then this band must be a sound engineer's nightmare: the overall effect, though, was mesmerising.

Others in the Far Out marquee made highly memorable contributions: Plank's sledgehammer attack of a few years ago has developed some intricacies but is none the worse for it.  Jupiter C, whose single from earlier this year I've been playing in my August Dandelion Radio show, revealed a bewitching promise well beyond the evidence I'd encountered previously.  James Yorkston played one of those sets of his that are half serious and half arsing around but he and his band made it work.  The short set Tender Prey delivered in the Cinema tent was highly enjoyable, while Talisman's performance in my one visit to the Chai Wallah on the Sunday night was every bit as good as you'd expect from one of the finest reggae bands Britain has ever produced.

Despite the cosiness demanded by too much of its audience, the Mountain Stage offered more highlights than is often the case.  Angel Olsen, a woman who could easily cut an easier path through the facile music industry by trading on her looks, instead takes a more difficult and far more interesting path, her sulky on-stage persona brilliantly matching the Cohen-esque richness of her delivery; like Olsen, Samantha Crain brought to life one of the finest albums of recent times in an exquisitely crafted and engaging performance in the Walled Garden on Sunday night, while Neko Case also didn't disappoint, one of the most distinctive voices of our age showing no ill-effects in what was her last live appearance of a lengthy tour.  Also on the Mountain Stage, veteran Cornish troubadour Michael Chapman added his considerable weight to the proceedings, providing one of the early highlights of Green Man 2014 and one that was only occasionally bettered throughout the long weekend.

Only Jeffrey Lewis and the Jrams (right) managed it. I'll be surprised if most of the mainstream reviews tell me I ought to have been watching The War On Drugs at the time, but for me Lewis is as close to unmissable as music gets and he didn't disappoint, raking brilliantly over the content of several albums (and he's never released a bad one) and leaving us, among many highlights, with an astonishing rendition 'Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror', as perhaps this festival's greatest moment.  I wish some of the chair-carriers had been able to see it above the heads of the highly appreciative crowd that swarmed around the front of the stage - would have done them good, I reckon. 

I suppose the issue I have, however, is that all of the above were artists I anticipated delivering the goods before I set out on Thursday morning.  I'm pleased they didn't disappoint, but for me so much of the beauty of the Green Man lies in the discovery of great new stuff.  This year, for me, only the excellent Frank Fairfield (left), who blew an appreciative crowd away with his startling re-imagining of songs of the old west, really did the business on this score.  Others I went to see on the off-chance of something interesting happening ranged from the ordinary to the truly appalling.  I won't name them because I don't believe in wasting words on music that doesn't do anything for me, but, among all the great music on offer, there was a gaping, disappointing hole in the middle of this festival and it needs seeing to because I suspect it, and the apathy of too much of the crowd, are two sides of the same coin.

The Green Man Festival is something that usually manages to surprise and delight in equal measure.  This year I'm happy to report that there was plenty to delight, but we were sadly lacking in surprises.

Green Man 2014: A Personal Top Ten

1.  Jeffrey Lewis & The Jrams
2.  Michael Chapman
3.  Samantha Crain
4.  Angel Olsen
5.  Neutral Milk Hotel
6.  Frank Fairfield
7.  Slint
8.  Talisman
9.  Jupiter C
10. Tender Prey

Green Man 2013: The Legends Strike Back

These annual Green Man reviews get about four or five times the number of readers than my normal blogs so I feel a certain pressure to say something different and not merely state what I've said for six of the last seven years: specifically, that the Green Man remains the unchallenged highlight of the festival summer and the musical event of the year.

So let's get that one out of the way quickly: on an atypically largely sunny weekend at Glanusk Park in the Brecon Beacons, the festival retained its eminent status comfortably.  It's probably useful for this reviewer, however, to be able to report that this year's experience was somewhat different.  While the festival normally delights in its propensity to sate my thirst for brilliant new and exciting bands, it must be said that the highlights of Green Man 2013 were often provided by more established artists.

There's an emotional element to all this.  The fact that I can at some point die having seen Patti Smith perform 'Redondo Beach' and Roy Harper deliver 'When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease' will mean the descent into my cold, cold grave will now follow a life a little less forlornly lived.  Add to that John Cale's effortless rendition of 'Pablo Picasso', Jon Langford laying into 'I Love A Millionaire' and Edwyn Collins giving us 'Blue Boy' and you had the makings of an indulgent nostalgia-fest of some magnitude.  It was to the credit of all of these performers, though, that they delivered such timeless gems with a freshness that would scarcely have been exacerbated had they penned them only yesterday.

Speaking with seasoned veterans of the Patti Smith live experience afterwards, I was frequently told that, in a dozen or more previous encounters, they'd never seen the priestess of New York punk nail her lauded back pages anything like so magnificently.  With a sparse backing band and no drummer, and taking the stage for the last gig of a long summer tour, she displayed a remarkable energy that laughed in the face of her sixty-six years.  Her performance was loaded with emotion following the death of close friend and early songwriting partner Allen Lanier only the day before and the chill that went up the spine when she sang 'Elegy', the song the two composed for Horses. would be the first of many over the weekend, reflected in the 72 year old Harper's earnestly stated hope that he would meet his audience again before the next life and perhaps even trumped by the Friday performance of Edwyn Collins.

The Green Man programme proclaims that its main Mountain Stage had a unique atmosphere.  In fact, it's generally the worst atmosphere of the festival's seven stages, its ambience dragged down by groups of people who park their deck chairs (yes, deck chairs) in front of it all day in order to get a decent spec when the major performers turned up later on and talk all the way through the likes of the excellent Haiku Salut.  Collins transformed this atmosphere into, for once, a unified cauldron of respect and admiration for a performer who was at one stage unlikely ever to speak again let alone make appearances like this.  It wasn't just about the emotion of the occasion, though; amongst newer material, Collins and his band breathed vibrant new life into classics like 'Falling & Laughing' and the aforementioned 'Blue Boy' and ensured that the first action of this reviewer on returning home was to dig out my copy of You Can't Hide Your Love Forever.

Harper reminded us that, while there have been many excellent troubadours taking stages around the country since his emergence in the mid-sixties, no one has ever been able to match his ability to confront his audience head-on quite so brilliantly and make even the most liberal-minded among us squirm with acknowledgement of our role in what a shitty world we've allowed it to become.  He refrained from giving us his finest expression of this, 'I Hate The White Man', but his delivery of classics like 'Men & My Woman' and particularly 'One Man Rock & Roll Band' more than made up for the omission got us all right between the eyes, minds and hearts with his unique combination of precise polemic and disarming charm.  

It would be wrong to say it was all about the veterans, though.  Performers of far more tender years added much to the occasion, as they always do.  There were magnificently noisy performances throughout the weekend on the Far Out Stage, where I spent even more of the festival this year than usual, from the likes of Thought Forms and Trwbador while Girls Names emphasised their thrilling transition from promising guitar band to chugging, rhythmically driven indie maestros who've, for once, attained musical sophistication and got even better while doing so. Landshapes (above, left) showed a similarly impressive progression in their performance in the Walled Garden; the former Lulu & the Lampshades can now take their place firmly in the gene line that began with The Slits and The Raincoats and to which are not a footnote, but a worthy addition who add much to one of music's most engaging musical evolutionary threads.  Moon Duo provided, as expected, one of the stage's highlights, with a groove that might well still be reverberating around the empty Glanusk Park for the rest of the summer.

If Sunday was a little more subdued than usual, this probably had something to do with so many peaks having occurred earlier than usual on the Friday, the excellence of so many late night performances and the woozy effects of the sunshine to which Green Man regulars are so unaccustomed.   It possibly had something to do with the 99 (that's 99) real ales or ciders on offer this year, provision with which the festival didn't merely respond to one of my criticisms from last year but surpassed expectations by an almost unfathomable difference.  It was Darren Hayman who stepped up to reclaim the atmosphere with a performance infused by the kind of dexterity and wit that makes him such a national, indeed international, treasure.  Following him on the Walled Garden stage, Public Service Broadcasting more than stepped up to the mark and offered a large and willing audience a festival performance of typically idiosyncratic brilliance.

Elsewhere, I've no doubt that the Green Man Rising stage was a well-meant addition to the festival.  I visited it at some point each day, in the generally forlorn hope that there might be an interesting new band on there.   Too often, sad to report, it was frequented by bands whose idea of 'new' was geared towards replicating the works of easily discernible influences.  The only band who bucked this irritating trend were Laurence Made Me Cry, a band whose album I already loved and played tracks from in my Dandelion Radio show earlier in the year.  Live they reproduced their beguiling, intricate melodies brilliantly.  More of this from Green Man Rising, please, or don't bother.

My favourite 'stumbled upon' performance this year was when I meandered into the Cinema Tent at one point to find Argentine band Los Cripis (left) in there, playing spiky indie pop with an energy that seems to have breathed welcome new life into so many practitioners of this genre of late.

I might well have gone for Smith as the festival's best performer, had it not been for the one glitch of throwing in a cover of John Lennon's god-awful 'Beautiful Boy', a song of such saccharine sentimental gush that no performer, even one as masterful as Smith, could rescue it.  Because of that, I've going to say that the magnificent Fuck Buttons edged it.  Having witnessed their remarkable debut at the Green Man in 2008, hopes were high anyway, and they were easily superseded as their hour long headline performance on the Friday night of the Far Out Stage dragged the festival's best crowd along on the enigmatic hooks of unremitting powerhouse electronics and battered yet unsubmissive rhythms.  It's tempting to proclaim that the performance found the duo at the height of their powers but the most exciting thing is they continue to sound like there's plenty left in the tank and they'll somehow, incredibly, get even better.

Green Man 2013 - A Personal Top Ten

1. Fuck Buttons (Friday, Far Out Stage)
2. Patti Smith (Thursday, Far Out Stage)
3. Moon Duo (Friday, Far Out Stage)
4. Roy Harper (Saturday, Mountain Stage)
5. Landshapes (Friday, Walled Garden)
6. Edwyn Collins (Friday, Mountain Stage)
7. Darren Hayman (Sunday, Walled Garden)
8. Los Cripis (Saturday, Cinema Tent)
9. Laurence Made Me Cry (Sunday, Green Man Rising)
10. Public Service Broadcasting (Sunday, Walled Garden)


You can still hear my Green Man 'preview' in my Dandelion Show throughout the rest of August.  My October show will include, among other things, several of the highlights mentioned above.

Green Man 2011: A Report

There were gratifyingly few clouds of the physical variety at this year's Green Man Festival, but one or two metaphorical ones gathering over the Welsh hills, threatening showers throughout Friday and Saturday, relieved by some startlingly sunny intervals, before a cracking Sunday line-up broke through the previously overcast conditions and saved the day.

Every Green Man before this one had got off to a fairly mild start before some band or artist walked in - usually on Friday afternoon or evening - and really kickstarted the event. It was the same this time, but disappointingly they didn't arrive until Saturday evening. At that point Polar Bear took to the stage, delivered a blistering 45 minute set, and from that point Green Man 2011 never looked back. I'll be the first to admit that jazz isn't something I particularly understand and that, therefore, I'm not in much of a position to appreciate what Polar Bear do, but what I did appreciate was the appearance of such a challenging and uncompromising set that had followed far too much mediocrity across the first two days.

That's not to say we hadn't had highlights before this, including some scorching pyrotechnics from Holy Fuck on the first night, delivering a performance that deserves to rank among the greatest Green Man sets ever, ably supported by a richly dynamic Sic Alps. But am I alone in sensing that the Far Out marquee witnessed an outpouring of relief among the crowd following a day that had barely hinted at such a spectacle? The highlights earlier that day had been few and far between...a richly rewarding set on the main stage from the Cave Singers and brilliantly promising performances at the Green Man Pub from Younghusband, playing their first festival, and Tender Prey, playing their first gig. The former impressed with their brash confidence and the consistent quality of their tunes while the former experienced a hesitant start but grew into something genuinely wonderful during their half hour on the stage. I'd love to see them when they've got half a dozen gigs under their belt.

She Keeps Bees were easily the best thing during the daylight hours of Saturday and indeed, somewhat depressingly, only one of two bands genuinely to light up the main stage across the whole weekend. The Burns Unit were entertaining enough, but then any band featuring the vocal talents of both King Creosote and Emma Peacock can't help but generate something astonishing during the course of three-quarters of an hour, and I'd still prefer any of that collective's separate projects to the semi-vaudevillian pastiche they produced together, which sometimes veered close to the self-congratulatory.

What grated about so much of the rest was not just the mediocrity, but a sense that the Green Man's priorities are, perhaps understandably in one sense, moving towards packing out the main stage with sufficient big names of the Uncut/Mojo set (Fleet Foxes, Laura Marling, James Blake, Noah and the Whale, etc) and that those who, like me, prefer to pick around the stages in search of more creative thrills may still find them, but will have to search around among the b-list indie bands, faux americana and nondescript singer-songwriters to do so. And so many of them talked on stage of Green Man-related superlatives (great to be at the best festival in Britain, one of the best in Europe, etc). All of which I can agree with, but the problem is a festival's only as good as its performers, and it'll only stay that good if you come and make a genuine contribution to it rather than simply bask in its much commended vibe.

There were other scheduling decisions that were simply baffling. The Doozer, whose sub-Syd Barrett ditties work perfectly well on record, has an intimacy to his set that may have worked in, say, the confines of Einstein's Garden but just didn't scan in the wider festival setting. And the choice of Explosions In The Sky, a band I love, for first night main stage headliners was perplexing. They're a band who have to be appreciated for the intricacies of their musicianship and not for the bombastic sound some attribute to them, and as such would have gone down a storm on the Far Out stage. Here, their gorgeous fretwork just didn't reach out across the green amphipheatre and anyone not previously acquainted with their sound seemed understandably lost.

But then, as the dusk gathered on Saturday night, we got our festival back. Following Polar Bear's catalytic intervention, we moved across to the Chai Wallah stage to see Manchester's Nucleus Roots deliver a set of the most sublime and uplifting reggae to get that stage's party into full swing. So good were they I almost stayed to the end, which would have meant sacrificing the opportunity to see James Yorkston at the Green Man Pub. Thankfully I made the decision to go, and found Yorkston delivering his best Green Man set ever, semi-improvised and generating a power that no other artist in this idiom can get anywhere near. I'd pleaded in my August Dandelion Radio show for James to include a version of Shipwreckers. Not only did he do this, he gave me the finest rendition of this beast of a song ever, followed with a sparsely concocted version of Tortoise Regrets Hare. Even more audaciously, the set finished with a violin and accordion propelled version of I Feel Love. We shot off to Far Out as soon as he'd finished to hear the second half of a characteristically uncompromising set from the awesome Squarepusher.

Then came the optimism and sunshine-fuelled Sunday, beginning with the gentle, unpretentious and compelling Two Man Ting, the understated electronic and sampling brilliance of Zwolf and a highly evocative set from the gorgeous Our Broken Garden, prior to the fascinating guitar and drums assault of Tweak Bird - great to see such an abrasive duo able to deliver with such personality and humour - before I said a farewell to the Far Out stage for another year with a stunning performance from Suuns, who took off where Tweak Bird had left off but fed in woozy grooves where the former band had supplied naked energy.

In between, I found one of the unanticipated highlights of this year's festival in the shape of Norway's Moddi, who started with the smallest audience of the weekend (for some reason the pull of Laura Marling and The Antlers on other stages had proved too appealing) but whose accordion and cello drenched gems seemed to pull in anyone who happened to go past so that, by the time the set finished the Green Man Pub was full to the brim and responded with a standing ovation. No artist had charmed the Green Man like Moddi across the whole weekend, and first thing I've done today on getting home is order a copy of his album. This was exquisite, totally unique and an example of what this festival, like no other, can do for you when it genuinely hits the heights.

Ultimately, there was enough about Green Man 2011 to ensure it remains the finest festival on the circuit, still helped by the complete absence of police and corporate sponsorship as well as friendly and helpful security staff. Pleasing too, to see the number of young teenage girls - who the media would love to think live in a world of Justin Bieber and whatever the latest X Factor churns up - in full dancing mode to The Cave Singers and making up most of the front row of Holy Fuck. The Green Man has a way of providing much needed reassurances once a year that the world hasn't entirely taken leave of its senses. For 2012, I would simply implore them to eliminate some of the mediocre padding that filled out so much of this event and not forget that a passion for taking risks and challenging its audience has always been a major part of its appeal.

A Green Man 2011 Top Ten:

1. Holy Fuck

2. James Yorkston

3. Moddi

4. Tweak Bird

5. She Keeps Bees

6. Suuns

7. The Cave Singers

8. Our Broken Garden

9. Younghusband

10. Nucleus Roots