poppedmusic

Words & Photos: Gary Lambert

Friday at All Points East – Victoria Park, London – 28 August 2023

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I love festivals. Festivals make me feel like the happiest person on earth. Ten years ago I was sat at a table at Kendal Calling chatting to someone who had finished their shift and said “if you want, I can get you a job working the festival circuit, just doing stuff”.  I worked in an office then doing job I hated for regular money so I said no.  I think about this huge life mistake often and know that if I had the chance again I’d bet it all on black.  So with a couple of days notice when I was given the chance due to someone else’s bad luck to go to a festival 200+ miles from home for one day, there was no way on earth I was saying no.

All Points East is an awkward festival to get to if you’re not London-based, and I don’t have a clue if parking at Epping and bouncing The Tube in was sensible or ridiculous.  However it was handy and it meant I got to spend thirty minutes on The Tube (I also love The Tube as I only go on it once in a while, but it feels inspiring).  If you have any better ideas for how to get to All Points East from the north of England by car please let me know (it’s sadly cheaper, more reliable, and easier for lugging gear than the environmentally friendly options).

Sometimes these big London “festivals” feel anything but a festival.  Instead, they give you a sense that you’re at a big gig in a field headlined by a band who are two years past their best but nobody will acknowledge it because everybody is in the field with you just for the headliner.  There is a different atmosphere to a festival in comparison to one of those shows.  Thankfully All Points East feels like a festival.  As soon as you walk through the gate it feels designed and curated to replicate the sense of being in a field in the middle of nowhere with an awkwardly shaped “marketplace” of food stalls, added to the fact there are at least five or six stages playing music so you can wander around and at times catch some music accidentally.  As well as get food, buy earplugs, and win corporately sponsored prizes.

There is a lot of corporate sponsorship at All Points East and definitely, that money has been used to create a festival your favourite indie fest cannot compete with, no point in denying it, but what really comes across is that there is care and pride in how this festival has been made.  The festival bill was curated so that whatever choice you made as to which stage to go to next and which act to watch, it flowed beautifully.  Like the music festival equivalent of a Choose Your Adventure book. It’s probably easier to do this when your stages are only starting at 3pm so you don’t need to find any filler bands, but when the music industry is, like any other industry, based around personal relationships and people wanting to do their job as smoothly as possible, All Points East have (admittedly based on the bands I chose to watch and my view of the others on the bill) avoided making decisions for the benefit of anything other than making the coolest, most enjoyable, “best in class” decisions for their festival.

Anyway, that’s enough about All Points East, now it is on to the really exciting stuff, the bands.  First up for Popped Music was HotWax.  And HotWax were hot as!  Hitting that sweet spot of between fun and heavy, undoubtedly my favourite sweet spot in music, HotWax will energise you and make you throw their tracks onto a playlist as they tune up between songs before getting on with the job of having fun once more.

The Lazy Eyes are an Australian band who mixed joyful indie rock with technically showy prog sounds.  The sort of band ideal for festivals as for a group of friends they will have something for everybody as their energy and tunes will win over anybody looking for a good time, whilst the musicianship on show will definitely impress those who look at music through a more serious lens.

I might not have heard of LA band Julie prior to their set, but I don’t think a day has gone by since without me telling someone else about them.  Telling them that Julie are a band you must listen to, you must experience, you must book them at your venue next time they’re in Europe. Why?  They’re simply breathtaking.  Looking like the coolest kids from Los Angeles School for the Coolest Kids, they have an insouciant swagger that grabs you attention as they saunter around the stage.  In a festival setting it makes you think automatically “these look like a band”.  And then they start to play.  And oh what a sound they make.  Imagine Black Rebel Motorcycle Club but with added hardcore moments that are suddenly, shockingly there to rip your throat out. Their set was powerful and vicious, and ruined my plans because I was not leaving the field until their set was over. Sorry to the other two bands I was going to check out during that time, but you just weren’t Julie.

Now it was time for Picture Parlour. If you believe social media, Picture Parlour have been designed by Don Draper and Gordon Gecko solely with the intent of taking the money from gig goers around the country without any heart or soul – or any hard work to get into a position for success. We, however, prefer to trust our own eyes on this matter, and we have known one of the members of Picture Parlour for a number of years now. They’ve been on these pages in reviews, interviews, and we’ve even had them play a show in a basement for us.  This is someone who has worked the hard yards, and if they’re having some success now, then I’m quite happy to give them the benefit of the doubt – and turn up to cheer them on the first chance I got.  This is a band who, like several others I’ve known, have honed their songs and craft for the project in the studio rather than choose to do their learning opening up a show in front of six people in The Jacaranda or Yes Basement or The Sunflower Lounge or whichever small capacity venue is near you, so I had high hopes.  And they achieved expectations and then some.  The key to Picture Parlour’s live performance is frontperson Katherine’s ability to prowl the stage and commandeer your attention.  It pushes them into something different.  There seems to be a lot of inspiration from latter day Alex Turner in their performance, but whereas Alex makes my toes curl, Katherine makes me feel like this is natural and how they wish to be seen on stage rather than how they’ve decided one day they’d like to be seen on stage.  It’s cool and makes you smile.  There’s witticism and guidance in the movements.  Like a mime being a big band leader. Nothing needs to be said, you just understand the purpose.

Movement around the stage for Angel Olsen was minimal, but that just meant the beauty in her vocal performance is maximised.  Whilst being in the photo pit so close to her was a treat, wandering to the back of the field to close my eyes and just get loose in the sound was truly magnificent.  Like you could just take a deep breath and feel you had grown, you could see new colours even though your eyes were closed.  I’m never in a million years going to listen to Angel Olsen at home unless she brings out a disco or metalcore album, but oh god that voice was so special.  And given that there have been some criticisms of the sound at All Points East, I can say hand on heart that for me that sounded brilliant.  Although festivals generally have unreliable sound with so many atmospheric moving parts.

I feel embarrassed that it has taken me so long to see Amyl and The Sniffers. They are the fashionable global punk act thanks to the chaotic energy of their frontwoman.  It’s very difficult to focus on anything other than Amy whilst the band are on stage as they dominate to such a degree that you’d swear they were 300ft tall.  Even standing still, it’s a struggle to keep your eyes off them.  And the heavens opened during their set, a proper biblical downpour where each raindrop felt like a god was prodding you.  The result was that it magnified the glory of the punk rock.  It made the event feel edgy and dangerous and awakening.

The rain meant that Tash had a packed tent for her set which I was looking forward to, but wasn’t putting any expectations on because I’ve seen so many young alt-scene performers over the years have a wide gap between a crafted and designed studio sound and a live show that is still being worked on.  I was shocked by how good Tash was.  Her performance was wild yet controlled, commanding yet not begging for attention, and fun without being silly.  She really owned the tent – and I got the feeling there were a lot of people in there who felt lucky that they chose there to stay dry.  Keep an eye on Tash.  She might just do great things.

Then it came to the act I’d been most excited to see, Yeah Yeah Yeahs.  If you’d asked me six months previous if I’d be excited to see Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I’d have been baffled as to why.  When they first came to prominence, the coolness of the three-piece had caused a lot of people I’d consider to be dickheads to like them.  As a result, I was put off the band.  Then in March this year, Spotify’s algorithm decided I wanted to listen to them – and it hit home for me that afternoon to the point that I listened to their entire works one after the other besotted with them.  So for other people, this was a nostalgia set, but for me, it was an exciting opportunity to see a new love for the first time.  And it made me so happy.  They were ace.  But you know bands like that are going to be ace.  But it really put the cap on a great day.  I loved it.  I loved it to the extent that I could have walked away from The Strokes without listening to a note because my day literally could not get better.  As for The Strokes, I’ll leave it to the words of my mate Suzie Queue to sum them up “a two hour mosh pit fearing for my life was worth it”.

They weren’t Yeah Yeah Yeahs though.  But who is?  And more importantly for Popped Music, who in a decade’s time, will be headlining festivals?  Picture Parlour?  Julie? Tash?  Who knows!  But it’ll be beautiful finding out.

N