If End Of The Road can sometimes be a sonic whiskey sour – fiery but rewarding – Saturday brings some welcome froth. “Let’s rock this psych track!” yell The Lemon Twigs from the Woods stage. “I hope nobody gets a bad trip from this one.” Little knowing perhaps that their Rubber Soul version of psychedelia is significantly breezier than the sort of head-crushing sounds the peacocks of Larmer Tree Gardens have grown to love over the years.
Here to shamelessly plug their new album A Dream Is All We Know (“because that’s what this whole festival game is about!” Michael D’addario admits, their marketing plan as rooted in the past as their music) the Long Island brothers provide vivifying light relief. The Byrds’ honeyed folk rock, beat-era songwriting and Beach Boys harmonic blendings are dipped in a ‘70s pop rock sensibility to create – on “In My Head”, “Church Bells” and their actual Beach Boys cover “You’re So Good To Me” – a richly satisfying evocation of simpler pop times, like Silver Sun, Ben Folds or Weezer at their most retro-active.
They have some affectionate comedy schtick too, explaining in depth the concept of the “cover version” and giving a British translation of “Foolin’ Around” as “Soddin’ About”.
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Sam Morton – the collaboration between actor Samantha Morton and XL supremo Richard Russell – meanwhile, sets out to straddle the art and melody at EOTR’s core. In a shocking blue jacket at the front of the Big Top stage before her rank of samplers, keyboardists and box-prodders, Morton is certainly prone to exploring the grimier elements of her traumatic childhood in suitably dank tones. “The smell of piss!” she cries over some dour, Eastern creeptronica on “Hunger Hill Road”. “Hug me while I cry!”
Despite her fragile voice, there’s a soulful melodicism at play beneath the grit. A sample of a policeman delivering news of a fatal overdose to the family gives way to a piece of enthralling trip-pop balladry, and Morton’s spoken word introduction to “Broxtowe Girl”, outlining the rebel parties that went on in her Nottingham children’s homes, bleeds into some positively life-affirming cosmic reggae.
If Morton needs a lesson in this inter-dimensional chanteuse lark, though, Jockstrap are giving a masterclass on the Woods stage. They map entirely new territory they’ve discovered between sultry classic blues, modernist rave, Disney soundtracks, chamber pop, trip-hop and elegant folk ennui. Maudlin amid the electronic frenzies of “Debra”, singer Georgia Ellery invents a wonderful new pop archetype – the sad girl in the superclub.
Over on the Garden Stage, things are getting croony. Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck comes on like a truck-stop Sinatra, while headliner Richard Hawley goes full Vegas: when he parades around the stage waving a “Welcome To Sheffield” road sign, he should really have scrawled the word “Fabulous” across the middle.
In building a glowering atmosphere with noir rockers like “She Brings The Sunlight”, murder ballad “Standing At The Sky’s Edge” and the brisk and modernist paranoia of “Deep Space”, he constructs a theatrical soundstage upon which his kitchen sink tales of Yorkshire joys and hardships can play out.
The showman soon emerges, though, as “Coles Corner” proves a real bow-tie loosener and “Prism In Jeans” chases its rootless protagonist around the blue bayous of the Sheffield suburbs. By a sweeping “Tonight The Streets Are Ours” – introduced as a celebration of “getting rid of those Tory fuckers” – and the ballsy ballroom ballad “Is There A Pill?”, EOTR is transported to lavish distant lounges, then sent packing with a gruff “you must have second homes to go to” ahead of a final “Heart Of Oak”. Frothy yes, but intensely flavourful.
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