Sunday 28/08/05 Day 3 @ Carling Weekend, Reading

It's the final leg of an epic weekend and the Reading festival site is besieged by long-haired, middle-aged rockers in biker jackets and Iron Maiden t-shirts. Seems like a good time for Gigwise to take refuge at the smaller stages.

 

Art Brut provide the perfect wake up call over at the NME Radio 1 Stage. True, they wouldn’t know a melody if it hit them on the arse but their reinvention of Pulp as a London punk band goes down a treat. Eddie Argos proves a captivating frontman and ends their set by imploring the crowd to, ‘go home and form bands, and then write songs I want to hear, or write books I want to read so I don’t have to do this anymore.’

 

Towers of London continue the early afternoon London love-in. However there is little to love about this woeful excuse for a band. Even Donny Tourrette climbing aloft a speaker stack and putting his hand down his pants isn’t enough to keep the restless crowd entertained. Every song is an awfully played, cliché ridden retread of the Sex Pistols with embarrassingly retarded lyrics and cringeworthy empty rock posturing.

 

From the ridiculous to the sublime, The Rakes appear on stage one man short as the crowd are informed that singer Alan Donohoe is at home ill. Guitarist Matthew Swinnerton valiantly takes up vocal duties for the first half of the set. But then in one of the ‘moments’ of the weekend, the Rakes suddenly form a Britrock supergroup with Bloc Party’s Russell Lissack and Gordon Moakes and Maximo Park’s Paul Smith joining them for a showstopping finale playing ‘Strasbourg’ and a endearingly shambolic ’22 Grand Job’.

 

After almost upstaging The Rakes, Smith gets back to his day job of singing with Maximo Park, and it’s a job he does brilliantly. Whether reading lyrics from his pocket notebook or jumping around the stage during a crowdpleasing ‘Apply Some Pressure’, his oddball stage presence is a wonder to behold. Musically they dispel any accusations of being Futurehead clones with every song already sounding like a 3-minute pure pop classic.

Deby’s Komakino walk on stage with the confidence of a headline act and from the moment they plug in their guitars it’s not hard to see why. Succeeding where The Rifles failed, the packed out tent (including members off Bloc Party) seem to relish every second of their energetic set. While they don’t veer too far away from the Interpol / Bloc Party template, Komakino may well just have the songs to pull it off.

 

Over on the Dance Stage MIA may well be one of the most hyped artists of the year but the live experience is somewhat lacking. Relying on just one extra vocalist and some tinny trebly samples the stage looks empty and even her cutting vocals get lost in the mix. Tellingly the Sri Lankan has to rely on cheap gimmicks to liven up the show, throwing horns into the crowd and orchestrating a stage invasion at the end.

 

She could learn a thing or two from LCD Soundsystem about putting on a live show. With three percussionists and a full live band they make an incredible noise. James Murphy manages to get literally the whole of the NME Radio One Tent dancing – no mean feat to a crowd who have spent the last three days slumming it in a muddy field. Funky bass, punky guitars and electronic disco beats combine to sound like the soundtrack to the greatest rave ever.

 

As a band that first met each other at Reading festival six years ago, it seemed quite fitting that Bloc Party should bring the festival to a close in the year that they have gone from relative obscurity to household names. Needless to say, they are in sensational form. Opener ‘Like Eating Glass’ sounds far more powerful and urgent live than on record. Every song is met with sheer rapture from the crowd and the band are clearly loving it; ‘I think this has to be the most fun we’ve ever had’ said a jubilant Kele Okereke. As the momentous set finishes with a soaring version of ‘The Pioneers’, confetti canons explode into the crowd, covering the whole tent to bring the curtain down in style on a truly unforgettable Reading Festival 2005.