Tuesday 26/06/07 Day One @ Hove Festival, Arendal, Norway

It doesn’t take much to make Gigwise want to escape into the remote woodland of Southern Norway. Of course, last week’s Glastonbury Festival – we say festival, we of course mean regatta – is an added incentive to hop on a cheap flight. That’s not just it, however, there are of course more musical reasons for us being here. Although the Hove Festival is in its inaugural year, it boasts one of the strongest line-ups of any continental festival on the calendar. The Killers, Kaiser Chiefs, Arcade Fire, Queens Of The Stone Age, Bright Eyes, Gossip, Interpol, Mastodon...we could continue, but heck, this is only day one.

Now, we won’t bore you with the details of our journey to Norway – after all a plane is a plane - except to say that it became a lot more difficult once we’d entered the country of our destination – we’re talking close to strip search difficult. Yes that’s right. If you fancy coming to the next edition of this festival or just Norway in general, then keep your head down and don’t say hello in the ‘Nothing to Declare’ section of customs. 

Near trauma over (after we declared that our Haribo Sour Mix was in fact just Haribo Sour Mix) and dignity still semi intact, the journey to the festival site from Kristiansand Airport at one and a half hours is actually longer than the flight from the UK.  Now, we’re not sure if having The Noisettes flight cases in the back of our van caused the journey to be so slow or that it is actually just a long journey from Kristiansand to Arendal. Anyway, to make things worse, our plan to escape the waders and trench foot of Glastonbury has hit a rather immediate hitch – it’s raining... badly.  So much so that as we drive onto the muddy festival site, a girl can be heard saying, “I’m losing my pants,” while others are frantically searching for wellies and waterproof bin bags in Glasto-esque haste. Maybe the fact that we’re still below the most Northern Shetland Islands of the United Kingdom should have warned us that Norway is not actually the continental tropical place that we hoped it would be.

Thankfully, unlike Gigwise’s recent experience at the much heralded Worthy Farm festival, this time we’re staying in a beach house with our own jetty and everything, man. In festival terms this is a rare five star luxury It’s just upsetting that the boat which is moored to the dock when we arrive would be a handy form of transport over today’s flooded festival site. 

Arriving at just after seven in the evening meant that sadly we missed what we’re informed was a “stellar” performance from The Twang; a “new rave” assault from Klaxons and a “mesmerising” show from Chromeo. We’re not too disheartened though. Firstly, because The Twang are... fill-in-you-own-opinion, and secondly, after getting lost on the forest trails, and via Incubus’ closing song, we literally bump into Amy Winehouse playing on the Amphi-stage. It’s a rather pleasant collision.

Winehouse may court criticism about her off and often, on-stage love of alcohol, but the reality is that as a performer she rarely disappoints. Tonight, her vocal range – from the depths of ‘Rehab’ to the scintillating, ‘Me And Mr Jones,’ – is as dynamic as ever. Running on stage (probably to keep warm in the now rapidly descending temperatures) she speaks sparingly during her hour long set but enough to make you realise that – contrary to the tabloid assertion – she does actually care. Taking most of her set list from her critically and commercially acclaimed ‘Back To Black’ album, Winehouse is again backed by her now trademark, vivaciously energetic backing dancer. In the deep forest of the Hove Festival, ‘You Know I’m No Good’s’ funk-tinged bassline reverberates around the tall trees with infinite resonance, whilst ‘Back To Black’ retains its intimacy in the rather unique woodland amphitheatre. Closing with her cover of The Zutons’, ‘Valerie,’ tonight, in Norway, without a paparazzi lens in sight, Winehouse seems understandably reluctant to leave.