Saturday 15/09/07 Day Two @ End of the Road festival, Salisbury

Really, it can’t be overemphasised how ****ing cold it was last night. I make a mental note to acquire some sort of amphetamine so I don’t have to bother sleeping tonight, before realising that the only drugs in Dorset are spliffs and Calpol. Oh well.

The Gigwise day kicks off with a trip to Yankee art-rockers (literally, not slangily) My Brightest Diamond, a band whose name I like so much that I keep on listening to them in the hope of liking their music as well. It doesn’t work. Crashing grungy tosh that would have sounded derivative in 1992, there’s too much good stuff around to waste spending any more time in the Big Top tent today.

Such as last year’s crowd pleasers, the Swedish collective I’m From Barcelona. Unlike the Prozac psychosis that is The Polyphonic Spree, this lot are genuinely entertaining and manage to make an entire field full of children and hungover adults cheery. The bounciness of ‘Treehouse’ and ‘Chickenpox’ are too much for some cynics who stumble off muttering things about “too camp for this time of the afternoon”.

Staying in Sweden and the Garden stage and this is the first time I’ve seen The Concretes since they carelessly mislaid singer Victoria Bergsman. While Bergsman has, to my knowledge, done sweet **** all since her backing vocals on ‘Young Folks’, her old band show off the fruits of their 10 years together with warbling duties from former drummer Lisa Milberg who, despite showing all the stage presence of a Twiglet, has a voice that provides a more than adequate replacement for Bergsman’s honeyed tones. ‘Firewatch’ especially lures the crowd into belying their Dorset calm and throwing all manner of Swedish shapes.