Saturday 02/08/08 The Maccabees, Melt Banana @ Standon Calling, Hertfordshire

Any seasoned festival-goer will appreciate that to pitch your tent just two hundred metres from the main stage is an almost unheard of luxury at most British festivals.  Not at the tiny Standon Calling, however. The absence of corporate sponsors and advertising at this intimate event lends a sense of integrity and individuality to the event. In three or four lush green fields in the heart of Hertfordshire, drinks are served from a tree-bar, bands and spoken word are watched from the comfort of sofas and blankets, and tea and homemade cake is provided in plenty as people lounge at the poolside and on hay bales.  Then, after dark, DJs entertain until the small hours from makeshift scaffolding in a decrepit corrugated iron cowshed, transformed into an illuminated Japanese love hotel.

On Saturday morning, feeling the effects of much aforementioned cowshed debauchery, Gigwise sleepily trudges to the Lordship Tent to find solace in the sofas and the hand-stitched harmony-laden melodies of Peggy Sue and The Pirates.  Today, Katy and Rosa seem to be suffering almost as much as their groggy audience, apologising for their inability to talk due to their morning-after fragility.  Musically, they enchant, their voices warming the tent with sparsely instrumented popsongs about life and love in the frankest of terms.  It can only be hoped that the recognition they deserve isn’t too far off.

Mid-afternoon thecocknbullkid takes to the main stage.  There’s a huge buzz around Anita Blay and her hybrid electro-urban-pop.  Scroobius Pip told his Standon audience to check her out, and Metronomy has produced her latest single.  Sadly though, her live performance is bland and fairly tuneless.  Her band fail to recreate the irreplaceable quirky allure of Metronomy’s recorded production, and her voice is not nearly so interesting in person, coupled with the fact that most of her songs are lyrically facile and musically flat in this environment.  This is a genuine shame, but until Blay can recreate the analogue interest of her recorded sound on stage she is unlikely to convince.

Melt Banana are the Japanese highlight of the Japanese-themed weekend.  On Saturday night the revellers dress up in far eastern attire and we sit around a huge campfire watching sumo wrestlers and harajuku girls dancing in the fields.  Melt Banana are furiously paced, their noisy spazz rock an acquired taste, but their set is well received, feeding off the static excitement of the Saturday night.

Later, The Maccabees take to the same stage for one of their few festival appearances of this summer, as they take time off to write their second album.  Having told Gigwise earlier in the day that he didn’t really want to do any gigs at all, it comes as no surprise to see vocalist Orlando Weeks a little subdued and weary onstage, vocally dragging himself through openers ‘Lego’ and ‘X-ray’, both of which are much slower than at their frenetic early ‘Colour It In’ shows.  His fixed ambivalence could’ve spoiled the set, even with guitarist Felix’s over-compensatory energy and willingness to interact with the crowd. 

However, their fourth song, one of six new tracks of the set, turns everything around.  No one’s heard it before, but the audience love it nonetheless, dancing happily to this more swollen, complex version of The Maccabees’ exultant, spirited pop.  Orlando suddenly relaxes, and everything falls back into place.  By the end, despite being plagued with a few technical problems, Orlando is cheerfully bumbling his way through thankyous, perfectly happy to perform some more overplayed ‘Colour It In’ highlights to a very special receptive and respectful crowd.  And then it’s back to the Cowshed, for Adventures Close To Home DJs, who shake the tin walls from their foundations with a heady concoction of dirty bass and heavy electronica until early Sunday morning.

Click here to see Standon Calling 2008 in pictures