Friday 21/08/09 Green Man Festival, Day One @ Brecon Beacons, Wales

We Aeronauts were the winners of this years coveted slot of Green Poll winners, and so bag the trophy slot of opening the Main Stage, strident indie-folk chimes reminiscent of My Latest Novel and Annuals on a euphoric tune from the off, then trad arrangement 'The Bosun's Cry', and yikes, bouncy pop à la Noah & the Whale - a Grease-style love-song about Nazi Germany, oozing cheese!

 

Dollboy fashions mellow works of pastoral folk, chilled for discernment, transporting with acoustic and minimal programming, today opening the Far Out stage with the wyrd-acoustica of 'One Liner' sounding like a boiled egg's proteins becoming denatured, while the woodkrafted 'A Beard Of Bees' evokes croqueted garden fêtes, and 'Hello Sailor!' musters a feeling of arriving at the Green Man. Elsewhere, homage is paid to Ivor Cutler's verse, while 'California' is a hazy shade of psyche-folk like a Linda Perhacs gem, with 'Jet Age kids' taking the Green Man airborne, a sweeping work of kosmik-folk.

 

6 Day Riot are a rousing and ebullient folk-pop act defining their sound with frothy instrumentation from standing bass and ukulele with trumpet sneaking in mariachi flavours - 'Go! Canada', 'O Those Kids' and 'Run For Your life' harbour a (dare I say) Lily Allen-esque carnival air with catchy verse, but a cover of Fleetwood Mac's 'Tusk' with pounding tribal drums is the order of the day! Contrastingly, Diagonal make for difficult, angular Tortoise-like free-form post-rock, fashioning a cross-section of bedlam on 'The Future Without Crustaceans' - you've just been progged!.

More masked men pounce from Liverpool - The Wave Machines have got it going good! Bag Talking Heads with Cyndi Lauper and The Guillemots, and you've a candy store of funk-pop evinced from the euphoric 'Punk Spirit' - a tale of politesse over frustration, while the blissful 'The Greatest Escape We Ever Made' has the hooks down pat, and 'The Line' is an 80's-ish sweet-pea. Flagons of good cheer to the masked avengers!!!

Beth Jean Houghton is springing surprises from Far Out - with a Siren's dulcet tones seemingly at odds with the jaunty-pop exploding-birthday-cake gaiety of her songs, the jubilant 'Hot Toast' has the wee daughter of band member Rory up with her choreographed dance routine among flashes of 'Cruel Francis', violin and trumpet rule, while 'Night Swimmer' feels ethereal and incongruent with the pop-tart frou frou and candyfloss hair B.J.H. sports. Histrionic-free!

Pivot wrestle post-rock dynamite 'Sweet Memory' from 'O Soundtrack My Heart' - I mean, these guys have come from Oz, so the need to tweak knobs like a hyper-kinetic bobbin can be excused - a cross-roads of ideas exists, free jazz drums hold the beat as bass plays lead, arrangements are dismantled, re-assembled, beef-caked, droned out, as Pivot soundtrack future cities. We're in good hands...

Gang Gang Dance do weirdy vocals, and banshee wails, but Karin Dreijer Andersson (The Knife) does it better. There's ladles of electro-noodle that can't find it's way despite X2 drummers - at times sounding spooky, passé, and contrived. Yet, the masses shape-shift, and Fourtet has the marquee a-jumpin' to his electro-wizardy. Building Teutonic programming that take in waymarkers from 'Ringer' and massaging the audience with beat-laden loops, where-from samples and pristine electonica, this is the sound of post-clubbing at 160bpm.

The pièce de résisitance - Animal Collective finally over the hitches and looping "you're dreaming" samples amongst obscurationist lyrics, this is a performance that takes some sticking with that even the died-in-the-wool fan would find difficult, yet A.C. prove to match their ambitious scope. Throw in alt-country flavours, post-rave anthems, alt-folk, add 'Summertime Clothes', the sublime 'My Girls', the sqiggly traffic light signals of 'Daily Routine' lighting up my head and it's a winner, then A.C. go off-kilter - dirgy and noodly, lacking coherence and testing patience. 'Lion in A Coma' works the crowd mental, the belting closer 'Brothersport' counselling "...open up your, open up your..." with a Bez-like agit-dancer. Tricky, but whoopee!