Into the Blue

Stephen Black, otherwise known as Sweet Baboo, tells a very complicated tale of the opening number of his set at the Prince Albert pub: it was originally called Wild Imagination and was the title track of the new album; but Moshi Moshi hated it so much they wanted it left off. So Sweet Baboo retitled another song Wild Imagination, but he is playing the original on tour just to spite the record company. I can’t remember the new title of the original song but it was about trying to persuade Black’s three-year-old son to leave the house more and embrace the outdoors. Are you following this?

This deadpan comic explanation is typical of Black’s between-songs ramblings as he tells us about the space bongo - “people have been going wild for the space bongo” - played by multi-instrumentalist Rob Jones and how the band have slimmed down from a six-piece to three since their last tour. To compensate, he says, they have crammed the stage with equipment; as well as the keyboards and guitars Black and Jones have, there is another Jones - Paul - surrounded by more keyboards than Kraftwerk had between them at the Brighton Centre last week. When things go wrong - as they do a few times - it is all dealt with with good-natured forebearence and a lightning quick catchphrase, "ten years in the biz".

There are some excellent tracks played from Wild Imagination that show the sophistication of the arrangements, the simplicity of the sentiments expressed and the emotion of Stephen Black’s voice. The beautiful Swallows, with its plaintive refrain of “Oh, won’t you come back to me?”, is contrasted with the funk of Pink Rainbow; and songs such as Wild Imagination (the newly titled one) and Badminton capture the bittersweet essence of the Sweet Baboo sound from the previous two albums.

There is a trio of songs from those albums: the glorious Swimming Wild and If I Died from 2013's Ships and the sublime Walking in the Rain from The Boombox Ballads, the track that first caught my ear when I saw Sweet Baboo at the Green Man festival in 2015. However, the stand-out song last night was Clear Blue Skies from the new album. Formless and abstract, it rolls along, swelling and falling, with shimmering and mournful guitars underpinning a lyric of hope and sorrow: "let's rise/ into clear blue skies/ far from home/ clear clear blue/ let's not worry about tomorrow".

Music Therapy

Friday evening, and after a hard week back at the chalkface, I was in need of a lift. With a few quid left over from the summer spending money and new albums out from Nick Cave, King Creosote and Pictish Trail, I headed down to Bexhill’s stellar record shop, Music’s Not Dead, for some – and I know it’s not a nice phrase - retail therapy. But as so often with Music’s Not Dead, you don’t just get to pick up the albums; there is always a warm welcome and sometimes you get to have some of the tracks played to you live by the artists themselves: music therapy.

Last night it was the turn of Isle of Eigg-based Johnny Lynch, AKA Pictish Trail and head honcho of the Lost Map record label, to perform in-store to promote his beautiful new album, Future Echoes. Supported on bass and keyboards by Suse from Lost Map band, Tuff Love, he delivered a short but diverse set, mostly from the album. The first song from Future Echoes was Until Now, a traditional and haunting number which highlighted Lynch’s voice at its tender best. We were also treated to Half-Life, the centrepiece of the album, with its nagging refrain of “we will always decay”, and the funky shuffle of Dead Connection which name-checked his label name throughout.

Using acoustic guitar, keyboards and backing tracks, Lynch is something of a sonic genius; it is this mixing of a folk sound with electronics that makes Pictish Trail stand out and, with the slow beats of Far Gone, he introduced us to Scottish hip hop, or ‘shop’ as he playfully branded it. I first saw Lynch at last year’s Green Man festival with Sweet Baboo, producer of Pictish Trail’s previous album Secret Soundz Vol. 2. They were something of a comedy duo on that sunny Sunday evening on the Walled Garden stage and Lynch was no different last night. His despair at the political climate in the wake of the EU referendum and his realisation, on seeing young people off their faces at Bestival, that he is not seventeen anymore had us laughing a lot.

It was a wonderful evening: ensconced in the shop, listening to great music and watching the surprised faces of passers-by in the twilight street outside. We got to have a quick chat with Johnny afterwards about the weather at Green Man, getting Sweet Baboo to come to Bexhill and his forthcoming Brighton gig with a full band. Then I was home in time to carry out my usual Friday night ritual: falling asleep on the sofa.

Pictish Trail play the Green Door Store, Brighton on Monday 10th October.

Red Wine Smiles

There was a wonderful moment in the middle of The Lovely Eggs set in Hastings last night: in celebration of the band's anniversary, they play a couple of quick 'old' numbers; the thirteen-seconds-long Muhammad Ali And All His Friends segues into the twenty second burst of fury that is I'm A Journalist. The latter, singer and guitarist Holly Ross says, is for anyone who has a shitty job. After asking the audience who has a job they hate, they then repeat the song with personalised lyrics for a civil servant called Keith - only at a Lovely Eggs gig would this happen.

The Lancaster punk duo - Ross and partner David Blackwell on drums - have been around for 10 years, releasing four small-label albums, a raft of singles and gigging regularly to critical acclaim. But despite the connections and endorsements - Gruff Rhys has produced them, Chris Packham adores them - they have stayed faithful to their "we do exactly what we like" ethos and remain a true underground band. Having seen them perform at the Green Man festival in Wales last summer, it was a delight that one of the 12 dates on their UK tour was just down the road at the Carlisle, the rock pub on Hastings seafront.

"We like your town," they tell us of their first visit to the Sussex seaside resort. They have spent a lovely day eating Morrisons' sandwiches in Alexandra Park - they were surprised that it is just as bloody cold down here as it is up north - and having their tea in Super Pizza. They have their three-year-old son on tour with them and they'll be up again at six in the morning - so no moaning from the audience about gigs on a work night.

There are those in the boozy crowd who are new to The Lovely Eggs, but they are clearly captivated from the beginning by the clever, funny and touching lyrics and the sheer joyous racket that two musicians are able to make; wherever I look, I see smiling faces. Fuck It, I Just Want Someone To Fall In Love With and People Are Twats are instant singalongs and touch upon universal themes; and as if to prove the point, a twat wanders onto the stage towards the end of the set only to be sent away with a flea in his ear from Holly. With no fake encore (see their website and sign the petition), the hilarious and ever-popular Don't Look At Me - "look at us with our red wine smiles" - provides the rousing finale.

Earlier in the evening, local band The Sine Waves had treated us to a highly impressive collection of space-age surf punk instrumentals. With lab coats, masks and some interesting radiophonic sound effects, they seemed as though they had stumbled straight off the set of The Quatermass Experiment.

Sweet and Lovely

Having always preferred live music with beer-sodden carpet rather than rain-soaked earth beneath my feet, I have not been much of a festival-goer. A solitary trip to Glastonbury, when it was first sponsored by CND, and a more recent outing to a tiny festival with the whole family being my only previous experiences, a sudden desire to attend this year’s Green Man festival took me by surprise. Surprise is not quite the right word to describe my family’s reaction: with an undertone of horror, they made it clear I was on my own; but having managed to recruit two friends to go along with me – one a festival veteran, the other a festival virgin – last Thursday we set off on the journey from Sussex to South Wales.

The Green Man festival has been running since 2005 at the Glanusk Estate, a privately-owned country park, set amongst the verdant hills and spectacular mountains of the Brecon Beacons. The reason I had wanted to go was not just the splendid setting but the expressed passion for the event by regular attenders and the line-up which, in recent years, has seemed to consist entirely of all the musicians I had been listening to at the time. 2015 was no exception with a whole host of artistes pretty much reflecting my record-buying over the past 12 months.

The festival proper runs from Friday to Sunday but most people start camping on Thursday so there is a small line-up on that evening. By the time I had remembered how to put up my tent, we only managed to see the final act; but it was a great start as we were able to ‘have it large’ to Leftfield, who finished their set in the Far Out tent with Phat Planet, which seemed appropriate as it was already shaping up to be a Guinness-fuelled weekend. We spent a lot of time in Far Out in the next three days – its dark interior had a certain appeal and it was a good shelter from intermittent soakings from the Spanish Plume – and saw some terrific turns from the perky Teleman, the youthful and enthusiastic Hooton Tennis Club and the cosmic and eternal Sun Ra Arkestra, whose leader Marshall Allen is 91 years of age. Watching Sun Ra it seemed amazing, not just that their sound works, but that they all managed to arrive in rural Wales (Saturn is a long way, after all). Far Out was also the setting for an amazing performance from Canadian post-punks, Viet Cong, on Friday: I was familiar with their album but completely unprepared for the intensity of their extended version of its closing track, Death, driven on by Mike Wallace’s ferocious drumming.

Seeking respite, we fled to the Green Man Pub next to the Walled Garden stage. The Walled Garden was a more relaxed and intimate area and we had already heard the tender modern folk of Rozi Plain, earlier that day, and would see her there again the next day, this time playing bass for Kate Stables’ wonderful, This Is The Kit. Saturday in Walled Garden also saw a stellar set of psych folk from Jane Weaver but we had to miss out on one of my favourite bands on the same stage later that night. A small irritation at music festivals is that, occasionally, acts you want to see clash with each other. On the Saturday night at Green Man, I was presented with a three-way clash: The Wave Pictures in Walled Garden, The Fall at Far Out and Television on the main Mountain Stage. The fact that they were playing their debut album, Marquee Moon, in full made opting for Television an obvious but, nonetheless, hard choice.

The main stage is probably in the most idyllic setting of any music festival and Television held the audience there rapt with a no-frills, faithful rendition of the songs from the album. The only concession to live performance was a shuffling of the running order to enable the set to finish with a dazzling reading of the album’s title track. I bought my copy of Marquee Moon 38 years ago but, shamefully, only really started listening to it in the last 15 years. My year-zero punk sensibility had previously dismissed it as being too proggy; now, I think it is one of the greatest albums ever made.

The Mountain Stage was an enjoyable place to be and we spent a lot of time there on Sunday: firstly, when Matthew E. White played a superb version of the Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat that brought out both the afternoon sun and my dancing feet, and secondly when the festival was closed with the impressive stagecraft of two big-name performers: the charisma and humour of Father John Misty and the surprisingly polished pizazz of St. Vincent. But what made Green Man 2015 so good were the performances of two lesser-known acts that I had been aware of but had not really listened to.

On Friday afternoon, Sweet Baboo – otherwise known as Welsh singer Stephen Black and his band - charmed us with his infectious and winsome melodies. If I Died…, Let’s Go Swimming Wild, Walking In The Rain and You Got Me Timekeeping, described by Black as their seven minute prog epic, were immediately memorable. Black appeared onstage again in the Walled Garden at tea-time on Sunday with The Pictish Trail, Isle of Eigg singer Johnny Lynch, for a relaxed and funny sharing and trading of songs (pictured).

The Festival Virgin insisted on only one thing during the four days: that we see The Lovely Eggs in the Cinedrome tent on Saturday afternoon. This meant missing the spectacle of Mark E. Smith being interviewed live onstage by Mojo magazine in the Talking Shop tent but I had heard a couple of Lovely Eggs songs and was prepared to make the sacrifice; and it turned out to be a sacrifice well worth making. The pop-punk couple from Lancaster – Holly Ross on guitar and vocals and partner David Blackwell on drums – were incredible. Full of energy and wit, they created instant crowd-anthems with People Are Twats, Fuck It and I Just Want Someone To Fall In Love With (“thousands of people feel like me!”). They electrified the audience and when they finished with the hilarious Don’t Look At Me, I thought they should have been carried from the stage shoulder-high and paraded around the festival site like victors.

There were non-musical delights on offer, too: we never quite made it into the comedy or discussion tents, and we had no need for the many children’s activities, but we did eat some great food. The Festival Veteran cooked us a tent-side breakfast each morning, which was shared with our neighbours, and the rest of our culinary needs were mostly met by one of the many independent caterers – there are no multiple retailers or corporate sponsors at Green Man – The Goan Seafood Company; their fish curry and mackerel masala dhal were particular highlights. Everyone we chatted to - and we had lots of casual conversations with people of all ages about music, beer, festivals and, of course, the weather - seemed to have eaten there. Green Man really was a joy: the food, the site, the music, the people – they were all perfect. Kids, you might be coming with me next year…

Three-Song Wonders

When I saw the charming and disarming Wave Pictures in Bexhill last summer, they had finished recording their most recent album, at Billy Childish’s studio in Kent, only a few days earlier. Just one of the songs that lead vocalist and guitarist David Tattersall co-wrote with Childish for the album was played that night but, a year on, and with the album released earlier this year to critical acclaim, a trio of those tracks formed the centrepiece of their set at the Underground Theatre in Eastbourne last night.

Working with Childish has given the band’s songs a garage rock edge and, having played the provocative and raucous Pea Green Coat – “Everybody in the station wore black/And then there was you in your pea green coat” – requests from the crowd for The Fire Alarm are rebuffed with typically self-deprecating humour. “We can’t play those two back-to-back,” Tattersall explains, “because then you’ll realise they are the same tune - essentially, we only have about three songs.” None of which is true, but they launch into the album’s title track, instead, before completing the run of songs from Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon with The Fire Alarm, safely distanced from its ‘doppelganger’.

As well as the flamingo, other avian life is present: from 2012’s delicious Long Black Cars album, both Stay Here And Take Care Of The Chickens and Seagulls are performed; and The Wave Pictures’ recurring motif of the sea features on Blue Harbour, from Beer In The Breakers, with the wonderful lyric, “let my eyes slip away/ toward the coast around the pier/ all the things that brought me here”. Bassist Franic Rozycki’s phrasing in the song’s run-out is also a delight.

Drummer Johnny Helm demonstrates the power of his voice when takes the vocals on Atlanta, from 2013’s City Forgiveness, and again later in the set when they play an old song, Sleepy Eye, from 2005’s Hawaiian Open Mic Night album. We are offered the democratic choice of Helm singing that or Now You Are Pregnant, another old song, but the crowd opt for the former. Then there is more audience participation as we are given the tricky task of singing the chorus to Come On Daniel (“come on Daniel!”), and Daniel-time is completed with the obligatory Daniel Johnston cover, this time, I Killed The Monster.

Jointly promoted by excellent local record stores, Bexhill’s Music’s Not Dead and Eastbourne’s Pebble Records, this superlative gig is brought to a close with two numbers from City Forgiveness: the final song of the set is Lisbon, with lyrics - “It was one of those days/ the dead were digging upwards through the earth” - that perfectly demonstrate Tattersall’s gift for marrying the prosaic and the absurd; and the encore is The Woods, a frantic Velvets-style workout that crackles with intimate electricity. There is only a month to go until the Green Man Festival where I will see The Wave Pictures again. But I can barely wait.