Saturday 14/05/11 The Great Escape Festival @ Various Venues, Brighton

What would you get if you scooped up the SXSW festival and hurled it, all the way from Austin, Texas, right into the tender underbelly of the British Isles? A tidal wave of unimaginable size for the literalists, but, for those with figurative capacities, you’d have The Great Escape, Europe’s leading festival for new music.

Brighton, even at the best of times, looks like it’s been invaded by an army of The Strokes’ making. During the festival you get the feeling everyone you pass on the street must inevitably have released a little known, but well loved E.P at some point. People double-take every time they pass a busker, just to make sure they’re not unwittingly walking away from a Guillemots secret gig (of which there seems to have been a lot this year, if all sightings are to be believed.)

No sooner did I arrive, over pay for some lack lustre beach-side fish and chips and get my bearings, than the siren-like sound of The Joy Formidable’s Ritzy singing ‘The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade’ came wafting down the street. Given that I’d been listening to the song full blast on headphones on the train, I initially suspect tinnitus, so was pleasantly surprised when I realised I’d stumbled into the band’s sound check.

We sat down to discuss their slightly slow burning rise onto the indie-rock radar. Given the bands mind-bending live capabilities its little surprise that the buzz around them grew faster than an album could be released, leading to a false impression of the band as slow workers. Bassist, Daffyd, assures me that, although tracks on the album are about three years old “a good song’s, a good song. They’re honest songs so they still mean as much now as when we wrote them, especially in terms of the lyrics which are important to us, they still hold true.”

Front-woman, Ritzy explains that the recordings before their debut we’re “originally just a tour C.D to sell at gigs, but it sort of got known as being our release a long time before the album came out, which is why I guess people feel like it’s taken a long  time.”

Either way, they’ve definitely arrived now. Ritzy looks wistfully to the venue from where we sit in the alley behind. “I sometimes wonder if we’ll miss days like this, playing smaller venues, sharing the songs with a couple of hundred people, but maybe you just get used to stadiums…who knows?” She says, giving a self deprecating, oh-to-be-a-rock star giggle from behind a pair of Kim Gordonesque shades. That night, predictably, they bring the house down with a stella performance, perfectly poised between ear bleeding noise and heart wrenching intimacy, formlessness and form.

After a slightly panicked run through predatory hordes of seagulls along the shingle beach, followed by a Google maps inspired psychotic episode, I eventually track down L.A based up-and comers Foster the People.

We discuss their debut album which, when released in June will undoubtedly be a huge hit, following on from the stir caused by their summer breeze of a track, ‘Pumped up Kicks’, the success of which was “a total shock” to the band. Singer, Mark tells me they’re already ready to start writing for the second album.

Their current album mixes the inverted process of electronic experimentation with outward-looking communal sing alongs. Marks explains “what makes these songs work is that they’re electronic but equally organic. It brings those separate worlds together.”

In other matters they tell me that, when not crafting melodic pop, they enjoy beating fellow L.A band, Grouplove, at Fifa on the X Box.

The next day I meet up with Grouplove to see if the rumours are true. Turns out the two bands have conflicting stories. “We beat them like four times in row” Ryan tells me “he’s just trying to rile me up.”

They also reveal to me band mate Hannah’s predilection to wearing a silver mask onstage “is to do with her hip-hop alter ego” a tip of the metallic headwear to MF Doom, no less.

The group, who met on an artist’s retreat in Greece are all song writers, leading to a very varied sound that’s already winning them tons of fans. “We did the whole album in my apartment, we weren’t even a band when we started writing these songs, it’s pretty crazy to come here and play them.”

Elsewhere, Canada was very well represented at this year’s festival, with Braids going down particularly well. I caught up with their, as yet unsigned, compatriots, Young Empires, to get their take on the proceedings.

“The difference between the UK and the US is that people genuinely want to hear new bands, they’re up for listening to people they’ve never heard of” they tell me. The band, who individually DJ aside from the band, know exactly how to control a room “we’re all about reacting to the crowd, we want people to have a good time”, a wish they fulfil with each of their four performances.

Of course, the point of the festival is to watch the bands play, rather than talk to them and there was plenty of scope given the 300 plus bands on offer. Having said that, due to capacity sizes at the various venues you had to pretty quick in to avoid big queues for the must see acts.

Warpaint were one such act and more than lived up their billing, hypnotising everyone in the room with their layered, bottomlessly murky tunes. I’m well disposed to a bit of shoegazing at such times, but it was impossible to take your eyes of the four women on stage. I would have been nice to get a view from the stage and try and enumerate the open mouths.

Twin Shadow, who played immediately before, also deserve a nod for their efforts, although I can’t decide if their slightly dodgy eighties look is a good foil for their slightly dodgy eighties sound. It kind of feels like a daring double bluff getting called. Either way they have some pretty decent tunes under their belt, aesthetics aside.

Other highlights included Sweden’s totally underrated The Radio Dept, who played an incredible set, which felt like being in either a throwback to the days of Sarah records, or an alternate universe, in which Ian Curtis had been too lazy to kill himself, allowing a more laconic version of New Order to eventually form around him. To paraphrase a friend’s appraisal of their sound “they’re like a band…but really far away.”

Other major successes were The Antlers, who always seem to lull you into a false sense of security, before folding up your brain like a paper plane and blowing it away with their vocal gusto.

Okkervil River were on hand to show new comers how it’s done, pleasing their sizeable long term fan base with hits from the cult classic ‘Black Sheep Boy’ as well as newer albums, pairing noisy guitar squalls with urgent acoustic guitar and strained vocals, in the lyrical mould of early Bright Eyes, The Mountain Goats and Neutral Milk Hotel.

Honourable mentions also go to; Ghost Poet, who raps with a flow laid back to the point of being horizontal, Marina Gasolina, who does a very good impression of a dolphin (as well as great music) and Fionn Regan, who sings songs about the Lake District with the exact type of voice required to sing songs about the Lake District.

Ones to avoid include; Charli XCX, a sulky teenager throwing a tantrum alone onstage to backing tracks, which sound like they’re embarrassed to exist (don’t give her the attention she’s after. In fact, forget I said anything), Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou (nice enough folk duo, but their ploy of simultaneously singing into one mike makes the whole set feel like a private moment, a bit awkward to watch).

The Great Escape Festival 2011 - Photos