Insight » Constellations Festival 2010 Review
Snuggly fit into the Leeds Student Union, Constellations is yet another multi-venued Leeds festival, much like the annual Live at Leeds and British Wildlife festivals. For those York students familiar with our humble student union, visiting the Leeds counterpart is like visiting a rich successful uncle’s country mansion, and wishing you’d been born to a different father.
Housed in an endlessly deep complex are three venues of varying size: the Refectory, Stylus and Mine. Each venue is idiot-proof sign-posted and all are roughly within 5 minutes away of each other. This is a total godsend, as multi-venue festivals usually take the form of some nightmarish navigational sport with cross-city treks to outskirt pubs and frenetic time-management of band schedules. It is hugely comforting to be able to stroll calmly from one band to another without leaving the building, making you wonder why it never occurred to anyone before.
Leeds has many home-grown bands that are affectionately supported, but none quite as much as Sky Larkin. Pleasantly popish but rousingly soaring, they play a set mixed with old favourites and tracks from new album Kaleide. Whenever Sky Larkin play a Leeds tour date it feels to an outsider like intruding on a gig for friends and family of the band. Naturally it gets a bit soppy towards the end when lead-singer Katie Harkin gets all sentimental and reels out the “a village makes a child, and you are that village” line.
Heading off towards Gold Panda, I am fully prepared to counter ex-editor and musical-sage Tom Killingbeck labelling the Essex producer as “hip chill-dub-twat-step”. But struggling through the mass of people it becomes rather clear this is the “hype act” of the evening. Unsurprising given his debut Lucky Shiner is an understated Oriental electronic treat, and has naturally drawn a crowd from its Pitchfork blessing. However, so many one (or two) man electronic projects are crippled by boring knob-twiddling, button wanking, laptop-cowering live sets. Gold Panda is sadly no different, the experience is akin to watching a band you really like play their album to you on CD while bobbing slightly on stage. It is a pity, because Caribou showed us this year that one man’s electronic fiddling can be transformed into a surprisingly good live act.
Viciously good: Liars at Constellation Festival
Thankfully Liars are there to fill the uninteresting void, with their always changing, always brilliant experimental rock. In person the band are an intimidating bunch, drummer Julian Gross has two ponytails fashioned out of his mullet and lead singer Angus Andrew has a Kurt Combain-styled mop that together makes them reminiscent of a trio of absconded prisoners from Alabama. Even their set sounds like the work of an escaped schizophrenic patient, switching between acoustic slower pieces such as ‘The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack’ and the unhinged aggressive riffs of tracks like ‘Scarecrows On A Killer Slant’ with its chant of “AND THEN KILL THEM ALL!” Somehow they make it all seem natural, both beautiful and unsettling.
(Words fail to describe Les Savy Fav’s subsequent performance, but I attempt to describe nonetheless.)
Blacked-robed, bearded and topped with a mortar board, Tim Harrington emerges on stage dressed as a University Dean. He proceeds to make a mock Dean’s graduation speech in which he narrates some prostitute-related indiscretion for which his wife apparently has left him, before ripping off the robe and bursting into song. As the set unfolds, it is difficult to quite comprehend what is happening at most times. Harrington runs straight through the crowd where he finds an unsuspecting male victim who he kisses and then dry humps while some hilariously well-timed technician shines a spotlight on the whole assault. Another crowd-surfer becomes Harrington’s next victim, as he overrules the security team and keeps the poor guy on stage to first torture him with some humping and then to pleasure him with a foot massage. It must have been a nightmare for the sound technicians as well as security: at one point Harrington throws his mic lead round the lighting rig several times to make an impromptu rope and swings around George of the Jungle style. Somehow he is surprisingly agile for a man of not insubstantial size, climbing onto a balcony and lying precariously on its edge (eventually falling from some height) while making various erotic poses for the surrounding photographers. Now obviously the havoc comes at the cost of the music being less than a canny resemblance to its original, but it doesn’t seem to matter with everyone’s interest more than kept by the crazed on-goings. Through the range of emotions the set produces, the least likely one to end on is guilt, but somehow Harrington’s t-shirt, made by his four year-old son, has gone missing and everyone leaves feeling collectively ashamed.
Indie super-group and headliners Broken Social Scene do a Guns N’ Roses and come on late, either succumbing to delays or misplacing one of their many members. From the first two songs it seems like they might be taking this comparison too far by also playing entirely from their new, and not as great, record. So to avoid potential disappointment, I leave to sample blog-favourites Sleigh Bells in the lower recess of the Union’s smallest venue, Mine.
Brutally Pop: Sleigh Bells at Constellations Festival
For the benefit of those without an unhealthy obsession for internet music trends, Sleigh Bells are “a duo comprised of Derek Miller from post-hardcore nutters Poison The Well and pop chanteuse Alexis Krauss”. Their set begins with a clip of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Everywhere’ before abruptly cutting to a hardcore track from Miller’s previous band; an introduction that nicely sums up the sugary yet tinnitus-inducing bass of their sound. Somehow, perhaps due sound-restrictions and what not, it just isn’t loud enough. I was expecting the anatomy of my inner ear to be blown inside-out and left hanging like some gory jewellery. As much as I hate fuelling these type of accusations, I am sure that most of set was actually a backing track with Miller fake-strumming. Even Krauss was more rapping than singing over her background vocals; the whole thing felt a bit hip-hop, whereas I was hoping for more resemblance to a hardcore gig. That said it was still a great set, with Krauss urging everyone to mimic her high-frequency screeching in ‘A/B Machines’, but it left me unusually unsatisfied by the lack of ringing in my ears.
There was no doubt that Constellations would be a triumph just from looking at its impressive line-up of legendary acts and popular emerging artists, all perfectly combined within the setting of Leed’s Student Union. Sure some were more hit and miss than others, but the concept fits together so well it leaves you questioning why hiking across the whole city was ever an acceptable practice.
Photo credit: Leah-Jade Connolly
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Liars and Les Savy Fav were superb. After a little last.fm scouting it turns Tim did get his T-shirt back. Happy days.