We had great neighbours on the campground and generally the campground was surprisingly quiet and civilised. This may just be a consequence of the audience not being the youngest but even the young attendees seemed reasonably well behaved. Seeing that I tend to hate people by default, I consider it a surprisingly good sign that the people I met both a the festival and on the way there were likeable and interesting to get to know.
It’s also great that they learned from problems they had with rain at the festival in the past and covered the ground up to prevent things like ultra-muddy people or stuck cars from happening. Extra kudos go to the locals who do not seem to be annoyed by thousands of people invading their little village for a weekend but rather seem to think it about their party which many outsiders happen to attend because it’s so great.
More on Haldern Pop 2008: Thursday, Saturday, Friday, All Haldern Pop posts.
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Okkervil River played in the afternoon and they were very good and much more loud and lively than one might expect from their albums. Extra brownie points their drummer who not only did the job with a necktie but was smiling and apparently enjoying himself all the way through. Welcome to Happy Drummer Day!
[More photos, taken with a better camera]
Jamie Lidell
The ‘Fink’ playing in the tent apparently were some English band going by that name rather than the English one, which made us just wait for the next band on the main stage. Perhaps the word ‘act’ would be more appropriate for Jamie Lidell and his costumed music troupe. No sir, I didn’t like it, even though some parts of the music may have been reasonably ‘interesting’.
Alamo Race Track
An early escape from Jamie Lidell gave us plenty of time to be in the - at that stage hardly existing - queue for the Spiegelzelt to see Alamo Race Track. They turned out to be very good and played an excellent set. With a happy-looking drummer, btw.
Iron & Wine
We saw the beginning of Iron & Wine’s gig on the main stage afterwards. I spontaneously rated their sounds as ‘hippie music’ - but on the boring side without the magic and intensity that The Magic Numbers bring to the genre. In the Spiegelzelt late at night this might have been nice. But in the afternoon on the main stage we went for a quick bite instead.
The National
That way we were a bit rested for The National. Their music is tricky. On the one hand it is very intense; but on the other hand it isn’t punchy or fast, so it’s a bit difficult to judge how things work out. People may find it dull. For me things worked well though. They made good use of the live setting to be a bit more energetic than on their albums and gave us a reasonably noisy set without skipping on details like the brass or their crazy violinist (at which speed and overdone arm movements does a violin stop sounding better than violin mode on a keyboard?).
Their singer caused discussions later on. Some people seemed to think he has some sort of psycho problem because of the way he acted and how he liked turning the back to the audience whenever he wasn’t singing. I just thought he tried to be polite to not distract from the band. It’s a thin line between craziness and genius I guess.
Maxïmo Park
The last band on the main stage were Maxïmo Park. I tried liking them but I keep thinking they’re mediocre at best. Their singer is a clown who behaves like an overly excited participant in high school theatre while the rest of the band just stand there disconnectedly. Reading stuff from notebooks isn’t clever, having a superfluous diaeresis in your band (or new economy corporation) name isn’t either. Bonus points for a nice and clean stage design though. When did ‘stage designer’ become a job title?
And that was that. There was too much of a queue to get into the Spiegelzelt again afterwards to see Scott Matthew and too much tiredness to stand things out until he was finished to see Ólafur Arnalds, who might have been interesting to see, afterwards.
More on Haldern Pop 2008: Thursday, Friday, Sum Up. All Haldern Pop posts.
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Hence the day began musically with White Lies. After seeing the slightly better Foals the night before I had to think about them as a less cheesy version of The Bravery as well.
Jack Peñate
Jack Peñate played nice music as well afterwards. And had a bit of rain to go with it. The incredibly well-prepared audience took that without much fuss and converted themselves into a water-proofed crowd within moments.
And of course a band shouldn’t come on stage without a plastic wrapped metallophone these days. Interesting T-Shirt as well (Young Folks?):
Joan as Policewoman
Joan as Policewoman wore a crazy whig along with a pailletted dress and shiny golden boots. The music was all right with too much posing for my taste. And, yes, an ordinary keyboard does look much better and interesting when it’s hidden behind glittery black fabric.
Cool bassist as well.
We skipped Kula Shaker (I keep thinking they might be good for a cover version of Instant Karma for some reason) for some food and sitting instead.
The Guillemots
We had semi-seen The Guillemots in 2006 already and they played a nice gig. They may have over-stressed the PA or something though. At least it stopped to work towards the end of their set. Amusingly they didn’t seem to notice and just continued playing. I wonder what they thought when people started cheering in the middle of a song when the sound came back.
Next on the main stage was Kate Nash. I had never heard about her before, but she was the only ‘act’ on the line-up known by my colleague. ‘From the radio’. Hence we just skipped that and went to the Spiegelzelt.
Gisbert zu Knyphausen
The silly name Gisbert zu Knyphausen turned out to be a band which sounded a bit like latecomers to the Hamburger Schule.
Lykke Li
I had never heard about Lykke Li before but she was recommended to me several times. And it’s hard to tell how good her music is. In part she nicely fills the niche of the small blonde girlie (don’t let my photos fool you) TV presenter and the negative associations that come with it. And some of her songs started on a low note. But when she stepped out of that and went closer to insanity, things seemed quite brilliant. A Vampire Weekend cover and that encore she played (what exactly was that?) didn’t hurt either. Interesting!
Editors
The Editors ended the day for us. Their music is solid but I keep finding it a bit dull. [Fan-friggin-tastic cover art, though!] It might have been a better choice to remain in the Spiegelzelt to see Loney Dear for whom the queue was too long when we got there…
After that we went back to the camp ground. My feet were aching at the time. Without doubt a consequence of running around in rubber boots for the better part of the day. The boots did a great job in making the occasional rain-fall a non-problem, though.
More on Haldern Pop 2008: Thursday, Saturday, Sum Up. All Haldern Pop posts.
]]>For some reason the festival had an extra day this year and started on Thursday already. Not the most convenient thing - but what can you do? There was also a fair share of bad weather announced which made me pack the rubber boots along with all sorts of other junk to take on the camp site where we stayed in our traditional favourite spot and managed to put up the tent before any rain happened.
The rain would come later but - unlike in other years it was reasonably moderate in both its intensity and duration. Which - along with everybody being well equipped with boots and raincoats as well as the critical parts of the festival grounds having been covered with plastic tiles - meant that luckily the bad weather wasn’t all that critical and didn’t affect things too much.
Finn and Norman Palm
Starting things off in the pretty Spiegelzelt were finn (who apparently stepped in for Noah and the Whale on short notice). We just saw the very end of their gig, so I can’t really say much. Afterwards Norman Palm played. Not too exciting, but doing well for a guy with his guitar.
We skipped a few lessons then and went back to the tent to get to know the neighbours as well as eat a little. As usual that dragged on a little but we made it in time to see the two remaining gigs on the main stage.
Foals
Foals reminded me of the Bravery in their sound. The same kind of poppy blandness and perhaps a bit less cheesy. All right to watch but not exactly my cup of tea.
The Flaming Lips
To top off the first night, what may be considered the festival’s highlight happened. Certainly The Flaming Lips playing there would have been reason enough to visit in its own. Particularly for those of us who loved their music for ages and hadn’t seen one of their not particularly frequent gigs before. I was really looking forward to that.
Even before they started playing the band left an impression. They seemed to bring along their own staff for the equipment which did their work in bright orange street construction workers’ overalls and in addition to that the band members actually took part in setting up and checking the equipment brought up on stage. The band also seemed to be responsible for bringing along giant disco mirror balls to decorate the stage, a screen to put behind it and a bunch of people dressed as Teletubbies to decorate the sides of the stage in silliness.
The gig started with what seems to be the typical move of Wayne Coyne being in a huge transparent rubber ball and rolling on top of the audience a little as a warm-up. Additional confetti and balloons were added later (as well as over and over again throughout the gig) which made the whole thing look fantastic and photogenic.
However, my impression was that the sound wasn’t very good with the vocals being too quiet and a lot of the magic in the songs which is familiar from the albums not making it across to us from the stage. While that improved a little through their gig, I kept having the impression that the band never quite ‘connected’ with the audience. - Which in the end left us with a nice performance but not one restoring a sense of childlike wonder or being quite as life changing as people usually say Flaming Lips gigs are.
And that was that. The festival’s first day passed in what seemed no time at all.
More on Haldern Pop 2008: Friday, Saturday, Sum Up. All Haldern Pop posts.
]]>- Early in spring this year’s Haldern festival didn’t look like the most promising one, band-wise. A number of decent bands were listed, as were the great Shout Out Louds, but that was about it. Slowly, however, the line-up improved and once we had Malajube and Architecture in Helsinki on the list, it was clear that having bought the tickets wasn’t a bad idea. Particularly with my friends from England and Holland coming along. Add to all this that apart from the bit of mud at the beginning and slightly chilly nights the weather was excellent – sunny but not outrageously hot – and we had a good weekend.
- One thing I found remarkable this year was how many bands expressed that they were happy playing there and that they enjoyed the festival, the lake and the atmosphere during their stay. Perhaps that also causes better playing…
- While I had the impression that the sound or mixing was rather poor for a few bands (and good for others), there were generally interesting things to hear. String instruments seem to be quite popular in pop music these days. And a number of odd instruments, from exotic percussion devices to a cheese grater to a saw appeared as well.
- It’s quite funny to look at the countries in the festival’s line up this year. The UK gave us by far the greatest number of bands on stage, with Sweden following as a distant second (and if my counting isn’t wrong, then Germany and then Australia/Belgium/USA/Irland)
- It was fun to look at the shirts people were wearing again. While I often find it difficult to recognise the faces of people, I seem to have much fewer difficulties to remember what a shirt looks like.
From my point of view, Saturday was the winning day of this year’s Haldern festival. With Malajube, Architecture in Helsinki and the Shout Out Louds playing among many others, things could just end being well. But before the music started we went to the surprisingly clean lake behind the festival area and had a refreshing swim there. With the excellent weather this was quite a popular option. Unfortunately I managed to get a cut in the bottom of my foot in the course of this which I didn’t even realise before we had returned to the campground. For my easily wrecked nerves it looked like a rather deep cut, but luckily it didn’t really hurt, so before seeing bands, we had a quick stop with the friendly medical people on the site who disinfected the wound properly.
We managed to miss the (to me unknown) Friska Viljor who might have been well worth seeing judging from the CD I heard on my trip back home.
Voxtrot (USA)
Voxtrot were our opening band for the day. Young, very enthusiastic and with plenty of jumping around. Fun.
Johnossi (Sweden)
While their song Man Must Dance is quite addictive for some reason, I find the rest of Johnossi’s music all right but not particularly exciting. Or rather, as exciting as you’d expect their kind of singing to a guitar with percussion music to be. Good for leaning back while listening from a distance and waiting for the upcoming greatnesses.
Malajube (Canada)
Next came Malajube. Canada sent their second best and I was keen to see them. Not that many other people were, so we could comfortably stand right in front of the stage. And the band played a great gig which I enjoyed a lot.
Architecture in Helsinki (Australia)
I loved Architecture in Helsinki’s odd music ever since first hearing it and was really happy to learn they’ll play at Haldern. Wonderful weirdos, what else can I say? Their songs were great of course and, if anything, there weren’t enough of them. Seeing them play was fun as well with all the different instruments and their singer/keyboarder having a monster on her shirt.
Shout Out Louds (Sweden)
The Shout Out Louds have nicely fit in my taste for Swedish music for a while and I enjoyed seeing them as support band for The Magic Number a while back. Ironically both bands were at this festival as well and both played great gigs. The was also an eager crowd to watch the Shout Out Louds, who seem to be have become quite popular by now and who are on the Haldern Pop label in Germany. I liked all of that.
After this we had some more fries and Currywurst before heading for the Spiegelzelt. The closing gig was by Jan Delay whom I already happily skipped at last year’s Monsters of Spex. We saw the end of The Drones’ gig there first which didn’t impress me much.
Ghosts (England)
Then we saw Ghosts play rather poppy music. A bit too poppy for my taste and with a singer a bit too eager to mention their myspace page perhaps. But live their music was OK evening listening and not as cheesy as they sound when properly recorded and mixed.
Duke Special (Ireland)
The final gig we saw was that of Duke Special. Who were a perfect way to end the festival in the Spiegelzelt with a somewhat theatrical band playing a piano and a number of wind instruments in addition to circusesque drums and an electric guitar. The singing fit into the theatrical frame. And while I’m not sure I’ll like the music all clean and shiny on CD, it definitely was at the right place and the right time when we heard and saw it.
[No photo here as this one was just so bad that all the other photos of my screen-less broken camera look comparatively good.]
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After breakfast, a stroll around, some cake in town as well as some shopping, we managed to miss seeing Brakes because (unsurprisingly) all of that ended up taking longer than expected and we joined the music for Gabriel Rios – not my type of music - and German band Polarkreis 18 who were all right but didn’t excite me too much either.
The View (Scotland)
We saw The View who excited some of our party. They were fun but still failed to excite me too much. The fact that their sound / mixing didn’t seem to be quite right and made things mostly noise probably didn’t help either. I kept thinking that they’d really love to be like the Libertines. But that they just don’t have the genes for that. I’ll just stop here before I get the snide remarks about polo shirts out. … And Same Jeans just sounds like a Cornershop rip-off, doesn’t it?
Jamie T (England)
I wasn’t too convinced my Jamie T when first hearing his music but thought there might be hope after listening to it again. I may have been overly optimistic there. At least I wasn’t at all thrilled to see him play live. Which was a good opportunity to have a crêpe with nutella (the guy who ordered his before I did had one with cheese and nutella which sounds just gross but he insisted it’s much better as the cheese doesn’t have discernible taste of its own and it amplifies the nutella taste).
And talking about take-away food, I have to add that we got quite used to the Bratwurst, Currywurst and chips made by one of the stalls. All of which were actually quite nice. The chips (as I had to remind myself I should say when talking to English people) were nice, thin and cripsy (which perhaps makes calling them ‘chips’ wrong as authentic English chips seem to be fat and soggy, but I digress…)
The Magic Numbers (England)
The Magic Numbers keep fascinating me. Their music is a nice, friendly and hippiesque thing, which I usually consider to be a bit too nice. The band look like a bunch of overweight hippies. Yet, once they’re on stage, they are doing a great show and give their music just that extra edge which may be missing on the CD. Very enjoyable indeed.
Spiritualized Acoustic Mainlines (England)
Take a Spiritualized singer, throw in a string quartet, a piano and a three person gospel choir and you get Spiritualized Acoustic Mainlines. While I’m not the biggest Spiritualized fan, I thought this combination could just create that certain magic (say, like, The Divine Comedy with orchestra in 2004) which makes music you only consider average sound great in the circumstances. But this just didn’t happen and in a way all the excitement and anticipation The Magic Numbers created was killed by a somewhat boring, and I think not well-mixed, gig.
Electric Soft Parade (England)
Our next stop was the Spiegelzelt which once more had quite a good queue but persistent joining of that queue actually brought us into the tent just as Electric Soft Parade started playing a gig which was a rather nice surprise for me. I quite like that. Just as I liked all band members standing next to one another on stage, allowing you to see all of them without the view being blocked.
Under Byen (Denmark)
The evening ended with Under Byen who join many different sounds. From singing to guitar to a cello to a saw (the first time I saw that on stage and the sound is rather cool). Unfortunately they didn’t shine light on their singer and their songs invariably seemed to be a bit too long for my taste. That, or lack a little a bit of extra drive and direction. Which made them a bit tiring after two in the morning.
← Thursday :Previously • Next: Saturday →
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The beginning of August is the time to go to the wonderful Haldern Pop festival again. With my flatmates chickening out this year, we were a smaller group this time with Steffen, Dan, Lucy and myself meeting the Dutch team Richard brings along. For the first time ever we made an effort to arrive at the festival on Thursday already as they already had bands playing then.
With me being the only one to come from Göttingen, I caught a ride with some other festival goers in town which was much simpler than going by train. Unfortunately I somehow managed to not pack my sleeping bag among all the other camping things I took along which meant I ended up a sleeping a car because nights were chilly enough to be quite unpleasant and possibly unhealthy.
After having had rain in Haldern last year and massive rain in 2005 we were a bit scared about the weather aspect this year. Particularly so as it had been cold and rainy in the past weeks. And, sure enough, it was raining while we were on our way there. But the rain stopped once we had arrived. And that was that. The only unpleasantness being that the rain had created a good bit of mud on the festival grounds a campsites which made it quite fun to see people drive their cars there with their weels having no traction in the mud.
It was surprising to see how many people arrived on Thursday already. While it wasn’t packed, the campsites were definitely well-filled already. Of the evening’s music we hoped to see a bit of Get Well Soon about whom good things were said but we only managed to listen to them a little from the queue outside the Spiegelzelt, which was already packed when we arrived. Luckily they provided reasonably good sound from inside the tent to those waiting. It took a bit longer until we actually got in. And we saw Tunng, Two Gallants and An Pierlé then.
Tunng (England)
Tunng aren’t the most exciting band I have ever heard, but they certainly played nice songs that were well-suited for the ‘chill-in’ in the Spiegelzelt. I disapproved of the guitarist’s hat.
Two Gallants (USA)
Just as before, I can’t really make up my mind about Two Gallants. On the one hand their music seems quite interesting. But I also kept thinking their songs are a bit too long and too slow, despite having very good bits of fairly energetic guitar playing and drumming in it. The low stage was a real bummer here, as it meant we couldn’t see the drummer, i.e. half of the band.
An Pierlé and White Velvet (B)
We finished the night with An Pierlé and White Velvet. While sympathetic and fun to look at on a mostly smoke filled stage, I found the music a bit boring and never had the impression the ‘band’ really did a lot. Certainly helped sending me to sleep though.
Next: Friday →
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On our way there we passed what we saw people euphemistically call Germany’s Industriekulturlandschaft
(literally: industrial culture landscape). Loads of cities merging into one another there. Loads of ugly buildings, loads of concrete. When passing Essen, we saw that they had a tram running between both directions of the Autobahn. Not only do I think that having a motorway right in the city is wrong, but having the tram – complete with stops where people are waiting just a few metres from people speeding their cars with 120km/h – seems absurd to me. Not that I couldn’t imagine how people were trilled by that ‘futuristic’ idea back in the 1960s. Just follow the Autobahn with the tram running East to West in the middle, see the tram stops and houses built all along it here:
Similarly, I was shocked and thrilled (because it was quick at the moment) that in Duisburg they have the Autobahn run right next to the railway station (at the left on the map):
And then, there was rain
there was saw dust
there were nice cigarette boxes
there were opportunities for silly long exposure photos
there was my mum’s car trying to fly
and there were shoes needing extra water proofing
Recovering from the long night wasn’t too bad – although naturally there wasn’t too much sleep to be had in the middle of a campground full of music fans. When getting up the weather looked lightly clouded and not threatening, which was a good cue to leave the tent and make some breakfast. While – to put it mildly – I’m not a big friend of camping, I quite enjoy the slow making of coffee and fried eggs sitting in front of a tent. It’s very relaxing… and you don’t even have to walk around. You can even just throw away those paper plates after finishing without the need for washing up (we did take proper mugs for the coffee, though, so this point doesn’t really hold).
There was plenty of time for procrastination before the music started again. Although, strangely, that time did pass rather quickly in the end and we went to see some more bands soon. On entering the festival grounds themselves, it became apparent that people had done a great job fighting all the water and mud that came there with the rain. Most of the area in front of the stage had been covered in saw dust to soak up the liquid and I heard people say that the fire brigade was there to pump away the water.
Bands we saw on Saturday
The Rifles (UK, 13:50)
Everybody must have heard a song or two by The Rifles as I’m pretty sure to have heard songs like Local Boy or Repeated Offender in some local clubs before. And while I’d say that some of their songs are a bit dull and they’re not all that brilliant in total, they still have quite a few nice songs that will leave people pleased. Not the most exciting gig, but still a nice one.
Islands (CAN, 14:55)
I found Islands to be a difficult band to watch. While their music definitely had its moments and was nice to listen to, I didn’t like watching them: Seven people, who are somewhat – but not really – uniformised and dressed up in white clothes with a dash of colour, wildly ‘emotionally’ jumping violinists and so on just made their show look too much like a theatre play than like a band playing.
With their choice of ‘exotic’ instruments for pop music and their over-acting, it often looked like they are going for ‘interestingness’ rather than for the music. And it made it hard for me to tell whether they’re a young band who are overly excited or a wet dream of a Canadian record executive wanting to build ‘a second Arcade Fire’ but missing the real points.
After Islands finished, Guillemots came on (I learned that a guillemot is a bird which is called Lumme in German and which I had never heard of before). But we just listened to them from a distance, sitting in the shade with some drinks and crêpes, which they made good music for.
The Kooks (UK, 18:35)
I wasn’t too impressed when seeing The Kooks at the Hurricane festival recently, thinking that the whole clarity which makes their album nice was lost there. And I think they sounded better this time along. Still a bit on the poppy side for your average indie-snob, but quite enjoyable nonetheless.
After that gig we went back to the tent – preferring a barbecue to singer-songwriterdom.
The Divine Comedy (IRL, 22:35)
But we were back in time to see The Divine Comedy who – together with a local orchestra – were a great closing band for the festival in 2004. And while Neil Hannon came on stage with the looks to match the occasion back then, he looked like a sixteen year old fashion victim when he came on stage this time, which I found a bit disappointing.
The music was nice nonetheless, although I have to admit that I consider many of the songs to be quite similar and hard to tell apart. But while I’d consider actively listening to The Divine Comedy at home a bit boring, seeing them play live is good.
And while they weren’t as great without the orchestra as they were with it, and while I can see how closing with the same band twice in three years would have been bad style, I would have very much liked that because the band who actually closed the main stage – The Twilight Singers – were the only band I immediately grew to actively dislike. Old men rock music or so. As the others felt similarly we left early to get into the Spiegelzelt in time… which many other people did as well. Enough to give us an opportunity to enjoy queueing, but few enough for us still to get in before the gig started.
Ed Harcourt (UK, 1:30)
I had heard some Ed Harcourt stuff before the festival and thought it was a bit dull. So I was pleasantly surprised to see a gig in the Spiegelzelt which not only fitted the environment perfectly, with an actual acoustic piano and proper acoustic bass, but also wasn’t dull. To top things off, they got the guys from James Dean Bradfield (whom we didn’t see playing in the afternoon) and some girls from the audience to join making the music in between.
Great stuff and – as we skipped the very final gig of Kante because of general tiredness – a great way to end the musical indulgences of the festival.
Conclusion
I’m a bit split about this year’s Haldern. The was all right in total. And I was there with many friends which was great. I also thought that the organisers did quite a good job to make our stay enjoyable, by doing their best to fight the mud and providing things like running water, sufficiently many toilets and such like (although I thought there used to be more and better food stalls a few years back). On the other hand, I don’t think any of the gigs I saw was outstandingly exciting. There were good ones, for sure, just none really standing out for my taste. And that would have topped things off, of course.
Related Haldern things to do: The Haldern Pop group at flickr, my Haldern links at delicious and WDR Rockpalast on the festival at the end of the month.
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