Truck Festival 2004

United Kingdom | by Tim Chester | 24 July 2004

Set up by Truck Records with the simple mission to guarantee a distinctly underground flavour, an open truck provides the stage for bands alongside the alluring Barn That Cannot Be Named.

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As festivals go, Truck is pretty unique. Only here do you find the local vicar selling ice cream. Only here do they fill a smelly barn with ten hours of acoustic, emo and electronic music. And where else on a Sunday can you see a contingent of toddlers sitting on shoulders, flicking the devil's horns at a Japanese metal band on a lorry?

The Truck Festival is at a great stage at the moment. Fiercely independent, almost all the bands on an underground labels (Truck Records, Drowned In Sound etc), and there are just enough 'well-known' acts to keep everyone interested. It takes a while to get adjusted, as you walk past what is basically a large gazebo before you realise you've passed the 'Acoustic Stage', and everyone you watch in the Trailer Park tent is accompanied by the noise of the main stage.

The Barn That Cannot Be Named provides much of Saturday's heavier music, from the emo stylings of My Awesome Compilation to Gang Of Four inspired My Red Cell, whose lead singer struts about spitting out yelps and screams to a jerky punk rock soundtrack. Jetplane Landing keep the crowd sweaty as they launch into tracks from their second album 'Once Like A Spark', and the guitarist does his best AC/DC licks, whilst the rest of the band stick to the tried and tested emo sound. Their screaming hides any normal Welsh singing voices and the end result is a Pretty Girls Make Graves/My Chemical Romance hybrid. It takes the imminent arrival of Electric Soft Parade to shift us out into the sun and over to the Trailer Park Stage where we had earlier seen Eeeblee, a sleazy Sigur Ros enhanced by an electric double bass and a flat drum kit.

Piney Gir is a new Truck signing and typically eclectic. She plays in five bands over the weekend but for her own set shows off the delicate vocals and various toy instruments that she's famous for, ending the set shouting along to 'My Generation' through a megaphone. One hour and several cups of £1 wine later Buck 65 takes to the main stage. Cutting up songs from the 'Talkin Honky Blues' album he jumps between scratching, singing and telling anecdotes, and tunes like 'Wicked And Weird' send the kids away amazed, vowing to get themselves some decks.