Get Loaded in the Park Review 2011
In my experience, whatever foreign festivals such as Benicassim and Lollapalooza may gain with their gloriously guaranteed sunny weather, they simultaneously lose a certain homeliness that only a drizzly dark day in a field of mud, rain and knackered umbrellas can achieve. This year’s Get Loaded in the Park was no exception, but unfortunately the following review isn’t drenched in quite as much spin as to make all-day downpours sound so welcome.
“You brave, brave people,” cried Darwin Deez, in an attempt to keep everyone’s spirits up at the ever-noticeably outdoor main stage. Frankly, we could have done without the patronisation; uppity guitar-pop tunes such as Constellations and Radar Detector did more than enough to keep everyone excitable, as well as some quirky dance numbers in-between to keep everyone amused.
Shortly afterwards over in the Last.FM tent came the day’s most welcome surprise in the form of Dark Moon. Dressing and looking as sinister as their music, somewhere between Veronica Falls and The Horrors, these guys delivered a set that won over a crowd only gathered to have a break from the perpetual rain with astonishing confidence.
Not looking so confident over on the main stage though were Los Campesinos! Despite their name’s mandatory exclamation mark, the seven (or so)-piece seemed less then enthused by the weather and the handful sized crowd cowering under it. But things were to only get better (although only before they became much worse again) with the appearance of a leprechaun-like Patrick Wolf before a pleasantly rain-free set.
You get the feeling watching Patrick Wolf, with his flamboyant outfits and gay, in the archaic sense of the word, demeanour, that this is how Jedward or any ex-X-Factor contender’s sets would look if they had any actual talent. As things stand, such teatime TV fodder has to settle for being famous for being famous, whilst perversely Wolf seems content with being comparatively obscure despite naturally having everything Jedward et al can only pretend to.
Unjustly obscurer still were O. Children, over in the Gigwise Arena, with a stage presence so dark I doubt anyone towards the back could even see them. Luckily, being at the front, I could take in their sharp brand of post-punk rock in its full ear-shattering glory, combining all that is loud about Joy Division, Bauhaus and Numan with some twistedly deep, soulful vocals.
Still having not lost a bit of their soul, even after a good decade or so on the scene, were the now Johnny Marr-less The Cribs. Having read on their website that the Jarmans were now just a three-piece again, I was looking forward to seeing them as just that, a three-piece. But no, I was to be disappointed by the sight of an extra guitar amp and a nameless chap playing through it, at the very same time that Ryan, Gary and Ross were playing no less. To be fair, the more intricate riffs of the band’s fourth LP songs, such as Cheat On Me and We Share The Same Skies, would be hard to translate to a single guitar. But then I think most Cribs fans would agree that, unless it’s Marr himself on stage playing the songs he co-wrote, we’d rather have a few more from further back the catalogue.
Line-up criticisms aside, The Cribs played a set that was not only as energetic and noisy as ever (I say this as someone who’s seen them six times now), but also saw the welcome return of tracks such as Martell, Women’s Needs and We Can No Longer Cheat You to the setlist. But a band that I cannot think of a tedious, wordy link for were main stage closers Razorlight.
It’s weird to think that at the peak of their popularity, Johnny Borrell and co were headlining festivals like Reading & Leeds to crowds of tens of thousands. By comparison, the Get Loaded crowd seemed to be in its mere hundreds, only about half of which could be bothered to applaud.
I suppose it can’t help that the Razorlight of today are not the same band that they were at the peak of their chart success. Literally. All but one of the members on the cover of their self-titled second album have jumped ship, leaving Borrell looking a sort of unthinking man’s Mark E. Smith. And even that’s putting it generously. But then, I suppose anyone that manages to get themselves kicked out of an early Libertines line-up, only to find a finite amount of success with an at-best generic pop band, only for them to leave you as well must have a certain knack for failure and disappointment. Unfortunately, in this case, it was Get Loaded in the Park’s disappointment.