MUSIC

Glanusk Park, Brecon Beacons (Fri 19-Sun 21 Aug)

The modern festivalling family brings a wagonload of kit. There’s the glamping gang with vintage bell tents, Moroccan lanterns and chrome barbecues; there are the ‘ready for anything’ families with matching headtorches and space-age hiking poles, and the home-from-home types, with cutlery and wine glasses, fully stocked larders, washing-up stands with working taps. The trolley hire man in the car park chuckles as he thrusts fistfuls of cash into his money belt – it’s £10 an hour for a small blue four-wheeler – and everybody seems to need one. As we arrive on site, there are hundreds of them trundling backwards and forwards, piled high with tents, toddlers and tins of beer.

The best place from which to appreciate the rolling beauty of Green Man is the top of the Ferris wheel. It groans to a halt and the site twinkles below – walled gardens and old stone stables done out like a village fair, the main stage away through a stand of trees, great shoulders of mountain looming behind. After 2010’s mudbath, the sunshine comes as a daily blessing, and an easy bonhomie warms the crowd. This year, we’ve brought our three-year old son Hal along, so the focus is shifted somewhat – the highlights are pond-dipping (we catch a huge, frog-eating dragonfly nymph), stream-paddling and romping in the kids’ area. Thus, as diaphanous Danish dream-pop quartet Treefight for Sunlight flood the main arena with a sweet falsetto croon, we’re on all fours, disappearing into a day-glo tunnel maze. Deranged children scurry in all directions. At last we’re out again, blinking in the sunshine. A wizard wanders past with a real live dragon under his arm, which yawns and blinks when stroked. We try the Bristol Bike Project’s ingenious pedal-powered Scalextric track (winners pedal slow at corners) then join a merry percussion orchestra. Everyone loves a bit of cow bell.

Later, Cave Singers bring swaggering hobo country rock. The frontman’s a trailer trash caricature: wife-beater vest, trucker cap and straggly beard. The lyrics are lost in a raucous backwoods holler, but there’s a likeable insistence to their pummelling Americana. Not that Hal’s much impressed, and so we scamper off to splash in a stream, racing makeshift twig boats down to the pond. Up on the hill, the Chai Wallah tent proves something of a mecca for the party set, and the Alternative Dubstep Orchestra typify what goes down well here – live instruments producing big dance-friendly beats. Roping in horns, strings, decks and djembe, they make a brassy, bassy noise. Just when we’re thinking ‘dubstep should be way dirtier than this’, they unleash some proper low-end wobble and the kids whoop and bounce. Past the compost bogs and behind a giant oak tree is the Far Out tent, where LA threesome Sic Alps dole out dad-rock for hipsters; a lazy, Stones-recalling sound, two parts guitar to one of drums. Tiny pin-points of laser swirl over every surface.

Back in the main amphitheatre’s grassy bowl, there’s ardent, wide-eyed folk from Villagers, frontman Conor O’Brien like a choirboy Conor Oberst or an Irish Willy Mason. Ominous black clouds roll overhead. We buy hot chocolate and hide under a tree. But, not for the last time this weekend, the threatened downpour never arrives. Far away in Far Out, Holy Fuck – four silhouettes in a fug of dry ice – fling out dance music for rock fans; live drums propelling a keyboard-thumping rave haze. As we head back to our tent, the swirling post-rock guitarscapes of Explosions in the Sky seem to blanket the whole site, perfectly soundtracking the slow slide to sleep.

Freewheeling folk ensemble Coco’s Lovers play a series of impromptu warm-up sets across the weekend, popping up in between other acts around the site and treating those within earshot to intricate, seven-strong minstrelling. Flute, fiddle and multi-part harmonies marry moonlit madrigal with proper-job knees-up. When they finally take the stage at Chai Wallah on Saturday afternoon, they’ve a tentful of expectant fans, who swoon and waltz entranced. It’s hot, so we queue for ice-creams before wandering to check the 2.54, a languid London foursome fronted by Venue’s own ex-hack Colette Thurlow: sweet seduction rock, distorted guitars and sighing – Lush for the Karen O generation. In a good way. The rest of Saturday is spent off-site at a wedding. Thus we miss Noah and The Whale, Fleet Foxes et al and pick up the thread around Sunday lunchtime, beside the Green Man Pub Stage where Under the Driftwood Tree are charming the sun-baked crowd with funk-folk reworkings of Tinie Tempah, Dizzee and M.I.A. Fun but insubstantial; we slide away to catch Simon Armitage in the Literature Tent. His flight is delayed, and John Cooper-Clarke is unveiled as a surprise stand-in. The packed house seems anything but disappointed, and the raspy-voiced bard of Salford delivers the goods as ever – more stand-up than moving odes, he slings out a scattershot set, pondering why there’s only one Monopolies Commission, asking what cheese says when you take its photograph, and defending his decision to voice a recent Domino’s Pizza ad. “What do you mean selling out? I got in the business to sell out. These principles have been on sale for 35 years – it’s just that it’s only been the last three weeks that anyone’s made me an offer.” We move on, into the cool dark of the cinema tent for the documentary ‘Consumed: Inside the Belly of the Beast’, a compelling take on consumerist behaviour. Seek it out here: www.slackjaw.co.uk/consumed. Suitably sobered, we blast away the blues with Tweak Bird, a clever muscle-metal duo who mash guitar and drums with eerie schoolboy singing. Chugging, chopping, stopping and starting, it’s strange, fun and unbelievably fucking heavy. Favourite band of the weekend? You betcha.

Down in the calmer fold of the Main Stage, James Blake’s soft-centred, achy-breaky white-boy soul ballads are wrapped in electronic alchemy. Space age drumming, a consonant-swallowing croon and sub-bass that vibrates the very air around us. Ace, and a tough act to follow for folk darling Laura Marling, who looks pale and regal, her court a quiet band of virtuosi – double bass, cello, banjo and Bristol’s own Pete Roe on guitar and keys. Rumour has it her drummer’s got the shits; he certainly keeps scurrying off stage and then returning mid-song to squirm uncomfortably on his stool (no pun intended). Marling herself sounds typically beautiful, though we spend most of the set playing chase through the crowd, Hal scampering off through a sea of thighs with a bunny mask on.

Ex-Bristol boy Dizraeli brings tent-unifying folk-hop to Chai Wallah's as darkness falls. There’s Bellatrix on beatbox and double bass, fiddle duelling with decks – a happy hour of arms-aloft singalongs ensues. Sunday night’s headliners are Iron and Wine – aka hirsute folk whisperer Sam Beam and his band. His back catalogue highpoints are superbly intimate (like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8aPyBr-_S0), tender, one-on-one stuff that whispers from headphones right to you and you alone. Trying to fill the main arena, he brings a nine-strong band, and proceeds to dilute his music’s quiet mystery with sheen and bombast – sax solos, showy percussion asides and ponderous arrangements. Less is more, Mr Beam.

But no matter – the disappointment’s soon forgotten as we follow the tide of people up the hill to the giant Green Man himself, a sculpture of woven wood and ivy some 60ft high, with glowing green eyes and antlers twisting to the sky. Tonight he’s torched, Wickerman style, sparks dancing into the blackness, fireworks exploding on either side, until only his glowing orange skeleton remains. Like all the best festivals, it’s wild and beautiful and odd. (Mike White)

Copyright Mike White 2011