But months did indeed fly by and whilst the line up for this years second ATP May weekender appeared a little tame on the surface you just can't deny that it's one of the best festivals around. In terms of atmosphere, location and quality of bands, ATP is unsurpassed. If you've never been or heard of it (where've ya been??) it's essentially like a small summer festival but just take out all the shit bands, add loads of weirder bands, remove all the pissed up knobheads that cause trouble add a few pissed up weirdos that are funny to watch and then let everyone stay in the splendor that is Mineheads Butlins Campus...Indie Rock Prison Camp is the best weekend of your life!
So we made the four hour drive to Minehead in well...four hours..weird that! Rocked up to the chalet and reclined in our luxurious living quarters, realised we'd probably brought far too much booze and not enough food. We checked out the days line ups and realising what time it was off we went. First problem arose in that Giant Sand were on downstairs, and The Bronx on upstairs on the excellent Centre Stage. Ten years ago Giant Sand would of won this, as it is now Bronx won out...No regrets they were ace. To be honest I'm not sure what happened next...memory blank but there must have been some other bands on!!
Next up was the stella Bon Iver. This was definitely a highlight for all of our party, big fans of the beardy one. His live set was brilliant. Fuzzing up the livelier tracks from album and EP into a frenzy of blissful guitar and pounding drum rhythms with that incredible voice soaring over the top of us and into the heavens. The swapping of instruments gave the set a nice variety, without losing momentum and the set list provided all the hits. Great show.
I'm not gonna write every detail of what we did all weekend, that would take too long and you'd just end up reading this and thinking "Why'd you go to a festival and spend most of your time watching weird shit on the telly!" guilty as charged, I'm going with the idea that you gotta get into the vibe and few cans of moderately cool (try tepid) Carlsberg and some shit telly (some really fucking weird telly btw) is ideal before getting your head smashed in by Shellac...which is what happened on saturday. They were incredible. As were Melt Banana. The Japanese mentalists overlapped the much hyped Deerhunter who I wanted to see to see what all the fuss was about. They were very good in fact, even if the sing along with Kim and Kelley deal was sweet to the point of vomit inducing. The Deal sisters seemed to be enjoying themselves with a serious of cameos throughout the weekend.
I was dissappointed to see so many "older" bands on the bill. Whilst I'll always have time for the Breeders (if only for Pod) the selection of Teenage Fanclub, Throwing Muses, CSS and Foals seemed a little pedestrian to me...The addition of the unbelievably good Mariachi el Bronx (bronx go mexicana) clawed back some points as did the second Shellac set and a late night Holy Fuck show that divided our group as to how good they were (i'm in the 7 to 9 out of ten camp).
It's only looking at the list of bands who played that I realise just how much we didn't see...always the way with festivals I guess...had an incredible time though, need to go and buy some Melt banana albums now.
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