Live Review

Leeds Festival 2009 – day 3 – Leeds

• 31st Aug 2009

And so we wake up to a steady drizzle of precipitation on this final day of Leeds 2009 wondering what musical delights will brighten our day.

The Airborne Toxic Event are the first visit of the day coming well recommended and having been Mercury nominated. However, despite their obvious glee at playing they fail to really capture attention. The announcement of their last single stirs some applause from the crowd but the rain has perhaps dampened the early afternoon vibe.

This is soon rectified by the rising starlet that is Little Boots. It’s like a home town gig for this diminutive blonde bombshell in silver and oversized shoulder pads, with Leeds being her adopted home after studying at university here, and the crowd is enthusiastically excited with the tent filling up early in anticipation. Unfortunately it’s a slow start with some quite poor pop efforts prompting a few early exits. Things brighten up however with pop gems such as ‘Enemy’ and ‘Every Time I Try’, as those of us who persevere, and to be fair it’s by far the majority, are treated to a more crafted and artful brand of electro pop. She finishes the set asking her brother to come and dance on stage to celebrate his birthday and he looks suitably overawed, staring into the crowd, at what his sister has achieved in such a short space of time.

A brief look into the main stage to see Deftones blast their wares at full volume, but unfortunately I can’t tell the songs apart as they sound basically the same. Its wall of sound stuff skilfully put together with excellent musicianship. Perhaps one day I will put some time aside to ‘get’ Deftones.

Then it is back to the NME/Radio 1 stage for another solo female artist. Its standing room outside the tent only for the mystical Florence And The Machine. Some artists you just know will do well, they have the ingredients to success and as long as the music doesn’t suck they are destined for big things. Florence has these sewn up. The right amount of geek chic with her interest in electronics and different things to make music with. A plethora of sex appeal as you can’t help but be entranced by a vision of the red haired banshee standing tall over the crowd, possessed by the musical demons on her own creation. And of course, the music does indeed not suck.

We waltz over to the main stage humming ‘no escaping… gravity’ to find Placebo in full swing AND blasting Gravity out. Joy. Somewhere along the line Placebo have evolved from a prima donna, angst ridden whinge bags into firm festival favourites. It’s a seamless performance spanning all albums of their back catalogue including ‘Bitter End’ and ‘Taste In Men’ and they even leave stage grinning and waving. Brian Molko must have mellowed in old age.

Popping into the Festival Republic stage we have a glimpse at Black Lips. If only because we promoted them early on in their career, and fair play, they have developed a bigger profile than we originally thought possible for them. Their attraction is part built on rock and roll reputation and part music in-cohesion… mostly reputation. The county punk rock fusion they produce is messy at best and lazy if one is to be particularly damning.

Jamie T is a young man on a mission. What that mission is I don’t have much clue, but I have a feeling it centres on parties, love and money. You know your average youth’s chief concerns? The set is opened with a stark new ditty featuring just him and electric guitar in an almost poetic rhythm, rather than pop rhyme, before he reverts to more customary pop. ‘Stone, Glass, Concrete and Gravel’ is an excellent song, whilst ‘Have You Got The Money’ is brilliance. The main objective of any festival performer is to entertain current fans and interest potential new ones. JT succeeded in stirring my interest for further research but there were some murmurs of discontent from the crowd regarding the arrangements not being true to the album recordings. Mind, these were mostly from the older portions at the rear, while the screaming kids near the front probably didn’t care and happily filled in the missing samples themselves.

Nicely warmed up by the smaller stages we head over to see Kings Of Leon. Apparently so did the rest of the site, culminating in a dangerous bottleneck entering into the main arena. We quickly changed our minds and decided not to march to our death, so went and watched from the safety of backstage. Caleb must have been feeling guilty for his gloomy comments at Reading, or perhaps Leeds just treats them better, as he constantly acclaimed the UK fans, and thanked them for making them what they are. Vomit. The music was storming however, with no time wasted with the obligatory encore, playing right through till curfew. Recent songs like ‘Sex Is On Fire’ drew the largest applause naturally, but KOL fans have explored earlier albums and found the gems that lie there such as ‘California Waiting’, with Caleb exclaiming, “this is for those of you who have come for more than two songs”. Perhaps band discord is an infectious disease at the moment, but at least KOL don’t let it affect their performance.