Hop Farm Festival 2009: A Review

by Another Form of Relief on Thu, 2009/07/09 - 7:34am Post to Twitter

This past weekend brought the second festival of 2009 for Another Form of Relief. It was a local festival, but one that I never intended on going to given it’s ludicrous £125 ticket cost. Seemingly others thought the same, given ticket sales struggled to such a degree that they were giving £250 of tickets away with £10 items via a clothing store. So, one Kangaroo Poo beach towel later and I had guestlist access to two days of live music. Not too shabby.

Arriving on site at around noon, the car parking was fairly well organised and it wasn’t a long walk (in festival terms) to the box office entrance. Where, of course, we weren’t on the guest list where we should have been. Joining a second queue of people all in the same boat, it took a bit of hassle with customer services, but eventually we got our wristbands and got in.

To be presented with one of the most deserted festival sites known to man.

After exploring the site for a bit and getting our bearings, we headed over to the main stage and caught a bit of Howling Bells. They are a band that I’ve been vaguely aware of but never heard much of it, and I’m happy to say that relationship is perfectly intact after their set. They were fine I suppose, but nothing grabbed me to a degree that I had to rush home and find some of their songs.

Next up were Noah and the Whale, a band I rather like, if not entirely. I love 5 Years Time and a few others, and thankfully they played all of the ones I knew. They weren’t exactly what I expected, the sound of four of them live without the voice of Laura Marling was a little bit odd. Not too bad, but 5 Years Time certainly lost some of it’s shine. The newer songs they played were fine, if not as immediate. I suspect they will be growers though.

After that it was a quick dash over to the stupidly small Third Stage, which had some of the best bands of the weekend. We arrived to find Let’s Wrestle about halfway through their set. They sounded good, replicating their recorded sound incredibly well. The only downside was that they ran out of songs 20 minutes before their set was due to end. It was salvaged my audience participation, an extra long jam session and a boisterous rendition of their signature “let’s fucking wrestle!” that certain members of the audience seemed to take to heart.

The mighty Johnny Foreigner followed them and provided the highlight of the weekend. Their set was littered with new songs, and new renditions of old favourites. The band flirted with some new arrangements too, including one song where Kelly took to the drums and Junior picked up a bass and a couple more songs that made use of a fourth member. Alexei seemed to be having a good time throughout, correcting the MC when taking the stage with “we’re actually Editors” and calling a Twang song “the worst fucking thing I’ve ever heard” when they were playing the same festival.

Back to the main stage afterwards for Ash, a band where I know the singles and that’s about it. Which is fine given that is mostly what they stuck with, just littering in the odd new song while constantly assuring us they would get back to the hits. All of the usual suspects made it into the set: Burn, Baby Burn and Shining Light, with the superb Girl From Mars providing the first almighty audience sing along of the day.

Off to the Third Stage once again for The Joy Formidable, who to my surprise had completely packed out the tent. I must have missed the point between Reading last year and now where they became massive, but it certainly felt like they had made it. It was a loud, messy set that went over incredibly well and if they aren’t playing headline slots by the end of the year I’ll be amazed.

That was where day one ended for us. The festival itself went on for a few more hours, with The Fratellis and The Pigeon Detectives being the highest acts on the main stage. But given they are shit, why bother staying?

We returned for day two and had a much longer walk from a much further car park. Which was at the very least good exercise.

Ladyhawke is someone I only know via one song that I’ve heard in someone’s car over and over again. I wasn’t expecting anything more than generic dance nonsense, so I was pleasantly surprised by her set. She seemed rather awkward on stage (apparently she has Asperger’s) and was played by technical difficulties throughout, but her performance was rather good. Not spectacular by any means, but an enjoyable way to spend 40 minutes.

The Super Furry Animals were up next, a band I’ve never been much of a fan of short of one or two songs. Neither of which they actually played. They were rather fun though, bringing their own “Woah!” and “Applause” audience cue cards. We actually left about halfway through their set to get to the Third Stage, so maybe they did play the songs I like after all.

I’ve read so many things about Dananananaykroyd’s “legendary” live performances, but nothing quite prepared me for what I walked into. Arriving in the tent, the band were just having the audience perform the Wall of Cuddles. They followed this by storming through a song with such ferocity that they immediately blew out an amp. While this was being fixed, the band killed time by telling jokes (”What was eight legs and is harmless to kids?” “The Jackson Four”) and playing a television theme tune quiz. We got through Eastenders, Hollyoaks (”that show sucks balls”) and another before everything was good to go again. The band launched into their second wind even more manically than the first, security trying to drag Callum back on stage from crowdsurfing while singing repeatedly. It was an insane, but utterly fitting show for the band, and I hope to see them playing outside of a festival environment in the future.

If it’s possible to go to sleep while standing in a crowd of people enjoying themselves at a festival, I could have managed it during Doves. Nothing particularly wrong with them at all, just all very uninteresting.

Speaking of uninteresting, Editors were on next. The crowd seemed to enjoy them, so maybe it was just me, but they bored me to tears on the most part. I just spent the time watching the lead singer flail around like a lunatic for seemingly no apparent reason. Never have I so randomly and intently hated a man as much as that guy. Thankfully we left about halfway through and I didn’t have to suffer any more of his twattery.

The last band of the weekend for me were the rather pleasant Rumble Strips. I missed most of their set, but I enjoyed what I saw. The band seemed to be very much on form, even managing to get the brass instruments sounding good in a live setting, which isn’t always an easy feat. I felt kind of bad that I only caught about three of their songs after the event.

And that was it.

Some random observations:
- The security guards were fine at times, dickish at others.
- The bar had nice, cheaply priced drinks.
- The food stalls had crappy, expensive food.
- The toilets (in the bar at least) were excellent by festival standards.
- The Grilled Chicken & Bacon Salad in the Brookers Oast next door to the site is lovely.
- The ridiculously long walk to get in and out of the site (and thus to the pub) was a bit of a git.
- For a festival that prides itself on “no VIP areas” so “everyone has the same experience”, it seems odd to have a VIP bar.

Pretty damn good for the price of a towel though.

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