Barclaycard Wireless Festival, Friday 2nd July 2010

We arrive at Wireless Festival in time to hear Hockey closing their set. Whilst walking to the entrance around the same time, we also see a very drunk man headbutt a lamppost in a bizarre attempt to impress his friends, then appear surprised when he begins to bleed profusely. Seems Wireless’ reputation for attracting the kind of people who wouldn’t normally attend a festival is unjust: this kind of behaviour and dimwittedness makes up 90% of the crowd at Creamfields, for instance. Wireless has, to it’s credit, been able to do something genuinely different though: the diversity of each days line up is unparalleled with any other ‘festival’ on the circuit. Essentially a series of all day gigs, today’s line up would be deemed the ‘pop’ day. Whilst there are still one or two unusual choices (Bowling For Soup? Seriously?), the crowd is mostly made up of families, young couples and a hell of a lot of middle aged lesbians.

Gossip are the first band we see, starting 15 minutes before Plan B. Their opening song is ‘Standing In The Way Of Control’, Beth Ditto sarcastically announcing ‘y’all may have heard this one before’. Predictably, at it’s conclusion a good 50% of the crowd bugger off to the tent to watch Plan B, us included. Before he comes on stage there’s an intro that involves: beatboxing along to basslines and snatches of Crookers ‘Day N Nite’, Reel 2 Reel’s ‘I Like To Move It (Move It)’ and Tom Novy’s ‘Your Body’. This gives false hope that live at least he might return to the hip hop sound of first album ‘Who Needs Actions When You Got Words’, a notion swiftly dismissed within two songs. The only first album track to get an airing today is ‘Charmaine’ which admittedly works within a full band environment, seamlessly fitting in to the rest of the ‘Strickland Banks’ culled set. The tent is filled to breaking point with a diverse crowd in age and gender until the climax of ‘She Said’ three songs in when (in what will become a recurring theme throughout the entire weekend) at least a third of the crowd disperse for pastures new. The rest of the set passes by in a not-entirely-unpleasant-but-by-no-means-memorable haze. Only a cover of ‘Forgot About Dre’ provides any hint of Plan B’s hip hop background instead of his current Motown rape, which culminates in ‘Stay Too Long’ to finish the set. An ironic finish, to say the least.

The Temper Trap are the tent’s headliners but it certainly doesn’t feel that way, such is the disparity in crowd size with Plan B (the Ting Tings are playing the main stage at the same time). They seem undeterred by this though, opening with distortion and feedback that slowly translates into an instrumental opener. Certainly not the most obvious way to win over an unsure crowd but they’re all the better for sticking to their guns. From there, the band grow from strength to strength with each song. ‘Fader’ is the first played to recognition from the audience and where on record the melody is soft, the briskness it’s played with live gives it a raw edge. Their set as a whole has a rougher quality to it than the record from which it is culled, even ‘Down River’ which is primarily acoustic but has a touch of the Frank Turner about it here. ‘Drum Song’ is formidable live, the percussion intensified by three members of the band hammering away at various kits. As expected, singer Dougie’s voice doesn’t soar quite as high as it did in the studio - the tuning down of the instruments to reflect this the cause for the scuzzier sound. ‘Sweet Disposition’ followed by ‘Science Of Fear’ to close the set is a strong one-two and leaves those who remain after Plan B glad they do so.

Pink - Don’t make me relive it. When a ‘pop star’ uses the phrase ‘Alright now it’s time to get political’ then follows it up with an acoustic ballad THEN engages in a truly ear-raping bastardisation mash up of both The Who’s ‘My Generation’ and Green Day’s ‘Basket Case’, it’s too much for this reviewer to take. The plethora of fortysomethings toe tapping around us enjoy it though, seemingly oblivious that ‘I hope I die before I get old’ should have been rewritten to include ‘or before I start enjoying total guff like this.’