Secret Garden Party (Day Two)

It’s midday, the sun looms high and for some reason, the entire live population of SGP seems to be watching dire hirsute comic Tim Minchin on the Great Stage. His lyrics were kind of amusing once, but years of repetition and banal iconoclasm make his set severely dull; that said, his AOR funk music is groovy enough for us to jig our booties to at the bar whilst no one’s looking.
Flitting from Minchin to SoKo within in a mere half-hour, the organisers couldn’t have created a greater antithesis: from large-scale laughter to introverted doom. Many songwriters pen one or two songs about death nowadays, but Stephanie Sokolinski seems to solely write songs about her sorry existence, whether as suicidal folk (‘The Destruction Of The Disgusting Ugly Hate’) or ballsy garage rock (‘Nervous Breakdown’).

She’s evidently a lot more in the festival spirit following our encounter with her yesterday: in the wraithlike ‘I thought I was An Alien’ she invites members of the crowd to join her in dancing like an alien on stage, and in the most surreal event of the festival so far, she brings Ginny Weasley on to sing backing vocals on ‘First Love Never Die’. But what’s most striking is her adorable charm: an insouciant burp appears mid-set, she replies to shouts of “I LOVE YOU, SOKO” with “I don’t know who you are, but I’d probably love you too,” and she closes with ‘You Have A Power On Me’, uttering “you guys are having this power on me right now.” It’s a wonderful, moving set.

Sauntering past bizarre art installations such as Guy Woodhouse’s Tea Dispenser and Rosie Jackson’s smoky Rope House, the next act we see is former Cambridge lad Nick Mulvey over in the OneTaste tent. His African-influenced guitar music is a world away from his work as ‘hang’ player in Portico Quartet, but songs written about his new surroundings of Regents Canal, a glorious cover of Gillian Welch’s ‘Look at Miss Ohio’ and ‘Curucuru’, perhaps the best original song we hear all weekend, are a delight to everyone’s ears.

LA grunge amants Tashaki Miyaki subsequently offer wallowing fuzz and Cocteau Twin vocals over at Where The Wild Things Are. In addition to a sweet elderflower and honey frozen yoghurt, songs like their Dum Dum Girlsy ‘Cities’ proffer the perfect antidote to the stifling heat. And the same goes for Violet, Pixie Geldof’s amazing new indie-pop outfit. Spotted skanking to Ludacris and holding a bright pink ciggie beforehand, it doesn’t bode well, but songs like ‘YOU’, ‘Pancakes’ and ‘Cherry Pie’ (there’s a foody theme), combined with twee “ohh-ah-ooh”s, twinkling keys and dulcet vocals engender spellbinding catchiness. Marvellous closer ‘Feet First’ recalls a poppier Mazzy Star.

Next – having bumped into a friendly Proudlock from Made In Chelsea (I didn’t want to say Hi, but my friend did), we catch a distinctly average set of gruff groaning from Baxter Dury on the main stage. Sadly, his music dead rings for his father’s but doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Now on comes Little Roy, whose mix of well-known 70s material (‘Christopher Columbus’, ‘Tribal War’, etc) and Nirvana covers off last year’s Battle for Seattle get the whole crowd bobbing up and down, and swaying from side to side. There’s a meagre turn-out at first but the crowd expands exponentially. A lack of live guitarists is peculiar, but a dubby DJ, two-piece brass section and backing singers more than make up for it. Who’d have thought you’d ever be able to groove like that to ‘Polly’?

It’s now left to Bristol reggae legends Talisman in the Rum Bar to continue the party. A slightly smaller live band than usual (they very rarely play outside the Briz), they still manage to rock the sparsely populated tent. As they claim, “we don’t play music, we work music… Tonight is edutainment”. In fact, they ‘work’ a captivating set which spans Peter Tosh and Bob Marley covers (‘Get up, Stand Up’ and ‘One Love’ respectively), alongside their own extraordinary material (‘Dole Age’, ‘Shine On’, etc). On the note: “Corruption in high places. Nothing change”, we move off and walk past a tent in which a cross-dresser is playing a trombone to the Pink Panther theme tune. It’s time for bed.