Festival Frolics: Whatever They're Doing In Heaven Today, It Probably Didn't Better Shhh...

If Morrissey's sentiment that everyday is in fact like Sunday, silent and grey, in a remote corner of Camden Shhh! couldn't resemble the week's dourest day more were in tucked away 'til noon with the croon of Lionel Richie and The Observer magazine, before bathing in Tropicana. Cecil Sharp House is a hotchpotch of off-kilter bars snatched from the bedraggled heart of Hertfordshire, pints of Strongbow pulled from rusty pipes and Lego totem poles that snake their way up the stairs, an unfathomably excellent venue by any stretch of a Saturday evening imagination. The afternoon's musical delectation is more resplendent than grey, more sonically rounded than silent, as the picturesque soundscapes of London dream-gaze troupe Still Corners could bluster away the doomiest of gloom, painlessly concocting a frequently breathtaking, intermittently arresting set. Banjo Or Freakout later augment the decibel levels somewhat, their hypnotic sonic convulsions akin to the rudest of awakenings indebted to a sheet of fish skin in a borstal following the subdued course previously followed by the day.

Yet sandwiched in amongst all the alleged sounds of silence, the bit of discernible fruit matter in the juice and the indubitable highlight of a rather spectacular day of revelry, or the antithesis of, is a rare headlining solo show from Stuart Braithwaite. Scarcer than Jessie J's asphyxiating Vivienne Westwood corsets are salacious, it's a gamble of sorts from organiser Howard Monk, as the hung, drawn and quartered contents of Braithwaite's setlist, tonight strewn languidly on a raggedy scrap of card are anyone's guess. Reservedly perhaps, the Mogwai man flitters between original material and irrevocably innovative reworks that whimsically transcend both genre and anticipation. Opening with a poignant cover of Washington Phillips' What Are They Doing In Heaven Today? Braithwaite establishes a glistening, gut-wrenching six string foundation over which his ingenuous, if slightly Americanised Scotch coo crawls. Immobile throughout, he clings onto his Les Paul for dear life, dispatching arrows of electric despondence on downcast Mogwai cut Take Me Somewhere Nice, before beckoning down unearthly drum machine thuds from the outer echelons for a deadpan rendition of Spaceman 3 staple Lord Can You Hear Me. Hugh Dallas sees Braithwaite empty out the contents of the deepest abysses of his heart, littering them all over the laminate floorboards upon which the restless shuffle and shush. Camden would almost certainly be ameliorated were every day like Sunday, and every Sunday had a Shhh!