The crèche to
the crate-laden, epicurean haven that is Rob da Bank's annual estival blowout Camp Bestival is increasingly becoming the sort of tranquil retreat the students and sybarites of its elder kinsman look as though they may require come mid-September. University may then beckon, the very stomach-tumbling thought looming large over your every ill-advised manoeuvre although this weekend, under a dense hum of sun, BST spun seasonal. And sonically? da Bank lavished we reddened mortals with perhaps the fest's best line up yet...
Alas, Mr. Stuart Goddard may no longer be deemed in many ways delectable: again performing – and with it boring – under his
Adam Ant & The Good, The Mad and the Lovely Posse sobriquet, his voice gunned down by palm muted nothingness his standing as substandard mid-afternoon festival fodder is exacerbated; exposed until a violent shade of hammy rouge. He must be goddamn baking in his threadbare naval regalia too, and indeed even a half-baked Stand and Deliver falls goddamn flat. And
flattened is precisely how an exiguous crowd appears in The Big Top, which affords Colette Thurlow the opportunity to unfurl some thinly veiled, if wholly premature Shirley Manson-styled shit fit. "Stand the fuck up", she snaps discontentedly. For despite having diverged stylistically from mere xx impersonators, this bolshie spunk befits
2:54 about as well as their newfangled bass-fuelled bombast musical. Come 18:15 they've vagabonded off elsewhere with their vitriol presumably in tow having put in what was essentially an inessentially villainous show.
From one Goddard to another the highly huggable, appositely ursine figure of Joe takes to the CD decks of the Bollywood tent for an inconsequential spin with
The 2 Bears, ahead of headlining the Castle Stage a smidgen later on in this very soirée. He and his fellow omnivore Raf Daddy infuse the afternoon with some supreme vibe at any rate, dropping anything and everything from the quicksilver schmooze of Jean Jacques Smoothie's 2 People, to the swelter of Chad Jackson's remapping of Third World's reggae-disco biggie Now That We Found Love, to their very own rework of Wiley's Skankin'. Whether their CD-Rs were ripped from YouTube that very morning or months previous thus fades into insignificance as the floor underfoot transcends a state of squidgy moistness, the tent subsequently becoming the sort of
House of Love of which Mortimer and Goodfellow could only dream.
Quite the antithesis to the maddening furore of Boyle's Opening Ceremony shebang – screened over outside a heaving Big Top – is Californian sweet
Jenny O, whose lyrics of "chicken pickin' with such gelid hands" tonight assume a forever greater pertinence. The sun now sheltering behind darkened horizon and beneath an icily pallid segment of moon, a snug Won't Let You Leave proves more succulent than any unsavoury produce from the Turkey Store of her dearly disgusting namesake as the temperature drops. O, however, is overtly heartwarming and plays out a candid and courageous forty-five atop exposed Bandstand. "I'm never gonna be your hapless cheerleader" she later avows as a flock of swallows swoop beyond the illumined features of this ideal outcast, and inclusive of all unapologetic and acrimonious amorous condemnations, even against the unremitting drone of the nearby waltzers she beguiles with those two
gelid hands o' hers. Beneath the moon, and the stars and backed only by the birds it seems as though – if only fleetingly – there be a consummate rationality to the revolving of the world. And then motion sickness mars such perception.
It is, however, only tarnished with the unabating brilliance of
Hot Chip who, with a set dedicated to sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and tots teetering intrepidly upon parental shoulders everywhere, scurry through a set dripping in hit. Alexis Taylor looks as dazed as we by the lustrous effervescence to it all, adorned in Mothersbaugh's sleepers and even turning Derrick Evans-motivational on a scintillating Flutes whilst Al Doyle, sporting sailor garb, lays down gleaming guitar anchorage to pin down opener Boy From School and more besides. Collective infatuation with One Life Stand burgeons; all positivity localised to East Lulworth is focalised around One Pure Thought; the compelling parroting of Over and Over inspires mass chirping.
This is not purely an accomplished promotion to the heftyweight division but a series of celebratory masterstrokes to leave us seeing as many stars as a wearied Amir Khan come the 12th round, and the undisputed star of this particular show is
In Our Heads. Spasmodically rethought here and there, the smouldering proto-balladry to the otherwise incidental Let Me Be Him is transposed into an incandescently glowing sendoff, its Hans Zimmer-honed, Serengeti-brimming roars veritably anthemic and ultimately unforgettable, as is How Do You Do? A deep, cerebrum-frying triumph, if after only a day I may already look and feel a Frazzle, a heady pulverisation at the hands of the somewhat disparate individuals of Hot Chip has been nothing short of a hoot.
