Supersonic 2009: The Strangeglue Review

No beating around the bush for once: This was the best festival I have ever been to. I had a hell of a lot of fun, the security guards were laidback and friendly, there weren’t many food stalls but what there was tasted good, was reasonable and almost wholesome. There were no toilet queues, one bar (of four) charged a fair price for a pint of cider (one is better than none!) and the audiences were a pleasure to be amongst. And yes: it was chock full of guitars and drum-kits. And yes: it was loud… but it was also clear.

I couldn’t leave my house in Cornwall till the Saturday morning because of some extra-curricular musical activities of my own, and after four hours of fitful sleep I arose at seven thirty a.m thinking: how the hell can I get out of going to this damn festival? Food Poisoning? Personal Problems? That’s right: I didn’t think of Swine Flu, unlike some (here’s looking at you Pontiak [not the chief, swine flu is not the revenge of the natives… it’s barely even the revenge of kleenex]).

So I went through the motions of preparing to run to the train I had booked myself onto but I did it half-heartedly. There were a few bands I wanted to see a great deal, but I hadn’t heard of three quarters of the line-up and I imagined I would come out of the weekend feeling as jaded as I have felt at the close of most British festivals. But the thought of you people out there hanging on my every word drove me to go drink cider, have my doom cherry popped by Thorrs Hammer and bear witness to the divine and hilarious retribution visited upon the barman at the Space 2 stage… I hope you’re all damn grateful that I did this for you. I can’t say more about that retribution, but the old nursery rhyme seems to say it best, “If you go pissing on the woods tonight, be sure of a pint in the face”.

The line-up was exceptionally well curated. I will soon be interviewing the ladies from Capsule (who are the hydra-headed geniuses behind the festival) and I intend to find out how and why they do it as they do, but for now I will just say that there was a breadth of style that ran deeper than the scent of superficial diversity given off by the appearance of token British folk act Nancy Wallace and solo Oud player Khyam Allami on the bill (interviews and reviews of both on the way).

I’m going to get all hippie on you now: It felt like people were coming together in a way you don’t even get a whiff of at some of the so-called “boutique” festivals. There were no couples with children, no free copies of The Guardian and barely a latte in sight. There was also a lack of hipster swagger and pseudo-muso bitching in between the music. There was a young man with half a beard, but I felt sympathy for him because he was so clearly the lone festival goon when you’d forgive him for imagining that he’d be in company; I thought that it was the kind of event that would summon all manner of kinks out of the cracks. People were there to have a good time, and they were getting it.

I didn’t expect to find myself feeling like I was encased in pulsating earth during Thorrs Hammer’s set, I couldn’t have predicted that seeing Pontiak play a short set at a festival rather than at a small club could be so fulfilling, and I didn’t think that Monotonix could blow me away for a second time, but all of these things came to pass this weekend at the Custard Factory in Birmingham. Over the next day reviews, photos and interviews will be provided to verify my claim that Supersonic is the very dog’s bollocks of British festivals, the ones I know of at least.