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home » festivals » Summer Sundae Weekender » Summer Sundae Weekender 2008
Reverend And The Makers shake up Summer SundaySummer Sundae Weekender 2008 reviewWednesday 13th August 2008 Sunday kicked off with the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir on the Main Stage as a replacement for The Mystery Jets who had unfortunately cancelled their performance earlier in the week. Initially disappointed to find out that they weren't a gospel choir at all I grew to like their mountain blues and found them to be of more interest than the heavily hyped Wild Beasts that followed. Jeffrey Lewis played alongside Helen Schreiner and David Beauchamp and performed in his usual quickly spoken manner. Lyrically Lewis is a genius and his style is like a smart Adam Green, but there is even more talent to Lewis than meets the eye as he showed with the showing of his short film and accompanying song 'The Creeping Brain'. 
Jose Gonzalez provided nice background music for what was becoming a nice sunny day, his best-received numbers were his usual covers including 'Heartbeats' and 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and he ended with his rendition of Massive Attack's 'Teardrops'. After catching Joan As Policewoman perform 'Christobel' in the 6 Music Hub Tent it was back to the Main Stage for Cold War Kids. For me Cold War Kids flirt between brilliance and mediocrity. Songs like 'Hang Me Up To Dry', 'We Used To Vacation' and 'Saint John' are some of the most recognisable tracks of the last couple of years and playing live the band perform with a real vigour bouncing of themselves and the audience. In fact it was during this set when I noticed that Cold War Kids seem to have a huge female following, it was the largest collective sound of female voices I heard all weekend. The rest of their set meandered slightly but still left a majority of the crowd looking forward to album number two. Of Montreal was one of the biggest disappointments of the weekend inside the De Montfort Hall. A stage show that resembled musical theatre couldn't draw away from the fact that their songs didn't translate over into the live arena very well. Even psychedelic pop masterpieces 'She's A Rejecter' and 'Bunny Aint No Kind Of Rider' seemed somewhat damp. 
Our last show of the weekend was Jon McClure's Reverend And The Makers. Immediately after coming on stage The Reverend ordered everybody to come forward to the front of the stage and for anyone sitting down to stand up, and to the crowds credit almost everyone did. The Reverend is not like your usual front man of an Indie band, he's got a message and he makes sure that everybody hears it, from his Love Music Hate Racism t-shirt to his political lyric changes. The punk-poet storms through almost every song on the bands debut album State Of Things to the rapture of the audience, in fact for quite a sedate festival the Summer Sundae crowd actually got, dare I say, rowdy. Beer can throwing, although not on the scale of other larger festivals is not something that needs to be seen at such a family friendly audience, maybe it is The Reverends confrontational stature that attracts this type of behaviour? Other than this minor gripe, the set is hugely enjoyable with standout tracks 'Heavyweight Champion Of The World', 'Open Your Window' and 'He Said He Loved Me' featuring vocals from Laura Manuel. At the end of the set The Reverend grabs his acoustic guitar and struts off like the pied piper for one of his famous guerrilla gigs with many of his disciples following behind. A great end to another super Summer Sundae, an independent festival that Leicester can be very proud of, and one that I will continue to battle the M5 for just to be part of.  review by Richard Stevens photos by Phil Bull / Sarah Stevens
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