Sunday review

Good Morning Campers!! You’re at V Festival, the festival that makes you feel like you’re living in a giant television with no standby setting. Here’s your early morning wake up call, Gavin De Graw, screeching across the V Stage like an otter caught in a meat grinder. Run!!

Over in the JJB Arena, Boy Least Likely To sound like Modest Mouse played backwards with the melody removed, and they’re followed by Mute Math, who do slightly better with their Sting-doing-Nu-Metal-hold-on-actually-no-it’s-prog-metal-with-cool-synths-this -is-better-than-I-thought Rock and Roll.

Their set attracts a huge crowd, not because they’re great or because anyone’s heard of them, but because Lily Allen’s on next and she’s, like, Totally Hot Right Now. Once it’s packed she saunters out dressed in ball-gown and chav-cap (ohhhh, juxtaposition!) and manages to pull off a great performance despite looking about as enthusiastic as an Essex girl in a Family Planning Clinic waiting room. Her short twenty-five minute set works because it means she can cut out the dross from her album (about 50% of it) and stick to the truly super ultra-distilled poppery that makes up the other half of it. ‘Smile’ gets everyone singing along, whilst set-closer ‘Alfie’ manages to trick people into thinking that dancing to children’s show theme tunes is big and clever.

The Dandy Warhols have this really amazing trick that they do, whereby they make a list of all the amazing songs they’ve written over the past ten years, then make a point of performing them as badly as possible. So what should have been a greatest hits set on the V Stage ends up a mumbley, out-of-time flop, that’s only held together by the crowd singing along in better tune than the band. God knows how they afforded that massive Dandy Warhols banner, their last album only sold about 18 copies. Still, ‘We Used To Be Friends’ has amazing hand-claps, no one can ever deny them that.

Lorraine are amazing on the Virgin Union stage, but no one’s really bothered because it’s 3pm, festival lunch-time, making it Burger O’Clock for most people (do you see what I’ve done there?). ‘I Feel It’ is the comeback single that Depeche Mode never wrote, if only electro-pop was cool at the moment, I’m sure they’d be huge.

It’s impossible to get anywhere near the stage for Sugababes, but even from a distance you know they must be fit, because they’ve got a spangley silver backdrop which in mathematical terms = glamorous = fit. The V festival crowd absolutely love it, but it feels bad to encourage such wilful abandon, as with each hip gyration, somewhere in the background, Vernon Kay and June Sarpongs unworldly powers are growing, their T4 stronghold is expanding and before we know it we’ll be living life as a series of fast-paced cutaway shots and funky twenty degree angles as a result of it. Then again, I’m dancing to ‘Push The Button’ harder than you, and I’m feeling more emotional during Genius Pop Naffery ‘Ugly’ therefore I am a bigger Sugababes fan. I LOVE THE SUGABABES, I don’t care if it kills me (I’m not sure how it might kill me, I’m speaking hypothetically). Sugababes induce mania.

Urgh now James Morrison is on AGAIN (he’s was already performing earlier in the afternoon on the Virgin Union stage)... time to get a beer.

Hard-Fi’s lead singer Richard Archer is the physical embodiment of top 90’s video board game, Rap Rat, as he’s an ugly fucker and with that bright yellow back drop on the V Stage it’s a lot like he’s reclining smugly on a giant slice of Gouda. Hard-Fi get the crowd going wild but they’re utter shit, their crap cover of ‘Seven Nation Army’ leaving people wondering why they paid £120 for a ticket when they could have urinated all over the classic single at home for free. The rest of their set is uniformly indifferent, which is probably why they’re such a success with the V festival crowd.

‘Who’s Paul Weller?’ is, surprisingly, the most overheard sound-bite in the twenty minutes before he arrives on the V stage mid-afternoon. Paul Weller was in the Jam, then The Style Council, then he was just Paul Weller. I hope that clears it up for you. Somehow, despite his credentials, he doesn’t do enough to keep this critic hooked, so it’s off to the Virgin Union tent to watch BellX1 play not-descript Irish Indie-Folk-Dance that’s not quite as exciting as the combination should suggest. They do play a song about Marshmallows and – get this – throw marshmallows into the crowd whilst they do so. It’s alright, but the marshmallows are too small to catch and it’d just be scummy to pick them up off the muddy floor afterwards.

Following on is Sunday’s true highlight, Matisyahu, the only act that manages to make you forget what a rubbish festival V is this year. The Hasidic Jewish Reggae Rapper outshines the novelty and smacks gimmick-callers round the face with his really rather powerful music. ‘Time Of Your Song’ and ‘Youth’ punctuate his criminally short half-hour set, but this is more than made up for by his amazing is-it-serious dancing that looks like he’s on an invisible pogo.

Dear Steven Patrick Morrissey, I love you. I really do. I was so happy to hear you were headlining V 2006, in fact it was the most exciting prospect of the whole charade. I guess it really was too good to be true though, you’re simply not headline material for such a mainstream festival. The crowd don’t even know the words to recent singles ‘You Have Killed Me’ and ‘The Youngest Was The Most Loved’, let alone the two really rather self indulgent B-Sides, ‘Don’t Make Fun Of Daddy’s Voice’ and ‘Ganglong’ that you decide to throw in (both great songs though). I guess it’s a small respite that they seem to enjoy The Smiths classics ‘Panic’ and ‘How Soon Is Now?’ that book-end your set, but asking people to text in to download your new single ‘In The Future When All Is Well’ is rather crass, especially the way they’ve super-imposed a phone number across your chest on the big screens surrounding the stage.

V 2006 closes with a whimper not a bang, and people shuffle out looking none-the-wiser and less inspired than when they walk in. I thought festivals were a reason to celebrate? Apparently they’re now so familiar that you treat them with the same excitement you do when making a sandwich. If this is the future, then forget it, I think I’m gonna stay at home and read.

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