Rolling up the high street into Camden tonight on the number 168 bus, things seem much of a muchness. Things are ordinary. There’s a man rambling intermittently about 3 seats back from us on the top deck (and we’re fairly sure he has no Bluetooth alibi), work ties are being loosened, I’ve just read one of those free London evening papers from cover to cover in about 47 seconds, on the other side of the window Woolworths is closing down for the day and there are signs of life through pub doors. It’s a Friday night. But then, thinking about it, did we just pass a massive drum approximately 3 metres in diameter outside Koko, with a man inside? And towards the bottom of Parkway, by the traffic lights, is that Amy Winehouse? Possibly with a small feral child nestling in her terrifying beehive? It sounds like her – either that or Hackney’s cabbies on an away day holding the final stages of an impromptu loudness competition. And the queue snaking away from the HSBC cashpoint into the distance, next to that pack of grimacing touts gathered by the tube station, is somewhat longer than usual. It is bloody busy for 6pm, we’ll give you that. So perhaps things are a little extraordinary too.  And that’s the Camden Crawl, back for a third consecutive year, all over. There is nothing particularly unusual about its principal components. One can, logic informs us, only be in one place at any one given time supping one beverage, and when you are it’s really no different an experience to a ‘normal’ gig. But it’s the size and ambition of the venture, the mismatch of bands to venues, the weight of the overall line-up (even if not to all your taste, and of course it isn’t, you can’t deny the density of ‘buzz-bands’ or just acts you wouldn’t mind checking out), working out which route out of a thousand could be yours and the fact you’re competing with 10,000 others, that makes it a unique experience. Those complaining that it will never work until there are venues big enough to accommodate the biggest bands on the bill are kind of missing the point. As are those who stand in a queue all night trying to see Travis (I mean, come on!). After a bag of chips for nourishment we dive straight into the Electric Ballroom – mainly because it’s nearby and starting early – and encounter “the new Lily Allen” in full adorably-peaky flow. Kate Nash might remind everyone an awful lot of the aforementioned gobby popette, but you know how you’re probably like “well, I like that Lily Allen, but…”. With Nash there seem to be no buts. After a chipper acoustic retelling of sinister fuzz-heavy single ‘Caroline’s A Victim’ we hop up the road to The Dublin Castle for The Hot Puppies, fronted inimitably by Becky Newman who is arguably far too ditzy to be a pop star (she’s wearing no deodorant and fell off her bike drunk last night, we learn). Prime exhibit for the defence though is That Voice, pitched somewhere between Sandie Shaw and Bonnie Tyler, and leading their polka-dot Britpop cabaret to unreal places. A new song sounds a lot like Sleeper vs. The Scissor Sisters, which shouldn’t really be any good, right? We pop into NW1 next just because we can – there are no queues and we fancy making the most of that fact – and find an Icelandic woman twittering on about all English men not in fact being very much like Hugh Grant, and then bashing out some brash anti-folk, like the Moldy Peaches baiting Bjork (kind of, she is the only lady with an Icelandic accent we can think of right now). The event timetable tells us they are Hafis Huld and though enjoyable they are not nearly as pure or as mouth-watering as Emmy The Great who is a leg stretching walk away upstairs at The Enterprise, but worth every last stride. That she is cute as a button is a mere bonus, for she is like Cat Power house-sitting for The Mountain Goats, her clarity is spine-tingling and her charm is warm and spongy. And that is hair-on-end stuff for anyone, not least this packed room. Attempts to catch indie-hypes du jour Cajun Dance Party at the Barfly and to up our venue count by nipping into Dingwalls to see the truly appalling sub-Fratellis The Dykeenies are both thwarted by queues. Sensing an emerging pattern we cut our losses and bed in at the Electric Ballroom. We’re rewarded, nay blessed, immediately with a wide-eyed fresh-dawn kind of musical experience. We’d been gently seduced already by their debut eponymous album, but Denmark’s The Kissaway Trail are an utter revelation live and something for which we weren’t prepared. They protect their dainty, woven melodies like a muscular mother would her child, they are ergo both vein-bulgingly intense and fresh as a meadow-sown daisy. In a jubilantly non-stop, rattling, pace-gathering set they sing like The Arcade Fire without the weight of the world on their shoulders and remind of Mercury Rev’s and Sigur Ros’ wide reach. Only shinier. Band of the night. If ever there were a dead cert, then tough-as-old-boots-on-the-march ‘singing’/storytelling stalwart Billy Bragg is undoubtedly it. Even if on first glance he might have seemed out of place, ‘Greetings To The New Brunette’ being older than most in attendance. We’d only really seen him preaching to the spliffed-out choir at Glasto previously, but from the moment he grasped his guitar like a weapon (Woody Guthrie reference intended) to the final venue-shaking hollers of the heartening ‘New England’ shout-along, he whips the audience into a frenzy; covering both The Carpenters and Dylan in a hark back to his Camden busking days, preaching, joking, poking fun at both himself and David Cameron, and ripping apart the BNP because he has to (and not just because it’s expected of him). “I’ve been having so much fun I’ve not even touched my cup of tea”. Even Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, following as headliners, drop the cool for a moment to profess his set “beautiful”. They themselves are clearly in their element, playing their last gig of a traditionally frantic flurry of London shows over the past few days amid a hail of sweat, flung beer and unfaltering distortion – and under leather despite the heat, natch. An intense, upbeat set sees the new album pitched against the first in a running battle and come out surprisingly well in the face of some of its awkward quirks, proving live performance for them to be the great leveller, that level being perpetually elevated. And in a funny way there’s really nothing more normal than such a blistering BRMC set. Though that’s the attraction of course.
James Berry for Crud Magazine 2006© |
