Voyage to the End of the Road

Had a lovely time at the End of the Road festival in Dorset at the weekend. Cider, cigs and silliness, plus music in the form of The Young Republic (fantastically raucous cover of Dylan's 'Isis', did THREE sets), Laura Marling (overcame the Big Top's rubbish sound and only being, what, five years old to play a storming set, if you're allowed to call folk "storming", although I guess the heavens had just opened so it sort of works), Jeffrey Lewis (I was standing in a puddle in a ditch behind a very tall man, but still bought his album as soon as I got home), Kimya Dawson (so cutesy, she's capable of making very cute bunny wabbits look, um, very uncute), The Wave Pictures (really fantastic and, wow, David Tattersall's guitar-playing is as clever and inventive as his lyrics, which is to say very clever and inventive indeed), Bon Iver (made me like the album, which I was previously a bit iffy about, so tres Bon, hyuk hyuk), Mercury Rev (epic, camp, hard to understand when you've just swallowed a gallon of cider), Devon Sproule (not quite as interesting as her name would suggest), Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band (my feelings about this are to complicated to be explained in parentheses, but I both loved and hated it), Noah and the Whale (the sun was out, they're in the charts, it was fun), A Hawk and A Hacksaw (only caught a couple of songs, but suitably confusing), Richard Hawley (his usual mesmerising self, and started his set, brilliantly, with the line, "Okay, let's ballad."), Calexico (surprisingly danceable Sunday night headline action), and, finally, Zombie Zombie (seemed to play just one song lasting 45 minutes, but with much pizzazz and yelping).

But that's just me. Luke, who fed us some Jagermeister when we were flagging, has penned a nice write-up here.

Visually, this: