Live Review - Camden Crawl
19th - 20th April 2007
Day One
It's in its 11th year, it's the first big festival of the year and its got a line up that reads like a who's who of contemporary rock and indie. It can only be the Camden Crawl, and we're here to enjoy the ride.
We pick up our wristbands and decide to start the day with a cold beer by Camden Lock. The weather is glorious, we've got our programmes and the streets are beginning to fill up with crowds of excitable music fans. From the dark interiors of the Electric Ballroom, The Underworld and countless other venues, bands are warming up, mics are being tested and guitars are getting a last minute fine-tuning.
Excited? You bet we are.
As Black Rebel Motorcycle Club casually saunter past us, we decide to head over to The Spread Eagle to check out the Camden Crawl Unplugged Sessions and then over to Bar Vinyl for the Gigwise Indie Idle competition finalists. The daytime entertainment is pretty limited so most people are sat outside various pubs enjoying the sunshine and, as there appears to be little going on, we decide to join them.
By about 5 o'clock, Camden's really starting to hot up, with hordes of fashionable young things gathering on the streets, clutching their programmes and goodie bags, trying to work out exactly who to see, when and in what order. We do the same and try to make some kind of plan, followed by a contingency plan for when that one inevitably goes wrong. It's rather annoying that the organisers have refused to let anyone see the programme for tomorrow as, knowing that most bands are playing twice, but some only once, it's nigh on impossible to work out who we can afford to miss today and who we really need to get to.
Emmy The Great
It's when we enter the cavernous red belly of super-club KOKO to see Mancunian three-piece I Am Kloot that it feels like the festival's really begun. As it's not really my kind of music, it's difficult to say that they kicked things off with a bang, but the crowd is huge and are obviously enjoying it, and Koko's magnificent interior more than makes up for it.
Next up we head over to a much emptier Underworld in time to catch a magical set from the brazen yet stirringly sweet Emmy The Great. On a par with other great female songwriters like Cat Power or Nina Nastasia, she woos the crowd with her child-like demeanour before throwing everyone off course by shamelessly cutting through it with wounding lyrics and the snarl and spit of an angrily wronged woman. As her set advances so do the crowd and by the end, she's got us all wrapped around her little finger.
Next on our itinerary are Swedish folksters Loney, Dear at The Earl Of Camden. It's a strange venue, rather like a Weatherspoons with a stage, but I've been hearing a lot of good things about this pop-influenced five piece, and as the venue fills up, it's obvious that a lot of others have too. As they quietly arrive on stage before bursting into three minutes of some of the most sublime folk-pop known to man, they certainly don't disappoint. Lead singer Emil Svanangen's vocal gymnastics and gentle Nordic charm, coupled with the band's ability to create rousing pop of orchestral proportions, instantly make them one of my festival favourites and a group I'll definitely be making a point to see again.
Just before the end of Loney, Dear's set, we run over to NW1 to catch the tail end of lo-fi rockers Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man at the Drowned In Sound showcase. We're a bit too late, however, and only get the last couple of chords, but the place is full and from the noise of the crowd, they've had a pretty good show.
Blood Red Shoes
Next up, we head over to the Black Cap, a hidden gem of a venue that soon fills up to capacity in frantic anticipation of the incredible Kitty, Daisy and Lewis. Formed by two sisters and their brother, with the later addition of mum and dad on guitar and double bass, Kitty, Daisy and Lewis are musical protoges making dirty jazz with a lean towards 20's skiffle and 50's rock'n'roll - and boy can these kids play. Between them they effortlessly switch from percussion to guitar, ukulele to banjo and harmonica to vocals, whilst calmly but steadily rocking the joint to the ground.
We're left speechless; If three kids playing the blues can get the audience of a cooler-than-cool indie festival cheering, jeering and doing the twist, we can't wait to see what happens next.
Sadly though, we have to leave early, as we want to catch Amy Winehouse at the Dublin Castle and we're well aware there'll be a queue. But as we approach and see the queue snaking down the street and into the distance, we make an executive decision and decide to head over to the The Underworld for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Although a much bigger venue than the Dublin Castle, they've stopped letting people in here too and so we go for plan C and make a run for the Purple Turtle to see Brighton two-piece Blood Red Shoes. Like an inverted White Stripes (with Laura-Mary Cartel on guitar and Steven Ansell on drums) the pair are expertly rocking the place to the rafters with their Sonic Youth-esque riffs and Moldy Peaches style vocal play. Laura-Mary wavers between sweet and sexy, sultry and smiley and her angst-ridden vocals meld into Stevens until it's impossible to tell just who's singing what. Despite the handicap of a single guitar and drum kit, they make enough noise to fill the place twice over, with new single You Bring Me Down being introduced as an instant anthem.
As one of the final acts of the day, Blood Red Shoes finish off the night nicely, there's a few DJs playing here and there but as the music's over and the tube's still running, we decide to call it a night and head off home, to mentally prepare ourselves to do it all again tomorrow...
Click here to read the Day Two review.
Words: Meg Rowell
