Camden Crawl 2010: Rated!

Various, Camden, North London - 1-2 May

Overall - 8/10

After bagging the Best Metropolitan Festival award at last year’s UK Festival Awards, the Camden Crawl again sets the bar for urban indie-spotting as the good and the great of emerging music squeeze in and square up in their natural habitat.

Camden is a Never Never Land where the punks and skinheads who never grew up mix with tomorrow’s trendsetters and it’s refreshing to see such a cocktail of different ages and varying musical tastes.

One wristband gets you into many of NW1’s top venues, although additional tickets are needed to see those top acts – Sugababes, Calvin Harris and Pendulum – playing the Roundhouse.

Although the music begins around 6pm, there is plenty to do through the day, such as music quizzes, hip-hop karaoke and busking sessions, and after the bands finish DJs spin discs into the wee hours.

There are the inevitable queues, but the official festival guide gives the following advice: ‘If ever you see more than fifty people waiting outside a small venue, you should move on to another’. Judging by the state of most punters, it’s doubtful they could count to ten, let alone fifty!

Getting there and back - 8/10

London is accessible from all angles and the Underground provides a direct link to Camden Town and the four Tube stations in the area. It’s just as easy to walk between the venues and there are always buses and cabs around when your feet can’t stand anymore.

The site - 8/10

Camden’s hedonistic charm makes it is the perfect place for an urban festival. Bands play in a myriad of different locations dotted around the town, with the majority found on Camden High Street, up over Regent’s Canal and north towards Chalk Farm.

There are 47 different venues, ranging from the historic Roundhouse, the cavernous Underworld and the Black Cap bar, which will shortly be hosting ‘Drag Idol’!

Atmosphere - 9/10

Constantly buzzing, revellers at Camden Crawl have come from all over the country and the world to soak in the friendly, feel good vibe.

A torrential downpour on the Saturday night doesn’t dampen spirits - it doesn’t even lessen the amount of sunglasses being worn - and there’s always somewhere to go to dance away the cold.

Someone hands out the obligatory free high-fives, generous Geordies give away tickets to Plan B outside the Blues Kitchen and people carry a gazebo past the Elephants Head with the intention of setting up the world’s smallest rave – the type of nonsense that wouldn’t be out of place at Glastonbury.

Music

Uppers

The Drums - 8/10

Tonight The Drums pound the Blues Kitchen, a minuscule bar that is no match for the mountainous hype heaped on the band. The choice of venue leaves many unfortunate and unhappy hipsters outside in the rain.

For those lucky punters squeezed inside, the New York band exceed expectations with an energetic set providing the perfect antidote to the piss poor British weather.

Taking a break from excitedly commentating at football matches, frontman Jonathan Pierce’s spasmodic dancing is just recognisable onstage through a mass of other people doing their best Ian Curtis’ impression.

The Drums’ post-punk pummels the bar and the crowd is a cartoonish blur of limbs throughout, but the highlight of their set is undoubtedly ‘Let’s Go Surfing’, a song that forces everyone to whistle that nagging hook, clap their hands in the breakdown and scream, “Oh mama, I wanna go surfing!” This just might have been possibly with the amount of rainwater and sick slurry surging down Camden High Street.

Lightspeed Champion - 7/10

Lightspeed Champion’s Dev Hynes is possibly the most popular man in indie, for at the Electric Ballroom it’s one in and one out.

Dev spins in circles whilst playing squealing solos on guitar and scuttling spidery hands all over a keyboard, but his band – although tight - remains static throughout and seem thoroughly disinterested, especially the guitarist perhaps too worried to crease his cream overcoat.

The heaving crowd don’t seem to mind, however, and claps along to ‘Madame Van Damme’ from second album ‘Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You’, featuring Dev happily singing “Kill me baby, won’t you kill me?”

The previously acoustic ‘Galaxy Of The Lost’ becomes a crunching rock epic, ending in a snarl of feedback and Dev’s work doesn’t end here, as later he joins We Are Scientists onstage at the Roundhouse.

The Sunshine Underground - 8/10

With Scroobius Pip also in attendance, The Sunshine Underground’s frontman Craig Wellington pushes through the brimming bar before his band’s set at the Black Cap.

Despite the long wait for Craig to finish his beer, the crowd is the most frenzied of the weekend, becoming one mass that shifts up and down and falls left and right.

Plastic bottles and glasses crunch underfoot as the band’s dance infused floor fillers cause unknown liquids to fly through the air and drip from the ceiling.

On ‘In Your Arms’ The Sunshine Underground sound how The Rapture would if they were based in Leeds, though it’s the opening riff of ‘Borders’ that causes the biggest reaction from the teeming audience, who blurt the song’s strangely familiar melody in unison. The song is so catchy it is sung all the way back to Camden Town Underground Station.

Downers

Villagers - 0/10

Thirty minutes after show time, one punter wonders, “Who are we waiting for again?”

“I’m not sure,” comes the reply, “I vaguely remember… a little Irish guy… acoustic guitar… words sharp as shards of broken bottles, a haircut that screams of scissors and pudding bowl, you know, Conor J. O’Brien.”

“Who?”

Five minutes later comes the news, not from the stage, but hot from the ladies’ toilets: “He’s cancelled.”

With no reason given, one has to wonder - did the inner city pressure get to Villagers?

Plan B - 5/10

Everyone should have a Plan B. His is a smoky, soulful voice that has seemingly come from nowhere. But did he not realise he could sing like this back in 2006 when he spat out grimy raps over an acoustic guitar? And why unleash it on the unsuspecting public now, four years later?

Maybe it’s because he was too busy with film career - or maybe he saw what a retro makeover did for Amy Winehouse…

With the singles from his sophomore album ‘The Defamation of Strickland Banks’ – ‘Stay Too Long’ and ‘She Said’ – Plan B rocks the roof off the Roundhouse. These songs are met with huge screams from the rain soaked crowd, but for the rest of Plan B’s set they’re strangely subdued, maybe coming down with the sniffles.

For the big finale Plan B looks awkward bouncing up and down in that suit of his – surely he must’ve ripped it – and of all of the songs in all of the world, he chooses to play a cover of Paolo Nutini’s ‘Coming Up Easy’.

Random Events

Umbrella Guitar Hero
In front of the World’s End, a man plays Beatles’ songs on a child’s umbrella for a mere 10p charge. This one-man jukebox proves popular, and after a sterling rendition of ‘Love Me Do’, a crowd of girls ask for his photo.

 

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