Keep On Trucking: Truck Festival 2012 preview
We bring you the lowdown as Truck celebrates its fifteenth birthday...
Photographer:Sara Bowrey
Chris Eustace - 19 July 2012
However, after a bit of a financial nightmare last year, we thought we may have seen the last of it. Luckily, the organisers of Y-Not Festival have taken it under their wing, promising a “back to basics” approach.
Truck lives then, and as it celebrates its 15th anniversary this weekend, we pick out a few acts that you should definitely try to catch:
Mystery Jets (Friday, Main Stage headliners)
Our favourite Eel Pie Islanders decamped to Texas to make their latest album ‘Radlands’ and returned reinvigorated, with ‘Someone Purer’ a VF office anthem. If it’s as fun as their bill-topping appearance at Bushstock was, Truckers are in for a treat – there’ll be hands in the air for ‘Flakes’, an album run-down- as-singalong to ‘Greatest Hits’, and the place will no doubt go crazy for the Number One in a just world that is ‘Two Doors Down’.
Tim Minchin (Friday, Main Stage)
A few disgruntled Henley festivalgoers might not be too into it, but anyone in possession of both a sense of humour and a pulse will love the musical comedian’s litany of clever and close to the bone numbers, as he rails against the mistreatment of redheads, crying babies and compares Jesus to Woody Allen. An early-evening masterstroke.
Fixers (Friday, Main Stage)
If Brian Wilson had spent the “sandpit years” listening to ‘Merriweather Post Pavillion’, he’d probably have emerged with an album sounding much like ‘We’ll Be The Moon’. Instead, that job fell to Fixers, and their hazy, harmony-drenched electro-indie pop is so made for the summer it’ll probably shift that troublesome jetstream all by itself .
The Temper Trap (Saturday, Main Stage headliners)
The Australian rockers will close out the festival in epic fashion, with a few more considered numbers from their new self-titled album rubbing shoulders with the 80’s stadium stylings of their debut. You might still hear ‘Sweet Disposition’ all over the place, but you’ll find familiarity won’t breed contempt when it starts up here – live, it’s nothing short of spectacular.
Lucy Rose (Saturday, Second Stage)
After shedloads of festivals and touring, both solo and with Bombay Bicycle Club, Lucy’s debut album is finally out in September, with ‘Lines’ the latest of her songs to charm the airwaves. As you’ll see this Saturday, there’s much more where that came from, with folk-pop that twists from beautiful and bruised to skittering and upbeat in the blink of an eye.
Johnny Foreigner (Saturday, The Barn)
Sounding like Los Campesinos! falling down the stairs, JF have the shouty indie/pop thing down to a tee, with boy/girl vocals constantly doing battle over soaring guitars. Rounding up the best 90’s US slacker riffs but with a UK slant, they’re an indie circuit institution. A perfect fit for Truck, and once you’ve been to see them, and inevitably bounced around, the only thing you’ll wonder is why they aren’t a whole lot bigger.
Want more? Have a listen to the VF Truck Festival 2012 Spotify Playlist!
Click here for the full Truck Festival line-up so far.
Truck Festival 2012 takes place at 20-21 July at Hill Farm in Steventon, Oxfordshire.
Truck Festival weekend tickets are on sale now, priced at £69.
Click to buy Truck Festival tickets
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