ArrGee wrote:

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Eamonn wrote:

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I NEVER thought I would witness Jarvis crowd-surfing but...er, yeah, I just have...

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 I was participating in it keeping him up!

Enjoyed Jarvis, Interpol and Yak, but was pretty underwhelmed by The Strokes.  Maybe was a bit far away from them but it was  very quiet. Jarvis was helped by being in a big tent.

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Class! I was too far back to get involved with the crowd-surfing. I was coming from seeing Anna Calvi so had less than 10 minutes to get to the tent and take-up a semi-decent position.

I hope you joined-in with the dance moves to Homewrecker.

Some gobshite threw a bottle of Heineken on-stage during Homewrecker, it just missed Jarvis. The ''minder'' (is it Liam, the stage boss for Pulp during the reunion? He looked familiar), came on a few seconds later with a towel around his neck, like a boxing coach and cleaned-up the spillage before it got into the guitar pedals and other equipment. He reminded me of Mike from Breaking Bad, moody and shaven-headed, getting the job done!

A couple of other things of note - the discoball was up from the start so I presumed they were going to play Discosong. I was surprised/delighted that its main use was for a laser and lights effect during House Music and the extended outro in that. 

His'n'Hers sounded beefier than it has on Jarv Is shows to date, I guess it was their biggest crowd so far so it made sense. The ''what are you frightened of?" interlude was amusing as always. One guy said "corduroy trousers", I wonder if Jarvis thought that was a dig at him, because he told the guy to rub his trouser-leg to check the material he was wearing (not corduroy on this occasion)!

On one of the songs, (Mary, I think - which again, sounded fantastic), the drummer fucked-up with the timing in the middle, I don't think Jarvis was too impressed and he kind of made him do it again properly.

I thought the set-list was near-perfect given all the songs the group have played live to date and the hour window to perform. Swanky Modes and Chilled Ibiza would have been nice too but I'm glad Elvis was dropped and that nothing too downbeat solo-wise was played (ie Big Julie) as it wouldn't have worked as well in a festival setting.

The tent (the only 'indoor' stage of the festival) was also the right choice, the sound is much better and Jarvis is more night-time/suited to an intimate setting rather than in the sun with a lot of the crowd milling around and not fully engaged.

Pharoh also had the Charlie Chaplin and Pharoh hunan-statues from the Halloween show back which made for an effective opener.

With regards to The Strokes performance, the sound was poor, the vocals in particular kept cutting-in and out at different volumes. It wasn't as if there was any wind, I'm not sure what the issue was and why they couldn't fix it. It also meant Julian Casablancas' between-songs chat which is usually pretty woeful anyway, was inaudible most of the time and he spent as much of the pauses between songs with his back turned to the audience, addressing his own band, as he did connecting with the crowd.

Of course you go to The Strokes to hear them plough through their three-minute guitar bangers but I think it would have been better if they had let more songs run into each other to keep momentum going rather than stop, regroup, talk in a mumbled, inaudible manner and restart. Maybe they should have got Jarvis up to lighten the mood and reprise that cover Just What I Needed from Leeds/Reading(?) 2011!

Their debut album came out around the same time as We Love Life and I spent much of the following year with both albums on high rotation - I was 16/17 and the right age to fall for them so I'm still fond of The Strokes - I actually think some of their later stuff (none of which was played last night) is really good, a more layered sound with synths and vocal-stylings where Casablancas really comes out of his comfort zone.

Anyway, do try and catch Jarv Is - hopefully a nationwide tour will happen in the not too distant future so that the gigs aren't all focussed in London.