overview

It is Monday morning and a small, elderly lady leans against the counter of the small Oxfordshire village of Steventon's modest Co-op. A queue of unwashed, bedraggled and exhausted young festival-goers snakes around the shop's narrow aisles.

The frail pensioner, picking up her copy of the Daily Mail and book of stamps, does not shy away from the defeated looking army of music lovers, or dart sneaky, disapproving glances in their direction. Instead she chats enthusiastically and proudly to them about this year's 11th Truck Festival.

And that's the rare beauty of this small jewel in the crown of England's festival circuit. The spirit of co-operation and respect between the little community, with its immaculate Tudor houses, and the 4,000 capacity event is inherent.

The parish church's vicar is involved, all food sold on site is done so by the local Rotary Club, the bar is run by villagers and members of Festival organisers the Bennett family, two members of whom, Robin and Joe are in the band Goldrush, live a stone's throw from the festival site. Much of the crowd is made up of young people from the village or Oxford - a short drive away up the A4074.

This year's Truck is an under-stated, yet unqualified success. Thankfully the monumental floods that wiped out last year's festival and prompted a determined rescheduling to September are not repeated and the sun even breaks through the petrol-grey July clouds for long spells.



There's been a slight tweaking of the site, with the slightly ramshackle erection, built atop two flat-bed trucks, that previously served as the main, Truck Stage replaced by an impressive new construction with a swanky purple canopy.

Sadly the incomparable Disco Shed has been lured away to Latitude, but The Magnificent Revolution, also to be found at Wood Festival, has been introduced and day and night its sound and light system is powered by willing cyclists doing their bit for the greater good.

The line-up is, again, diverse and fulsome, with a significant nod towards acts from Oxford, and there are a number of surprise guests throughout the weekend, not least 2005's headliners The Magic Numbers, appearing in the tiny Market Stage tent, although Truck 11 is perhaps a little lighter on higher-profile acts than in previous years.

The booking of Saturday's Truck Stage headliners, The Lemonheads, was a matter of great pride to the organisers and they draw a large crowd.

Evan Dando's band plough through their 1992 album 'It's A Shame About Ray' in its entirety and to no little acclaim from the crowd, but there's little audience interaction, few fireworks and it's a slightly underwhelming experience as a result.



Earlier in the day brilliantly bizarre Truck veterans Fonda 500, from Hull, were on far earlier than a number of Saturday arrivals would have anticipated with the line-up not officially announced in advance, which is a shame because they're a gloriously unusual treat who surely could have charmed a bigger audience, higher up the bill.

Another act handed an early Truck Stage slot are Oxford duo Little Fish. A small crowd recline in the burning early-afternoon sun enjoying their punky bass-heavy blues rumble with Nez thumping away metronomically on the drums, underpinning Juju's pleading, anguished howl. 'Devil's Eyes' opens with tribal drumming, Juju lending a hand on an additional snare, while 'Am I Crazy' is a more urgent rush of angular guitar and defiantly yelped vocals.

Television Personalities fail to attract a much bigger crowd from a youthful festival audience, despite a handful of old stagers crowding the front. The influential new wave act were formed in 1977 and on the evidence of today's performance appear like a band who have been searching unsuccessfully for a good melody throughout their careers, while singer and founder member Dan Treacy's vocals sound disappointingly flat.

As afternoon begins to drift into evening Emmy The Great are a pleasant enough way to while away half an hour underneath the setting sun.

Dressed in denim shorts and a vest top, singer Emma-Lee Moss strums whimsically on an acoustic guitar and has a voice like a chirping songbird on a spring morning. Their songs are delicate and endearing and their set slides down like a cool cider.

Away from the Truck Stage, an excellent yet tiny new addition - The Beat Hive - and the equally pokey Village Pub Stage, situated conveniently inches from the bar, offer some unexpected treasures to the curious and casual moocher.

In the Village Pub, Les Orchards are one such pleasant discovery, moulding clean fender guitars, violin and accordion with poetic passages and heavy daubs of French artistry. Their final song rises to an impressive climax and next time I'll be making sure I don't stumble upon them by accident mid-set.



After Saturday night's much-hailed rave in the Barn, replete with neon ceiling hangings, UV lights and the potent stench of cow shit, Sunday is given an altogether lower tempo theme for a Sonic Cathedral shoegazing day.

Among the highlights are Leicestershire's Kyte. Their epic and ethereal sounds are perfectly suited to the dark, claustrophobic environs of the barn. Some early feedback problems are swept aside and Kyte set about their work with fixed, steely determination.

Eerie floating openings explode into formidable walls of sound, built up with guitars, keyboards, chaos pads, glockenspiel a second drum kit assembled front stage, and haunting vocals, swathed in reverb and delay. Their elfishly good looking singer, wrapped in Christmas jumper and possessing rabbit-in-the-headlights eyes, is an enchanting front man and vocalist and the ambition of their music - evoking bands like Sigur Ros and Mercury Rev - defies their tender years. 'Boundaries' is a majestic, epic song, swept along on chiming guitar, electronic beats and glockenspiel.

Back out in the sun-blessed main arena another Oxford act, Winchell Riots - formed from the remains of Fell City Girl, inject a little pace into proceedings.

Opening song 'Turn This Ship Around' powers along, driven by the steady hand of new bassist Rich Leicester as guitarist Phil Jones and singer Phil McMinn hold a fraught, angular dual between Telecaster and Stratocaster.

The highly emotive near-falsetto vocals are affecting and powerful and after the opening song there are more mournful tender moments, notably the slowly-building Glasgow Spaceflight and closing song Red Square.


Fighting With Wire, three guys from Derry, Northern Ireland, in T-shirts and jeans, bring straightforward punk pop to the Truck Stage. Songs like the vicious 'Everyone Needs A Nemesis' sound not a million miles away from Nine Black Alps or early Feeder and it's pretty good, if unspectacular, staple tea-time festival fare.

They dedicate a song to the watching Frank Turner, calling him a "fucking terrible, useless bastard" in the process. Joyful stuff.

The Bennett family are big fans of Camera Obscura and they are afforded a glowing introduction. Their floaty, upbeat acoustic ballads, embellished with trumpet solos and tinkling piano are perfect for a sunny summer's evening, reminiscent of Belle and Sebastien or The Magic Numbers.

Brakes are pretty much part of the Truck Festival family now after years of consistently brilliant performances at Hill Farm. Sadly they're absent this year, busily devoting time to an array of side projects and solo work, but there's still a fix of their sharp, riotous politico-humour provided by singer Eamon Hamilton, who performs a universally well-received set on the Market Stage.

Thrashing away at an acoustic guitar, he gleefully takes a dozen requests, including Brakes songs 'On Your Side', dedicated to "holding a friend's hair while they're being sick", 'All Night Disco Party', the hilarious and nonsensical 'Spring Chicken' and the bizarre anti-war 'Porcupine or Pineapple'. 'Comma, Comma Full-Stop' is torn through twice alongside favourites 'Ring A Ding Ding', 'Jackson' and 'What's In It For Me?'

The genius 10-second middle finger salute to the American vice-president Cheney is greeted with a huge roar and a new song, shorter even than Cheney, where Hamilton delivers the words "Consumer, producer, chicken or egg", is introduced. No one leaves the tent without a smile.

Back in the Barn Maps provide a perfect link to modern day Shoegaze, compounding the bond with a cover of standard bearers of the genre Ride's 'Leave Them All Behind'.

Their opening song 'So Low, So High' is a beautiful, low-fi electronic fuzzed up classic in the making and the insistent and catchy 'Don't Fear' follows on its heels as the early moments of the set are loaded with a lot of the best material from critically-acclaimed debut album 'We Can Create'.

It fits well with the Shoegaze theme, but is as often euphoric and uplifting as morose and grand and their waves of floating, ghostly sound reverberate perfectly around the high-ceilinged barn.



The honour of closing the festival is bestowed upon the strangely popular Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly but I have important business to attend to, in the shape of furiously pedalling a bike that goes nowhere while listening to drum n bass in a dark marquee.

Out on its margins, Truck is a great festival after hours, with Genevieve's rock 'n' roll party keeping people away from their sleeping bags on Saturday night with a barrage of indie classics, and the Magnificent Revolution and a UV disco, hosted in a tent the size of roughly four phone boxes, admirably defying the end of the Festival well into Monday morning.

So I'll look forward to stumbling into Steventon Co-op again in 12 months, smelling like the inside of the Barn and having another chat with a resident of the village about how great Truck 12 has been. Until then...

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