My first in years - since the 2000 festival, actually (Nine Inch Nails, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beth Orton, those were the days!) - and a good day out, dust, heat, crowds and all. Started off seeing bits of Eddy Current Suppresion Ring and then of Cut Off Your Hands with David; neither made much of an impression but both seemed pretty okay. Next was Kate Nash, who had a Lily Allen kind of vibe going and was quite good - had a bit of spark and warmth, and her songs had lots of catchy little hooks and instrumental/sampled breaks, though the best bits of her songs were often their opening bars.
Then Spoon, the first of the acts who'd really drawn me to the BDO this year in the first place, and they didn't disappoint. There wasn't a huge amount of energy in the crowd, but the band sounded great in running through a selection of songs from their last four albums, with a bit of a bias towards Gimme Fiction and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga ("Fitted Shirt" getting a run from Girls Can Tell, "Jonathon Fisk" and "Stay Don't Go" (I think) from Kill The Moonlight). They sounded tight and focused, and the 'Spoon sound' translated well from record to live, with the little uneven-nesses and stutters still present, even if in a way that flattened them out a bit - and of course the joy of knowing every song carried the set a long way for me. Very happy with it.
Saw a bit of Billy Bragg, although we possibly could've picked a better 10 minutes or so to be passing through, only catching the tail end of a political diatribe on the importance of faith and believing that Rudd is really different from and better than J Howard (a sine qua non, of course), and a Shangri-Las cover in duet with Kate Nash, before heading for the Arcade Fire - who were, of course the main event for me.[*]
Alas, getting into the D-barrier for them proved completely impossible, so we settled for a spot a bit further back. So, you know, they kicked off with "Wake Up" and they sounded really good, and after the who knows how many times I've listened to all of their songs (at least those on Funeral and Neon Bible) it was cool to have them blasting out right there, but really it wasn't a particularly satisfying experience...so it goes.
Next, saw a bit of Battles from a distance, and then, after meeting up with Michelle and her friend Eunice again (we'd bumped into them at Spoon earlier), went off to Bjork, who was definitely the highlight of the day. She basically played a greatest hits set, getting through nearly all of my favourites ("Unravel", "Pagan Poetry", "All Is Full Of Love", "Bachelorette", a disintegrating "Hyper-ballad" - those could well actually be my five faves of her solo stuff), and it was a reminder that, as mediocre as I've found her last couple of records to be, she really is something special - amazing songs and blessed with talent which is off the scale to boot. The one act for the day, too, whose live reworkings of songs I already knew really significantly invoked my existing associations with those songs and added something to my store of 'moments' wrapped up with that music.
And finally, festival wound up for me on a chilled note with Sarah Blasko - it was pretty intimate, presumably because most were camped out for RATM or else at the next stage over for Paul Kelly at that point. What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have has proved to be a stayer and a vivid part of my mental musical landscape, and Blasko was a beguiling presence on stage, investing both the songs I knew and those I didn't with an air of fragility and of the ethereal, held together by a distinct clarity of vision - ending with her was definitely the right choice for me.
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[*] The chronology went like this: didn't get my act together to buy tix for BDO initially ('cause these days it's apparently one of those be online at midnight, or 6am, or whatever type deals and I wasn't near excited enough for that, and figured I'd get tix to sideshows instead anyway); got it into my head that Arcade Fire weren't doing a sideshow and so went into BDO ballot; found out at 5pm on day that AF tix had gone on sale that (a) they had gone on sale and (b) they had all sold out; cursed all hipsters with renewed fervour for a day or two; got the good news that the ballot had come through for me (QED).
