1. Notre Dame: Sur Ton Repondeur
2. The Hit Parade: Autobiography
3. Architecture in Helsinki: The Owls Go
4. Final Fantasy: That’s When the Audience Died
5. CocoRosie: Beautiful Boyz
6. Go Home Productions: Essex Doves (David Essex / Doves)
7. Pluxus: Igår, idag och from nu
8. Stereo Total: Das Erste Mal (Mad Professors Dub Trip 3)
9. The Strokes: I’ll Try Anything Once (‘You Only Live Once’ Demo)
10. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: Some Loud Thunder
11. Dr. Dog: Easy Beat
12. Islands: Rough Gem
13. Malajube: Montréal -40°C
14. Arcade Fire: Intervention
15. Sufjan Stevens: The Henney Buggy Band
16. Opal: Empty Box Blues
17. St Christopher: All Of A Tremble
18. Of Montreal: Wraith Pinned To The Mist And Other Games
19. David Vandervelde:Jacket

And there’s cover art as well which can be seen as a spring-time tribute to Zapfino.

Boo for iTunes which seems to cover less than 50% of the songs used when submitting the compilation as an iMix. And Last.fm aren’t much better.

This day was also going to be absolute highlight of the festival. With too many rather than too few great bands playing it was impossible to actually see all of them. But an effort could be made and it was absolutely worth it with:

• The Sounds
• Skin
• The Kooks
• The Raconteurs
• Nada Surf (sort of)
• Hard-Fi
• Mando Diao
• Adam Green
• The Hives
• Element Of Crime
• The Strokes
• Sigur Rós

Holy shit! This still reads mouth-wateringly good when writing it down now…

The Sounds (12:20, Sweden)

We meant to start the day by seeing Skin on the main stage and we were a bit early for that. So we heard The Sounds play on the secondary stage and introduce us for the first bit of Swedish goodness of the day which made us stay there for a while. Enjoyable music from bands you’ve never heard of – just what you hope to find in those lunch-time festival gigs.

Skin (12:50, UK)

Next we headed on to see Skin play the main stage. After I had seen her in an interview on telly lately, I wasn’t too impressed and thought she was rather lame. But Jean wanted to go anyway. And it was worth it as she was much more powerful stage and there were many bits of Skunk Anansie goodness all over it.

The Kooks (14:00, UK)

I recently listened to The Kooks and ended up liking their album, particularly for its clear sound acoustic bits. Their live performance was disappointing in comparison as they gave up the clarity in many places for what seemed like a feeble attempt of being more noisy. Not what I was looking for.

The Raconteurs (16:30, USA)

The Raconteurs are another new band which deserves a little attention for being with Jack White and Brendan Benson alone. Which deserves a lot of playing for being kick-ass great. And which deserves being looked at for its nicely drawn letters.

And as luck has it, all of those points held for the gig they played at the festival. Their music was fantastic. Jack White – despite having a facial colour and hairstyle that makes him look like a cross-over between Michael Jackson and Robert Smith – is our guitar god. And they had that nicely drawn R put up at the back of the stage. Absolutely fantastic. More of this is needed!

Nada Surf (17:30, USA) [sort-of]

I’m not the biggest Nada Surf fan. But some of their songs are nice and I didn’t see them play last year at Haldern so this was a good opportunity to catch up. Except that it didn’t really happen as their slot happened to be right in the Germany vs. Sweden match of some football tournament. Apparently loads of people at the festival wanted to see that match and the police said that all of them hanging out at the dedicated football screen was too dangerous or so.

So the organisers decided to show the game on the screens next to the secondary stage… where Nada Surf were supposed to play. Football fans cheered. And if there were any Nada Surf fans, they weren’t too vocal. The organisers said that Nada Surf were great to see the need of the game being screened and gave up their slot for that… while the band’s singer said something along the lines of it being strange that at first they were cancelled and then they were asked to play four songs in the middle of the game. Trying to make the best of it I suppose…

While I didn’t watch the game, I still was in favour of Sweden all the time. After all they sent many of their great musicians to play for us… but it didn’t help.

Hard-Fi (18:00, UK)

While the football went on, Hard-Fi played. While I found their album quite addictive after seeing them last summer, I don’t think they’re all that great. Particularly seeing them play the main stage after The Raconteurs was a bit of a shame. As the same space that had seemed vivid and brilliant and before, suddenly looked quite empty and a bit lame – particularly when seen from a distance. At least they played their cover version of Seven Nation Army.

Mando Diao (19:30, Sweden)

With this gig Mando Diao reclaimed the ‘most seen band’ status with me because it has been the fourth time I saw them play live. I still like their music, but now I’ve seen them grow from being unknown to a headline act at a large festival. Which means that seeing them play just isn’t as much fun anymore (or that I’m old…). Still nice to see them again, just from a certain distance this time.

Adam Green (20:45, USA)

Mando Diao’s status in my list of most seen bands didn’t last long. Counting a Moldy Peaches gig back in 2002 and two others, the wonderful Adam Green now scores a count of four again. And his gig was absolutely fantastic. While he sometimes seemed a bit sleepy or neglecting his excellent old songs in former gigs, none of that happened this time.

In particular there was a lot of audience participation. I’m not entirely sure I got this right, but it sounded like the singer of The Scorpions (who are from near by) was present and Adam forced him to sing a bit of Wind of Change with him to start off the gig. Later on he had an attention-seeking guy from the audience up on stage with him and they sung and danced a song together for us.

After some more great songs, he finished with Dance With Me, having two girls wearing paper bunny ears dance with him on stage. Great entertainment, just as in his early days. The best of his solo gigs I have seen.

The Hives (21:15, Sweden)

While this would have been a good opportunity for a break, we quickly moved back to the main stage where The Hives had already started playing. We didn’t have the best viewing angle, but could see them all wear suits and pose a little too much as usual – including a really cool moment where they all just froze on stage in mid-song. I can pretty much stick with what I wrote two years ago: great music, a lot of power, too much posing. Particularly their singer looks like he’d love to be Mick Jagger. But he’s neither cool nor ugly enough for that. Talking a bit less might be a good first step, though.

Element Of Crime (22:30, Germany)

It’s only been a few weeks since I saw Element of Crime play live, but it was great to have a (short) look at them again. Their music was a soothing break – Wo die Neurosen wuchern, möcht ich Landschaftsgärtner sein… – and a short one because, knowing that I’ll see them again at Haldern in August, I gave up the end of their gig (which included an ultra-long version of Across the Universe) for the next one…

The Strokes (23:00, USA)

I just love The Strokes their newer albums may not be able to match the fantastic Is This It and they may just be a little too cool for their own good when playing live, but in total it’s still enough for some serious ass-kicking.

Their set-list was great, including my favourite song The Modern Age and many others which are frequently neglected. The lights they had on stage were strips of lights which could change colour and all and are meant to go with their current album cover I suppose. I thought their lights were a bit too bright – shining too much into audience – though, which made it a bit hard to actually see the band at numerous times. And while I’m complaining, let me mention that my camera claimed its battery was empty after I took a single, really bad photo of the band. The camera took another 50 photos with the same battery an hour later, though. Argh!

Sigur Rós (0:30, Iceland)

And sometimes, just sometimes, when you’ve got everything you would have asked for, someone will come and offer yet another thing you really like. And at this festival Sigur Rós were that thing. Finally I got an opportunity to see them. And while starting to be exhausted after a day full of gigs this was worth every minute of standing in the night.

Not only did they play their beautiful music with eight people on stage, including an electric bass, electric guitar, drums, a strings and keyboards, with all those high pitched sounds actually being sung by a guy – the music was complemented by a simple yet stunning video projection on the back of the stage which was the only ‘decoration’ they used.

Great Stuff! And I was completely knackered after that day of extreme musical goodness.

Next up: Hurricane Sunday

Uh, I really like this. And technically this one’s quite interesting as well as I only very recently discovered that my flatmates Powershot G3 camera can take RAW format photos as well, which I tried out here.

A bit of both, I have to say. On First Impressions of Earth [buy at amazon .com, .de, .uk], they have more brilliant lyrics, a couple of exciting or cool songs, plenty of decent songs and a notable increase in song durations. A quick comparison gives:

	#	∑	Ø	Median	Best songs
Is This It	11	36:24	3:19	3:17	2,7,5,11,1
Room On Fire	11	32:28	2:57	3:00	2,6,1
First Impressions Of Earth	14	52:33	3:45	3:32	12,2,10

I have a tendency to be sceptical about longer songs, but at the end of the day The Strokes are quite good at avoiding bad moments with those. What I’m more concerned about is the ‘cool’ factor. Back in mid-December the band did a couple of pseudo-secret gigs / press stunts across Europe. Reading the paper after that, it seemed that the author was most impressed by the band being so cool (and he admired that the visiting fans could sing along with the songs from an album that wasn’t even released at the time). But listening to the (studio) album, I have to disagree. The band may still be cool on stage – after all it always looked like acting too cool would be their problem, if any – but their album lacks the distinct cool disconnection that I loved on Is This It.

Lyrics sound like they mean something now. Or rather like they’re supposed to be important. Going from Is This It’s lyrics to You only live once’s requires a long journey. A journey that leaves you with better developed and less charming lyrics. In other words, chances that I could write lyrics like those new ones are much better than chances for me to come up with the old ones… which apart from making things a bit less exciting and a bit more conventional means that those lyrics are well thought-out and cool.

My ultra-short impressions of the songs are:

Good: Juicebox, Fear of Sleep (including >20 repetitions of You’re no fun and a few others, thus almost beating Clap Your Hands Say Yeah for the most repetitive lyrics), Ize of the world (despite its length my favourite), Red light (Get yourself a lawyer and a gun, they’re Americans after all)

Nice: You only live once, Razorblade (My feelings are more important than yours), On the other side (slightly dull in fact, but containing the lines I hate them all / I hate them all / I hate myself for hating them / So I’ll drink some more / I’ll love them all / I’ll drink even more / I’ll hate them even more than I did before), Ask me anything, Electricityscape (a tad boring, though), Evening Sun

A bit dull: Heart in a cage, Vision of division, Killing lies, 15 Minutes

The album isn’t bad. But to be honest, I had expected a bit more. Or rather, less and possibly shorter songs but with more new directions and ideas. Next we’ll have to see how it stands the test of time, whether it’ll grow on me and how frequently we’ll hear its songs when going out.

Arcade Fire and David Bowie

Eeeeek! Tears in my eyes – the wonderful Arcade Fire, who are on a good track to have played my personal gig of the year and the similarly fantastic David Bowie playing two songs, Bowie’s Life on Mars and Arcade Fire’s Wake Up together. [Buy at amazon .com, .uk, .de]

Admittedly not the best recordings ever. And the cover art is somewhat tacky as well, but you can grab a copy at iTMS or try getting the video as a torrent.

The Strokes

… have a new album coming early in the new year. I am curious? You bet! Get the first single, Juicebox at iTMS. The song sounds a bit harsher than what we’ve heard on Room on Fire. In principle, I’m all for it. But I don’t find that song too inspiring. It made me think whether The Strokes are trying to sound like the new, less polished, Franz Ferdinand… and wouldn’t that be the wrong way round? [Buy at amazon .com, .uk, .de]

Radiohead Remixes

For download via Bit Torrent. I think I start liking those torrent things. A special nod goes to the ever magic track 7 which does a Fitter Happier-style voiceover for Creep using Macintalk’s Fred voice.

Helge Schneider

Finally, an oddity that I ran across again recently. The severly twisted and fucked-up German singer, comedian, whatever Helge Schneider singing Es gibt Reis. Unexpectedly funny once more. [Buy at amazon .com, .uk, .de]

Po told me about the Strokes' gig in Belfast a fortnight ago which was very good, so anticipation was even higher than it would have been anyway. In the UK, they had British Sea Power as a support band which I would have liked to see as well. Unfortunately they didn't come over here but there was a one-person craptacular singer going by the name of Har Mar Superstar, which looked truly horrible and a disgrace for the occasion on his website – and sadly lived up to the horrid expectations. I wonder who thought that he would be a good 'special guest'.

After his performance ended, Jean and me sneaked our way through the crowds and reached quite a good place, perhaps ten metres from the stage. Unfortunately they needed ages to set up the stage and tune the guitars, so Jean decided he'd rather stand at the back where it was less crowded and not as hot. I really do wonder why those roadies have to tune the guitars on stage while everybody is waiting and why – despite supposedly being professionals – they aren't too good at getting all the cable connections right the first time around.

Anyway, the long wait paid and the band eventually did come on stage. The first thing I thought, when seeing them is that the key point of their job description is 'cool' – a fact that I easily forget when only listening to their music (or anything than the first tracks of their records at least). Shirts, 60s jackets, ties, sunglasses – looking a bit Beatles-esque and a bit punk-ish, but not quite [apologies for the pretentious crap]. No jumping on stage, but disciplined and good making music. Just a half-assed, superfluous and somewhat embarrassing attempt to mimic the destruction of some on-stage kit at the very end.

Right when they started and the crowd started moving, the general movement brought me even further to the front right at the middle of the stage. That was good luck. I was just far enough to the back to not be squashed too much by the people. It was also reassuring to be surrounded by so many people enjoying the music – making quite a difference to the usual 'The Who?!' expression I see in people when mentioning The Strokes – and that's without any reference to the band going by that name of course.

I'm not good at remembering setlists, but considering their not-too-extensive repertoire and guessing that the time they were on stage was a bit less than an hour, they played most of it, both of the Is This It and the Room on Fire albums. I seem to remember a lack of Is this it and Between Love and Hate, though. On the other hand, they did play enough songs to exhaust everyone sufficiently and while I definitely would have enjoyed something new or a cool cover version for an encore, I wasn't too sad they didn't do any.

Finally I have to remark that while the playing was good, it was also apparent that The Strokes operate on more than just a shoestring budget by now, with a lot of shiny lights and equipment working for the band. Another nice fact was that while the music was reasonably loud, I never found it too be too loud – the kind of loud that makes your ears beep afterwards – thus making it an even more pleasing experience.

Thus I have anxiously awaited their second offering. Anxiously because I think their first CD will be hard to match by any standard and particularly by people who are a few years older and will probably feel the non-trivial pressure to live up to the expectations. An important of Is this it's charme was its relaxed nonchalance after all. So how do they do with their second album?

I wanna be forgotten,
and I don't wanna be reminded.
You say "please don't make this harder."
No, I won't yet.

I wanna be beside her.
She wanna be admired.
You say "please don't make this harder."
No, I won't yet.

Oh dear, is it really all true?
Did they offend us and they want it to sound new?
Top ten ideas for countdown shows.
Whose culture is this and does anybody know?
I wait and tell myself "life ain't chess,"
But no one comes in and yes –
you're alone.
You don't miss me –
I know.

Oh Tennessee, what did you write?
I come together in the middle of the night.
Oh that's an ending that I can't write,
'Cause I've got you to let me down.

I wanna be forgotten,
and I don't wanna be reminded.
You say "please don't make this harder."
No, I won't yet.

I wanna be beside her.
She wanna be admired.
You say "please don't make this harder."
No, I won't yet.

What Ever Happened

They're doing fine. Not brilliant, but solidly fine. They set my room alight but not on fire, to use words. I have listened to the album many times by now and there are many bits which I like very much. That particular 'Strokes sound' is still present and after certain songs of the new LP I always expect other songs of the old LP to start – so I guess I can reasonably claim that the music ties in reasonably well with the old album.

For my taste, the new songs could be a bit more vivid and strong. While I appreciate the whole 'laid back' and 'cool' style the Strokes adopted, they managed to squeeze a bit more out of it in songs like The Modern Age Take it or Leave it or New York City Cops than they do now.

On the other hand I definitely think the new record improved on the lyrics. At least for grumpy ageing people like myself they're brilliant. You're not trying hard enough, I wanna be forgotten, You talk way too much, I don't want to waste your time are a few examples for cool snippets.

The best song is track two once again: Reptilia. Other favourites are Between Love and Hate and I Can't Win. I am not too much into 12:51, although the lyrics are quite cool and the song is quite lickable. Its 'Tron-style' video (actually it reminds me more of that crappy 1980s TV series called 'Auto-Man' iirc) works surprisingly well as well – although I prefer the live style of the old videos.

Watched her as she wiped her eyes –
You don't make me sorry.
Now I know
that you never
listened. - Listen!

Thinking about that high school dance –
worrying about the finals.
Yes I know
you're feeling lonely.
Oh lo-o-nely, so lonely.

Never needed anybody,
I never needed anybody,
I never needed anybody,
I never needed nobody.
Don't worry about it, honey
I never needed anybody
I never needed anybody,
it won't change now.
Am I wrong?
Don't sing along with me.
I said I was fine,
It's just the second time
We lost the war.

She'd be in the kitchen
I would start the fire.
Those days are gone
But you know I can't
give up – Give up.
P.S. if I may ask why,
When will they get tired
We've stayed up
All night
Tryin' – Tryin'.

Never needed anybody,
I never needed anybody,
I never needed anybody,
I never needed nobody.
Don't worry about it, honey
I never needed anybody
I never needed anybody,
it won't change now.
Am I wrong?
Don't sing along with me.
I said I was fine,
It's just the second time
We lost the war.

She'd be in the kitchen
I would start the fire.
Those days are gone
But you know I can't
give up – Give up.

Between Love and Hate

Did I mention that this music is like sugar – sweet and utterly addictive? Or perhaps like a cigarette:

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Free links: official site, Feedster, Google, The Strokes at iTMS, taz +, I love music, Pitchfork, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel.