Rapid fire May is loco yo gig reviews 4: All Tomorrow's Parties - Minehead

I really hate my car sometimes. Despite the hundred odd thousand miles of service that it's given me over the years it chooses the most inopportune moments to cause me problems.

This evening for example, driving out of the long stay car-park in Dublin Airport it decided to start vomiting oil all over the road, not good. One reversion to childhood and a stressed out phone-call to my folks later and along comes Daddy to save me, or at least to give me a lift. My car is currently abandoned in a car park somewhere in North Dublin, I'll sort it out in the morning but if some fucker decided to rob it, crash it, and burn it out at this point I wouldn't shed a tear.

But that's the reason why I'm not at Animal Collective and Atlas Sound tonight. As it happens they had their own transport problems on the way over here and by my reckoning AC are just about now hitting the stage in Whelan's for the impromptu late gig that they had to arrange after missing their ferry earlier today. I could have made it after all but I'm too pissed off over the car and too generally tired from the weekend to make it through a late gig. But if it's anything like they were in Minehead last night it'll be a hell of a gig, everything the last one in Tripod should have been.

Friday at ATP began with sitting around a car park till 4 in the increasingly worsening drizzle for a couple of hours waiting for the time when we could enter the chalets. My only previous ATP experience is with one of the Camber ones a couple of years ago and that's a pretty bleak looking place but in spite of its far more pristine appearance trudging through misty rain in Minehead is a far more miserable experience than anything that living in the set of Hi Di Hi is. On the upside things went pretty much stratospheric after that.

Anyway, bands n' shit:

The Good And Great:

-After brief stints checking out Papier Tigre and Mono the first band I properly caught during the weekend was Sunset Rubdown. Actually as that band was the one on that bill that I most like but hadn't previously seen they were the one was most anticipating seeing throughout the whole weekend. It did not start well. Actually it started, then it stopped, then it started again, a couple of times. 2 broken guitar strings in 3 songs meant that it took them a while to really hit their stride but when they did ... it was moider. In a good way, a really really good way.

- Curators Explosions In The Sky. They did their thing, I liked it, as usual the stuff they played in 6/8 did far more for me than the rest of their material. They're forever at their best when there's a little swing in what they do but having seen them a couple of months ago I wasn't overly anxious to see the full set.

- Since last Tuesday I've been regretting not seeing the Hold Steady and going instead to see Yeasayer that night (it's been an reasonably stress free week, ordinarily I have more important regrets). Turns out I was wrong on both counts. If Friday night was any indication The Sugar Club was the place to be because The Octopus Project rocked my face off, far and away the most enjoyable thing I saw all weekend.

- Okkervil River. Despite having seen them a couple of times already I seem to always forget how much Will Sheff throws himself into his performances. Rockin'. And I thought that The Wren's Charles Bissell added a really cool new dynamic to the material with his (guest) guitar playing.

- I really enjoyed Phosphorescent when I saw him play upstairs in Whelan's a few weeks ago but I suspect that his gig was somewhat overshadowed by how good Why? were later that night. But on Friday night he was on a whole different level. Hopefully back in Ireland, with a full band, in July or so. Not one to be missed.

- Animal Collective, but I already said that.

- I can usually take or leave Four Tet live but he was pretty good this time around. Rocking the Tenori-on.

- The National, not as good as Thursday, better than Wednesday. Having seen them twice this week I didn't feel the need to watch the whole set but for the 20 minutes I was around for them they were getting the job done and most of the people there who weren't suffering from a slight case of National fatigue seemed to be into it.

- A Hawk And A Hacksaw. Big noise considering their lineup, I'd have been tapping my toe were it not for the fact that I was lying down on the fake grass.

- Despite some odd comments about Ireland from Dave Berman The Silver Jews hit the spot perfectly midway through Sunday afternoon. Berman's a lucky dude, great songs and, as the ATP handbook for the weekend pointed out, he's got "a hot band and a hotter wife."

- Dinosaur Jr. ripping into "Freakscene" as soon as I walked into the venue.

The Not Good And Great:

- Adem, with a big band he sounded like Snow Patrol or Coldplay.

- Broken Social Scene, it just felt really jam-bandy and dull. This impression wasn't helped by J Mascis, EITS and one of The Constantines showing up together on stage for one song.

- Battles, not them but the insanely long queues to get in to see them. We didn't even bother the first night and only got in 15 minutes into the set on the second night. They were good but for me I think it's something of a law of diminishing returns every time I see them. The sight of one of my mates dancing to Atlas may well be the personal highlight of the whole weekend.

- How fucking sheepish indie bands are about selling merch. Making money isn't a crime dudes. They should all take lessons from the Wu Tang crew who were pushing their shit on people all weekend.

- Missing Jens Lekman because I couldn't drag my exhausted arse out of the chalets and away from the rasher sandwiches we were having for breakfast. This meant that the first band I saw on Sunday were Polvo, who I really liked but hardly the best way to ease your way into day 3 of any festival.

- The flight home. Not so much fun. I don't think there's ever been a short haul flight in history where so many of the passengers fell asleep during the 45 minute flight time.

- Meeting Scott Devendorf from the National on Saturday night when walking back to the chalets and embarrassing him when I said to him that 30 seconds into our chat the handshake that we were continuing all the way through the conversation had become uncomfortably long. I felt like such a dick afterwards. By the way, second wind award for the weekend goes to his brother Bryan who looked like hell when I saw him at the bar on Sunday morning but a few hours later was bounding around the place shooting hoops.

So that's it for another year at least, I don't do the Christmas ones as my noise tolerance isn't up to much. As awful as it sounds I've got my fingers crossed that Real Emotional Trash tanks, I've heard stories.