The Beat Surrender

When i’d originally asked for review tickets for this gig, I thought it was just Ida Maria on tour and headlining, it was only once the tickets came through and it was billed as Dance To The Radio’s All-Dayer that it began to dawn on me quite what i’d let myself in for.

Now this may seem a touch fickle and a little work shy on my part, but let me try and at least put my point of view over here. I’d seen Ida Maria supporting Good Shoes so it would have been nice to see her with her own crowd and see how she handled it and came across for a full set.

Add onto that the fact that i’d only been at The Cockpit a few days earlier, so spending anything more than a couple of hours inside the venue again didn’t exactly grab me. I think up to this point as well i’d never really grasped the concept of an indoor festival that goes on all day, surely the whole benefit to the Festival is the great outdoors, the sun and the various side attractions?

While I wouldn’t call myself a full on convert yet, I am now ready to give this sort of event a proper go again. It was supremely well organised between the two rooms, no sooner had the last note finished on one stage than the next band were striking up on the other stage. The result of that is that the worst bit of a gig is lost and that in my eyes is a big plus. No I don’t mean queueing for a beer, I mean the horrible wait around inbetween bands while fat roadies set up on stage.

After a bit of digging around on the internet, a trawl round a few bars in Leeds to kill the afternoon beforehand, we time it just right to get into the venue just as Ida Maria and her band are taking to the main stage. It’s 5.25pm and some hardy souls have already done a four and a half hour stint, personally I opted for getting in and out as quick as possible…or so I thought, as you’ll see later.

She’s on an upward curve is this particular Norwegian kookball, her recent single Stella has gathered her some vital radioplay and it’s a gealthy crowd that come through from the other room to see the first big-ish name of the day. She opens things well enough taking on guitar as well as vocals on most songs, she’s confident, eccentric and has enough pop panache to mean that she gets a decent reception.

The biggest cheer is for Stella, it’s her closing track and debut single Oh My God that I think steals the show for me, it’s got a real wiry feel to it and rockets along nicely. The only little blip in the set is when she sings what I take to be a fairly slow song and then over dramatises things by resting her head on a speaker stack in an ‘emotionally wrought’ way. It doesn’t come across as genuine…or maye she was having a quick ten second siesta who knows.

As I said earlier I had intended to ‘do one’ once Ida had been on, but i’ve discovered The Hair are on this stage next and there is no way i’m missing them as they are probably one of the best and most underrated bands in West Yorkshire at the moment.

Before them though we have Tired Irie, a band who have promise and a ginger afro to show for their trouble. Unfortunately the first few songs are blighted by sound gremlins and for me they never really recover. I’m not sure what it is but something feels to be missing from them, that extra ingrediant that could turn their show from decent, to bloody great.

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