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the weather played its part and made the 1234 Shoreditch festival a hit in our books. Entry was far speedier than last year and drinks were cheaper too, a bloody great surprise. With pop ups from Meat Liquor, Herman zee German, amusements and the luxury of proper toilets on site there was little to complain about. Jeff the Brotherhood started us off for the day on the main stage, the brothers from Nashville delivering a monumental dose of slacker rock. Nodding along to ‘Bone Jam’ as the sun appeared in the sky makes us wish every weekend could be like this. They threw in some improvised jazz for good measure too.
The Artrocker tent was packed for Holigrams so sadly we could not push are way in, it was early in the day and we’d promised to play nice. Back at the main stage Dirty Beaches played as a three piece, the lo-fi atmospheric croon gently gushed from the stage and grew into a noise pop rockabilly show, although packed with interesting sounds a tent would have captured the essence of their craft more so than the open air stage with much of the noise being lost in the space.
Crocodiles were up next and as usual didn’t disappoint, playing a mix of hits from across all three albums. Joined onstage by A Place to Bury Strangers drummer Jay Weilminster, the San Diego band belted through their set at breakneck speed filling the air with feedback and looped guitars as they bounced through a set which included ‘I wanna Kill’, ‘Endless Flowers’, ‘Morrors’ and ‘Sunday’ which in our biased and very excited opinion was monumental and epic. Finishing on a cover of the Sex Pistol’s ‘Bodies’ on stage came Pistols drummer Paul Cook to take up duties as sticks-man, a cracking surprise and a brilliant version.
Miss Liela Moss excited us next, the feisty front woman worked the stage as the Duke Spirit’s bluesy rock exploded before our eyes. Speaking to Miss Moss she mentioned she had split her head open the night before so was feeling a little woozy but that didn’t stop the band delivering quite a performance. ‘Love is an unfamilliar name’ being one of the highlights for us a long with ‘Surrender’ from their last album ‘Beruiser’ which was released last year.
We caught a little of bad ass girl duo Deep Vally who rocked out in hot pants with hair flying every which way as the sun began to disappear. The night time tends to bring out the dark and dangerous, with a packed out second stage the crowd waited in anticipation for the most hyped band of the day. The four girls tipped for the big time and helping to save guitar music is Savages who got quite a slot considering the short time they have been around. Make no mistake Savages are fierce and make quite an impact with their devastating assault of post punk rock n roll. Hailed as the best new band in the country they are under enormous pressure and the amount of people who came to see this lot proved it. Singer Jehn Beth morphs into an Ian Curtis style frenzy of dancing and jerking head movement. ‘Husbands’ and ‘Flying to Berlin’ made the crowd erupt and the applause kept coming as they left the stage.
Anyone who had been drinking from 2pm would by this point feel all warm inside and we started to turn our attention away from bands and more onto rolling around on the floor and the photo booth. Sorry. This kind of behaviour is all too familiar. Who knows who or what we seen after that. 1234 a great success, bring on next year. Thank you and good night.
