I have just returned from the End Of The Road festival, re-nourished and positively overloaded with fresh musical experiences and excitement. Maybe I am a little low on new discoveries this year but that is due to the line up being so rammed full that I had a schedule that offered little opportunity for casual roaming. A few takeaways from the weekend are; most people seem to be unmoved by the prospect of an Oasis reunion. The Gallagher’s were a hot topic of conversation, especially with reports of the jaw dropping cost of tickets and the consensus seems to be they are definitely only in it for the money. The prices are obscene when stacked against the inevitably telephoned in performances these fans are likely to witness, a real reunion would involve all five original members (it would, that’s the way many bands try and do it, especially the first time around) although most people still agree, as I do, that the first two albums were pretty fantastic.

A couple of months back I touched upon this subject in relation to REM. The point still holds up, even Noel Gallagher has been subjected to re-prints of his old quotes this week which state that no band is better the second time around. During this festival I saw two groups who I have been a fan of for decades but only caught live for the first time this weekend. If Sleater-Kinney and Camera Obscura adhered to the anti-reform principles, I would not have seen them at all I guess and I am genuinely overjoyed that is now not the case. The argument can still be applied that both their peaks have passed but, in their defense, neither are riding any kind of nostalgia gravy train, both bands continue as creative units primarily to make and play new music, so the ethics are beyond question. The end product too definitively justifies the endeavor, and the bone lobbed in the direction of us listeners is the chance to hear an old classic or two played by a line up with nearly all original members.

Other highlights included a rare festival headline set from Bonnie Prince Billy in which the size and relative hushed attentiveness of the crowd were both immensely pleasing. Another legendary American act, Yo La Tengo, were moved to a main stage headline slot after a cancellation and they too grabbed the situation with both hands in a set of loud, quiet then chainsaw like abrasiveness that refused to pander to any main stage festival headliner tropes. Lankum too, closing the Garden stage on the Friday night, were a brilliantly politicized, musical hearse heavy on the hypnotic drone. As concrete-on-concrete scrapes punctuated the sound, nighttime bats flew overhead to enhance an at times eerie experience not unlike raising the dead. You don’t get that at the Cambridge Folk Festival (well not so intentionally anyway). I also loved Ty Segall not merely in his conjuring such reverberating garage rock energy out of a single acoustic guitar but also for his handling of an apparent serious medical emergency at the front of the audience. Elsewhere I was blown away by the zinging country rockin’ of Canada’s Cat Clyde, the pure folk stylings of the groundbreaking Richard Dawson whilst Joanna Sternberg had the outsider art geeky loveable manner of a Daniel Johnston but, crucially, the songwriting chops to make the comparison entirely valid. They appear in this month’s playlist along with a mix made up, as always, of 74 others…