Great Escape 2010 Review
This weekend hundreds of the world’s finest breaking and established bands descended on the seaside town of Brighton for The Great Escape. For three days each year the town is overrun with bands, industry insiders and music fans – in what has quickly become the first essential date in many festival goers’ diaries. As always this year saw a huge variety of acts attract feverish levels of attention from the crowds. Headline acts such as Groove Armada, Chase & Status and The Big Pink topped the line up on a bill that included hundreds of performers.
Their were also several notable names from the music industry on hand to offer advice and share their experiences in thorough question and answer sessions. These included former NME journalist Nick Kent, XFM’s John Kennedy and Drowned in Sound’s Sean Adams.
Although seeing every band would be impossible – over 300 acts play across the weekend - we headed down to cram in as many gigs as possible over three days. Here’s a few of our stand out acts over the weekend.
Thursday
The last minute inclusion of The Cribs headlining the Coal Exchange gave punters further headaches about what to choose on Thursday evening. While the Jarman brothers and Johnny Marr provided a stellar set, there was plenty more to keep the masses entertained. We started by checking out Gaggle, the all female choir. With more than 20 members, the group is very different to your usuall run of the mill band As to be expected, they provided one of the most original performances of the weekend.
Heading over to Audio, Levis brought their ‘One’s To Watch’ stage to the festival. Managing to squeeze into the venue we caught Fenech Soler’s lively blend of electro punk before These New Puritans took to the stage at the heaving venue. After their latest album ‘Hidden’ proved the band had staying power, tonight’s intense performance saw them become one of the weekend’s standout acts. After jotting over to catch the tail end of Surfer Blood, we saw the start of The Cribs set. As you can imagine when you employ the services of one of the UK’s finest guitarists, The Cribs MKII are a bolder entity these days. However – as is frequently the case at the Great Escape – the call of another band pulled us away. This time it was Egyptian Hip Hop, who headed up a line up at Digital curated by White Heat and Rockfeedback.
Friday
On Friday one of the standout performances came from fast rising troubadour, Darwin Deez. Fresh from touring as part of the NME Radar Tour, the singer attracted a huge demand for his performance at Digital – with many forced to listen from outside. Despite a slight altercation with an audience member, the singer proved exactly why he’s on the lips of tastemakers; delivering a set of perky indie pop interspliced with dance routines backed by the likes of Pointer Sisters ‘Automatic’. Think Napolean Dynamite if he’d listened to The Strokes instead of Jamiroquai.
Previously we caught Dam Mantle deliver a set of schizophrenic glo-fi electro before being wowed by the jaw dropping Cate Le Bon – playing tracks form her fantastic debut ‘Me Oh My’. Unlike many of the crowd, we resisted the 80’s influenced synth pop of Hurts and chose Japandroids at Audio. Despite only consisting of two members, this is a band who deliver loud. After catching recent NME favourites Frankie & The Heartstrings, we had to make a tough choice between Delphic and Wild Beasts. Heading to the Pavilion Theatre to catch Wild Beasts proved a popular route, but hearing lead singer Hayden Thorpe’s inimitable croon removed any fear of claustrophobia.
Saturday
The line up final day of the festival showed no signs of fatigue. While the audience may have started to feel the effects of the festival, there was no time for sore heads. We started early on the final day, heading to Digital for Australia’s teenagersintokyo. Lead singer Samantha Lim proved quite the front woman in their sharp set. After taking the walk down Brighton Pier – complete with Fish & Chips and a go on the penny slot machines – we caught Team Ghost at Horatio’s. Their doom laden industrial indie certainly won over the crowd, think M83 meets Interpol and you’re not far off.
After seeing the crowds that Darwin Deez attracted previously at Digital, we arrived with plenty of time before The Big Pink’s set. Luckily this meant we caught Here We Go Magic play a set that, although cut short due to time restrictions, turned us on to their addictive sound. Unfortunately the time restrictions also cut short time for The Big Pink, however the band still had time to run through fan favourite ‘Dominos’, causing a mass sing along to its chorus. After an unwelcome sprint we just caught the final bars of Marina & The Diamonds set, with the singer yet again proving she’s a fraction away from morphing into the star she looked likely to become.
The weekend was given the send off it deserved by Groove Armada, whose hit laden set proved the perfect end to the festival.
