Hydro Connect review 2008

Scotland has a disproportionately large number of festivals for its size, but then the nation does have a disproportionately large number of inhabitants who are passionate about live music.

Yet even that can't disguise the fact the market has reached saturation point and it would be no surprise if Hydro Connect became the first major casualty of the 2009 circuit. The fledgling festival's drive to provide a credible alternative to the monster that is T in the Park is admirable, but the shortcomings we found at this year's Connect merely served to expose its limitations:

1. The campsite is a treacherous 30-minute (that feels like an hour) walk up the Hill of Death from the campsite. We're talking a single-track, relentlessly uphill, mud-caked path here. Add a backpack, tent and sleeping bag to the equation and you've got yourself guaranteed misery before you've even made it to the campsite...

2. ...which is on a slope (the first no-no when it comes to picking a spot to pitch your tent) and seemed to contain only half a dozen toilets in total.

3. Enter the arena site and the only timetables to be found are on the laminated programmes that are on sale. Can someone explain how it can be acceptable to expect punters who have forked out hundreds of pounds for tickets to then cough up more cash just to find out what time the acts they've paid to see are actually on at? Scandalous.

4. Campers were allowed to enter and leave the site as often as they liked to wander around Inverary but the same flexibility wasn't afforded to those who didn't have camping wristbands.

5. The rancid Portaloos more often than not contained no toilet rolls.

In truth, we could have just about put up with all that but when the Inverary clouds have mercilessly dumped its entire contents onto your head for five solid hours and turned the Duke of Argyll's estate into a giant mushroom soup of mud, it's time to cut your losses, go home and find renewed appreciation in the comforts of central heating and a clean pair of socks.

Before we gave up on Sunday morning, here's what we saw...

CONOR OBERST predictably, but no less disappointingly, sidestepped his Bright Eyes material in favour of a set that drew from his latest album under his own name. Musically, the new songs aren't layered enough to scale the same heights of genius as the work that made Bright Eyes a household name (in households with distinguished taste at least) but the good-time guitar-pop vibes felt right at home in a festival setting.

However, Oberst's reputation for being something of a diva seemed justified with some on-stage banter and antics (kicking his bandmate's guitar while he was playing it) which at best suggested he was under the influence, at worst just an unlikeable, arrogant, slightly patronising imbecile.
Connect gave us many things: overpriced venison burgers, a new-found respect for the Wellington boot and our first experience of the GLASVEGAS live show. In terms of describing the latter, it can be summed up best by paraphrasing the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - when they were good they were very, very good. But when they were bad they were horrid.

You can't deny Geraldine, Flowers And Football Tops and Daddy's Gone prove Glasvegas frontman James Allan has a genuine lyric-writing gift. However, they were almost undone by the band's penchant for peppering their set with tuneless, feedback-drenched dirges.
It would be far too easy to be cynical about GOMEZ using the 10-year anniversary of when they peaked with debut album Bring It On to play all 12 tracks in order from start to finish. Given their subsequent fall from grace, you can't blame them for wanting to remind a lost generation of the soundtrack to their stoner student days.

In their three-way fight for microphone time, the gravelly-voiced one showed off in his barroom blues way, the honey-voiced one did all the lovestruck teenager numbers and the geeky one had an easy job playing cheerleader to a large crowd who clearly welcomed a trip down nostalgia avenue.
We've written about BROKEN RECORDS so many times on The Pop Cop that regular readers should have an album's worth of their mp3s by now. The scary thing is that not only are their demos better than almost anything released by anyone this year, but the one track in their set that the Edinburgh band haven't recorded, The Ukulele Song, could well be the instant classic that takes them into the bosom of the general public.

We caught the seven-strong group's second performance of the day in which they turned the Your Sound stage into an impromptu ceilidh barndance among the audience. Broken Records tend to have that kind of power.
Somewhat unexpectedly GOSSIP were a real disappointment. Having recently added a bass player to their usual three-piece line-up, guitar wizard Brace Paine has been relegated to keyboard duties on three new songs that go down a wishy-washy electro route. Worse still, he actively ruins what was a perfectly good song in Listen Up by strumming the sound of a rustled crisp packet while new member Chris Sutton (no, not that one) plays Paine's old parts.

Beth Ditto may have stayed true to her punk-rock credentials with her usual feisty behaviour and foul-mouthed chat, but inviting bottles to be flung onto stage and then hurling them back indiscriminately at audience members is neither cool nor clever, Beth.

4 Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band - Souled Out!!!

4 Glasvegas - A Little Thing Called Fear
b September 3, Fat Sams, Dundee (sold out)
b September 5, QMU, Glasgow (sold out)
b September 7, Liquid Room, Edinburgh (sold out)

4 Gomez - Tijuana Lady

4 Broken Records - Wolves (Maida Vale session)
bSeptember 15, Community Centre, Portree
bSeptember 16, An Tober, Tobermory
bSeptember 17, Hootananny, Inverness
bSeptember 18, Woodlands Centre, Stornaway
bSeptember 19, Loopallu, Ullapool (tickets)
b September 21, The Doghouse, Dundee (tickets)
b September 22, King Tut's, Glasgow (tickets)

4 Gossip - Yr Mangled Heart