23rd-25th july
Last weekend saw the second edition of Sheffield's free summer festival Tramlines with 250 acts playing over 50 venues of all shapes and sizes, from the 8,000-capacity Devonshire Green stage (complete with fairground) to something called The Rude Shipyard and a world music stage. It was really friendly and well organised, last year's wristbands being abandoned for a more relaxed first come first served – and in most cases all served – system.
Only going down for the Sunday, we managed to see a few of the bigger acts, starting with Leeds' Grammatics at The New Music stage outside the City Hall. They played a charming set, with Owen Brinley singing sweetly from under a kneelength navy coat and thanking the crowd 'very much' between songs. They played a few from the upcoming Krupt EP and finished with a rousing version of Relentless Fours, bringing out a token moshpit from the young crowd in its final fret-thrashing minutes. There was a slighty sour taste with the announcement afterwards that this was to be one of Grammatics' final shows, and that they've decided to call it a day. You can help them on their way out over at Pledge Music, as they're offering up limited editions of the EP, their own guitars and even the chance to have them do an acoustic set in your back garden.
Next up were Rolo Tomassi, Sheffield's own practitioners of punk jazz mathcore, who were curating this Drowned In Sound-bannered stage and who played last year. The boxy tent complete with city hall didn't quite seem fitting for them, but singer Eva Spence's howling, frantic movements and constant demands for a circle pit were enough to keep an expectant hometown audience fairly busy.
With that we headed over to Devonshire Green to catch headliners Echo & The Bunnymen, who were absolutely tight even if Ian McCulloch wasn't 100% fit to perform. The crowd came alive for the one-two punches of Seven Seas and Bring on the Dancing Horses, and The Killing Moon and The Cutter respectively, with the latter closing the set. It was only during the encore however, when they were joined on stage by Richard Hawley for a cover of The Velvet Underground's I'm Waiting For My Man, that the feeling of a daytime picnic was lost amid people of all generations dancing ecstatically.
Next we made our way to the university area for Three Trapped Tigers in The Foundry, the music venue of the Students' Union. Proceedings up until now had run impressively smoothly for a free festival, so it was with an obliging sense of disappointment that we read the stage times: "Three Trapped Tigers (solo performance due to illness)". Apparently it was a dodgy Chinese that finished off the other two, but we made do with our solitary trapped tiger, who did his best to engage the audience, debuting songs written only last week and taking requests, where guitar lines had to be improvised on keyboard. While totally unexpected, this was a rare treat and a great warm up for 65daysofstatic who were next on the bill, or so we thought. For little did we know that at the time there were so many people crammed into the venue that security were being forced to turn away hundreds more at the door. The rumour goes that someone decided to try the fire exit as a sneaky entry point, setting off the alarm and causing an automatic shutdown of power to the building, along with hundreds of angry fans – the fire drill sounded just as the band were taking to the stage. No explanation was given by the personnel at this point; they just asked us to make our way to the doors. There was to be no performance of 65daysofstatic that evening.
In dire need of some simple noise pop to lift our spirits, we queued to see Dum Dum Girls at The Harley. Dingy and wonderfully atmospheric, it was an ideal place to wait for some technical problem or other to sort itself out, and by the time they started their set at 1am nobody seemed to mind or even notice that for most of Sheffield the Tramlines festival had long since finished. Apart from some very striking haircuts and a certain L.A. nonchalance there wasn't an awful lot in the way of engagement, save closing with Sonny Bobo cover Baby Don't Go, the only sign of emotion in a fun but otherwise pretty samey set. After that we did of course go, safe in the knowledge that we'd probably got our money's worth.
