We report from All Points East festival in Victoria Park, London on Sunday 25 August
Yo La Tengo (★★★★☆), famed for their long jams, have just over half an hour to do their thing in Victoria Park. It provokes the strange sight of the trio’s frontman Ira Kaplan telling the crowd ‘[they] have time for a couple more’ just ten minutes into their set. They manage six songs in total with the final number Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind morphing into a 15-minute jam session. Now in their fortieth year, the band find the balance between tight and loose, like a fine-tuned machine.
Styled like two latter-day members of the Ramones but with a sound that evokes The Beach Boys, The Lemon Twigs (★★★★☆) bring their 60s-styled pop with its bright harmonies to the Cupra Tent. The Long Island duo flesh out their compositions with a full band that seals instruments between songs as the duo engage in some bizarre bantering with the packed-out tent – some of which goes over our heads as they talk over each other. It’s an addictive set that is cut short when the band find themselves having the plug pulled having continued to play behind their allotted time. This may be pop but they have a rock edge.
The Decembrists (★★★★★) arrive in Victoria Park for what is surprisingly their only European date this year, marking the end of their tour in support of their new album As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again. Playing against a decadent backdrop of luscious greenery that matches the riches of the band’s indie-folk sound, they’re supplemented on tour by a two-piece horn section so that they at times draw comparisons to Bruce Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions band (no complaints). From folk song epics like William Fitzwilliam to the swaggering Oh No!, it’s a wonderfully curated set that showcases both the new album and their extensive back catalogue. One of the stand-out performances of the weekend.
I catch the second half of Phoenix, their set overlapping with The Decemberists. They’re also on the final date of their tour – one that included an impressive performance at the Olympic closing ceremony. The French band have always been at home in England – singer Thomas Mars talks about how they found a place for their music here when audiences in France were less enthused at the beginning of their career. By now, they’re slick operaters with the tunes to match and though the crowd thins slightly towards the end, hits like 1901 retain their power. It’s a communal moment as Mars makes his way into the crowd to share a beer with their devotees before crowd-surfing back to the stage, Madri in hand.
Then it’s the joint headliners Death Cab for Cutie (★★★★☆) and The Postal Service (★★★★★), two bands fronted by Ben Gibbard, for some noughties nostalgia. They’re playing their albums Transatlanticism and Give Up in full, twenty-one years on from their respective releases. There’s an obvious affinity for the bands from the crowd – that might be stating the obvious, after all, everyone has bought a ticket to be here – but there is a sense of shared history amongst a crowd that is largely in the thirties. There are plenty of Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service band t-shirts from previous tours, as well as other bands of the era.
Interestingly, despite Death Cab for Cutie arguably being the senior partner here (they have 3 million monthly listeners on Spotify, twice as many as The Postal Service) it’s The Postal Service who receive the biggest reaction from the crowd who sing most of the lyrics back at Gibbard. Perhaps it’s because Give Up, despite its underlying melancholy, is just more suited to an outdoor festival show with its fast up-tempo beats. Either way, both bands deliver two stellar sets. Gibbard has lost none of the power in his distinctive voice and he carries us with us back to a time before Starmer and Sunak, before Truss, Johnson and May, before even Cameron and Brown, when things like rent, mortgages, nursery fees, financial crises, austerity and cost of living crises couldn’t have been further from our radar – such great heights.
