When you’re dressed as Hulk Hogan you can do anything – mud-wrestle (obviously); punt a giant apple around a lake; jump on stage with Jarvis Cocker halfway through every other song he plays; swap clothes with a hardcore Baltimore band while they yell in your face.
Right now though, 10,000 secret gardeners are thinking the same of being disguised as fried eggs, Run DMC, cats, chimps, wizards and massive bellends (literally).
This is an enchanted world of adolescent adventure; a bubble-blowing place of wildest abandonment;
where nothing is improbable and even less is frowned upon: Alice’s Wonderland without the bad drugs.
In fact, so giddy is this year’s Secret Garden Party that its third-rate, Secret Garden Party folk-heavy lineup somehow only heightens the experience – three days of unmissable bands,
after all, is why so many of us never make it to the more interesting further reaches of Glastonbury.
In the midst of this eccentric do though – which turns distinctively Wickerman once its organisers set fire to their floating stage,
stranded in the middle of the idyllic Great Lake – a handful of bands are as brilliant as the organic pies on sale.
The xx – playing the relocated Where The Wild Things Are stage – are as humble as ever, smiling to one another at the cheers received by ‘Crystalised’ and a majority of their new self-titled album.
That they left a vital keyboard at home, leaving Baria to hop on and off stage à la an unwanted Liam Gallagher, is only noticed by a few,
everyone else transfixed by James’ electronic drum-pad poking. It’s a solid set,
Longstanding friends – and Comanechi’s label boss in The BP’s Milo Cordell: the man behind Merok Records –
Akiko is practically a fully-fledged member of the shoe-gazing band now.
And when she’s not drumming for them (which she usually is, due to their continual climb from buzzing blog fodder to credible princes of Radio 1’s playlist)
she’s screaming and collapsing as she fronts hardcore noise gang Pre and,
occasionally, performing under her solo guise, Sperm Javelin.
That’s four bands that Akiko is involved in, perhaps alluding to why just as many years have passed with no sign of a Comanechi album, and definitely leading me to ask how they manage to keep this, their main concern, going.
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