Wildbirds & Peacedrums
Uncut Stage
Saturday, 12.30

This Swedish duo make a virtue of their minimal percussion-based set up to create songs of immense colour and charm, drawing a sizeable early Saturday crowd into the Uncut tent. It's a twist on the simplicity of folk, as evidenced by Mariam Wallentin's peculiar blowing method used to play the harmonica, that most pernicious of instruments, before making unearthly sounds with a steel drum. It's at first utterly beguiling, but curiously Wallentin and drummer Andreas Werliin morph into the kind of insufferably smug couple, the sort where sending them an invitation to a dinner party would be an act of masochism resulting in immense feelings of inadequacy over the pickled herring...

Joe Gideon & The Shark Lake Stage Saturday, 16.30

...Joe Gideon and the Shark, another male / female duo into clattering the pots and pans, are what W&P sound like if you got so infuriated during dessert that you spiked their coffee with something untoward and left ‘em to sleep it off in a rickety old caravan out back. In her leopard print catsuit and peculiar grin, the Shark resembles a children's entertainer led astray, Joe Gideon the man who did the dastardly deed. The result is a weird English take on lascivious blues, hectic and unnerving and somewhat at odds with the scores of ankle biters fleeing from wasps in front of the Lake Stage. Then again, perhaps the Shark was controlling them with her electronic noise box...
Next: Patrick Wolf