On The Scene// Threshold festival: Day One
#srcz was at
Threshold festival ’14 and in partnership with the festival, spent the weekend
capturing magic moments, robotic revelries and visual arts excellence. Helen
Basil was part of our Media Team and captures the eventful first evening from
her point of view below:
As carefully
planned in advance as it had been, Friday ended up being a flurry of printouts
and spare pens and making sure I got everything. So it was no wonder then that
I left for the 7PM start of the festival feeling a little unprepared. I
wandered around a bit and before stumbling over the 24 Kitchen Street venue
where Spoony Bard was just setting
up and decided to start here.
With a resounding,
clear voice, he had my attention with the first few strums of his guitar. Choosing
a simple style often passed over nowadays, his folky spin on contemporary
issues was very well received by the crowd. With songs that seem to have been
written on the banks of the Mersey, Spoony Bard dusts off old sounds and makes
them his own. Threshold was starting to sound really good, and I was only one
act in.
Then it was on to
the Baltic Bakehouse for me, where I managed to catch Christopher Moore’s set. Having been privy to see him perform
before, a pattern was emerging. The first thing to catch the ear is his voice:
with a roughness to it that very few musicians can pull off, he seems to have a
knack for backing it up with just the right amount of emotion. The Waitsian comparison
may be inevitable, but it only goes as far as that: a fleeting reminder, as his
original pieces have their own flavour. Gravelly goodness indeed!
By this point, the
skies have decided to keep me in this venue with their rain, and I’m glad they
did. Up next was Simeon Turtle (pictured below) , an
emerging local talent. Hailing from Chester, this 20 year old was a treat to
see. What struck me most about her original pieces is was their simplicity,
coupled with her strong voice they’re the kind of songs that hit home. She
makes an impact by capturing simple moments of life and being young, and
managed to get the room’s full attention from start to finish. Simeon is
definitely someone to look out for in the future.
Not to be that person that talks about the weather
all the time but… at this point I had pretty much given up on using the first
day enthusiasm to check out the venues Threshold had to offer. I returned to 24
Kitchen Street for Kalandra, a band
that I’ve kept missing somehow around Liverpool. Their folk-rock style boasts
Nordic influences which was a selling point for me – I had a feeling I’d like
them, but I was completely blown away. The show they put on was the most
delightful combination of theatrical folk rock, and they’re just one of those
bands who’d have a good time playing anywhere with each other. Feeding off the
energy of the crowd, lead singer Katrina’s ethereal voice enchants while making
all manner of available limbs move. Passionate performances came from all
members of the band, and they’re definitely a band worth seeing perform live.
It was then time
for me to head to Siren for an act that’d been recommended to me in a flurry of
words that didn’t really convey a lot about his style, but rather his choice of
song topics: Beans On Toast, ‘that
dude who sings about drugs’. I really had no idea what to expect since musical
comedy is so hard to pull off, but does this guy know how to do it. Being in
front of an audience seems to be as natural to him as breathing, and he knows
how to get the crowd on his side right off the bat. He even got a few to help
‘adjust the stage Feng Shui’. But his songwriting isn’t just about trippy
festival experiences: he just has a quirky way to put into words his
experiences that most have been through. He’s one of the few musicians I don’t
think I’d ever get tired to see live.
As for the Destroyers, well… a fellow contributor
managed to put their show into words much better than I would. Ingrained in my
genes after generations of homemade moonshine and traditions, my Balkan
instincts took over. I was helpless to resist them and I ended up dancing my
little heart out. And as much as my feet were protesting the morning after,
it’s going to be stuck in memory as my personal highlight of the festival.
