A festival goer snoozes at The 1234. Photo by Tamsin Chapman // Flickr: teaselbrush

No NME journalists were present as Lydia Lunch launched a tirade of abuse at “tweety pie” Pete Doherty during her set at the 1234 Festival. Commenting on Doherty’s early release from prison, the singer accused him of playing up to his celebrity and mocked his so-called rock star image and substance use: “You can’t handle your drugs! Give me your fucking drugs and I’ll handle them for you”. The singer’s set of heavy blues-rock, in relation to her unashamedly fiery outbursts, proved to be poor, falling a little too close to contrived rock by numbers for those coming with expectations of her clattering no-wave past.

The Raveonettes failed to light up the main-stage afterwards with a set of indie pop detritus that simply wasn’t up for headline material. Singer Sune Rose Wagner strutted out in front of the crowd doing a feeble imitation of Jarvis Cocker, with some self-consciously awkward dance moves making the spectators cringe out of embarrassment for him. The rest of their set failed to pick up from there, even when trying their luck on bigger songs such as ‘Dead Sound’, with their backing musicians too busy proving that trying to project a cooler-than everybody-else image doesn’t make you a rock star.

The place to be throughout the day was the Artrocker tent with Two Wounded Birds demonstrating how to make 50s rock ‘n’ roll sound fresh and exciting – without the pretention. Warm Brains then put on a courageous performance with singer/guitarist Rory Attwell declaring “our drummer is off-his face in the dance tent, we only taught our new drummer the songs 20 minutes ago.”, although the stand-in percussionist seemed to know their set a little too well for this to be the real case.

Their sexually molested pop tunes from Warm Brain’s debut album were perfectly accentuated live by a member of the audience who began publicly rubbing his genitalia against the barriers front-of-stage and salivating at the feet of Richie Edwards-lookalike, Attwell, as the three-piece continued to play, seemingly oblivious to this lunacy.

Earlier on in the day, topless rock four-piece Forms had the right attitude but looked as if they were auditioning for a Westlife strip-o-gram competition. Not much could be heard beyond their guitars even though they were allowed to play on for an additional 15 minutes, much to the delight of an overexcited audience. Things in the ‘VIP’ area weren’t much better, with an open-mic set up for the bands that didn’t get booked to have a free rehearsal later in the afternoon.

A persistent criticism of the festival by its punters was the ropey volume of the stages. The festival’s site is located in a densely populated residential area which severely limits the maximum volume level. The close proximity of everything also meant that the noise bled over from one stage to the next. Although this clearly didn’t bother the dozen or so comatosed indie-kids, who paid £22 for a nap in Shoreditch Park.

“If this festival were an animal, it would be a Dodo.”

A member of the audience we spoke to during the afternoon commented on the festival’s sterile atmosphere: “There’s no one smoking here. Just loads of hipsters doing coke in the toilets.” He also criticized the event’s lack of character, suggesting that “If this festival were an animal, it would be a Dodo.”

Despite the nonexistant haze of marijuana, smiling faces and banter between the crowd, Black Lips always promised to be entertaining and ended the night on a high, with a nod and a wink to Jacques Dutronc, before covering themselves in toilet roll streamers, whiskey and low-strength lager. Black Lips may be on Vice Records (a branch of the festival’s sponsors – Vice Magazine) but they single-handedly managed to redeem some of the enjoyment factor at an otherwise disappointing festival.

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