{"id":85132,"date":"2018-07-05T22:32:47","date_gmt":"2018-07-05T19:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/?p=85132\/"},"modified":"2018-07-05T22:32:47","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T19:32:47","slug":"opener-festival-2018-day-one-nick-caves-sky-cults-alex-turners-lunar-dreamland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/en\/news-el\/music-en\/opener-festival-2018-day-one-nick-caves-sky-cults-alex-turners-lunar-dreamland\/","title":{"rendered":"Open\u2019er Festival 2018, Day One: Nick Cave\u2019s sky cults and Alex Turner\u2019s lunar dreamland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arctic Monkeys, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds kicked off Poland’s legendary weekender last night (July 4)<\/p>\n

Of Arctic Monkeys\u2019\u00a0twelve thousand festival dates<\/a>\u00a0in 2018, Open\u2019er will make them feel most at home. It\u2019s the closest the European festival circuit has to a Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino. Set on a glitzed-up landing strip in northern Poland, it\u2019s a place where surreal high art meets stylish sonics. An art piece made of conjoined white-painted and graffiti smothered buses sits in the centre of the arena like an abandoned settler base at the Apollo basin. An on-site museum displays film and artefacts from distant Earth history. Clubs rage in protective bunkers and tunnels and a gigantic, jagged neon totem pole rises from the centre of the festival like a 23rd<\/sup>\u00a0Century landing marker. There are even signs that the place is getting gentrifaaaayhaayed \u2013 a new onsite indoor restaurant allows you to book a dinner with a famous Polish chef. We\u2019d give it four stars out of five. Unheard of.<\/p>\n

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Before the Monkey has landed, however, Wednesday\u2019s otherworldly cabaret at the main stage gets underway in earnest with the psychedelic space-rock strains of Noel Gallagher\u2019s High Flying Birds, the perfect early-evening beer band. Mingling shimmering, motorik sunrise psych with brassy glam pop like \u2018Holy Mountain\u2019 \u2013 famously the sound of The Vaccines doing Ricky Martin\u2019s \u2018She Bangs\u2019, but it doesn\u2019t half sound remarkably \u2018Country House\u2019 too \u2013 it\u2019s becoming clear that NGHFB are gradually nurturing a canon equal to that of Oasis, even if it hasn\u2019t been able to puncture the public conscience so fundamentally. Noel\u2019s disinterest in Oasis is apparent \u2013 \u2018Half The World Away\u2019, \u2018Wonderwall\u2019 and even \u2018Don\u2019t Look Back In Anger\u2019 are thrown away half-heartedly, sounding like plodding relics from a dull and distant past compared to euphoric, modern pop swirls like \u2018Dream On\u2019 and \u2018It\u2019s A Beautiful World\u2019, complete with artsy additions from Noel\u2019s infamous scissor sister. Notebook out, David Byrne: she has loud telephone arguments mid-song and snaps her scissors through \u2018She Taught Me How To Fly\u2019 like a click track you could make a doily with. Grade eight from Juilliard, we\u2019d wager.<\/p>\n

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\"Ben<\/p>\n

Noel Gallagher at Open\u2019er (Ben Bentley\/NME)<\/p>\n

At the opposite end of the feelgood scale, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds warm Alex Turner\u2019s seat with a set characteristically spit between the savage, the sublime and the self-indulgent. Out on the barrier preaching dark gothic tales to his disciples from the off, Cave twists an opening brace of tracks from his tragedy-laced \u2018Skeleton Tree\u2019 album \u2013 \u2018Jesus Alone\u2019 and \u2018Magneto\u2019 \u2013 into intense grindhouse mood-setters, and then lets his Seeds fly, attack and infect. The seditious funk of \u2018Do You Love Me?\u2019 gives way to pure savagery; \u2018From Her To Eternity\u2019 would have Noel Gallagher thinking he needs an onstage brimstone player, assaulted as it is by the Seeds\u2019 crank violence and the sound of Satan\u2019s violin, and when Nick tells us that rabble rocker \u2018Loverman\u2019 is \u201ca very old song\u201d he\u2019s not joking. It sounds like it dates back to the Big Bang.<\/p>\n

The sublime? \u2018The Weeping Song\u2019 is pure pirate passion, \u2018Rings Of Saturn\u2019 a gorgeous spoken-word lament, \u2018Red Right Hand\u2019 an enthralling masterpiece of taut gothic drama and \u2018Into My Arms\u2019 is a front-runner for the best ballad ever written. The self-indulgent? Nick gathers a coterie of swaying devotees onstage to push the sky away during \u2018Push The Sky Away\u2019 like a weird sky-pushing cult, and two decades of exposure hasn\u2019t stopped this writer finding \u2018Stagger Lee\u2019 a noisy innocuity. If I wanted to be shouted at about murderous paedophiles I\u2019d go watch Tommy Robinson.<\/p>\n

\"Ben<\/p>\n

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Nick Cave at Open\u2019er Festival 2018 (Ben Bentley\/NME)<\/p>\n

\u2018Moon River\u2019 plays out over the PA (geddit?), and beneath a backdrop featuring the word \u2018MONKEYS\u2019 in silent movie font, Turner and co take the stage with the air of a hackneyed lounge act doing their fifth show that afternoon. As they break into \u2018Four Out Of Five\u2019 from their recent fan-splitting \u2018Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino\u2019 album and then rage straight into \u2018Brianstorm\u2019, it\u2019s easy, and way too simplistic, to mark yourself out as an old Monkeys fan (smiles, provincial haircuts, trackie bottoms tucked in socks) or a new Monkeys fan (smirks, satin shirts, gauloises), plonk yourself down and wait for your allotted tunes to arrive. The Monkeys\u2019 development is more sophisticated than that. \u2018Tranquility Base\u2026\u2019 might at first seem like a curveball album that resets Arctic Monkeys\u2019 trajectory, allowing them to do literally whatever they want on album seven, but the attentive fanatic can trace hints of its moon lounge lunacy throughout this career-spanning set. \u2018Crying Lightning\u2019 was the suave neon signpost to the Casino car park, \u2018505\u2019 an early dash of languid Americana, even riotous early tunes like \u2018Teddy Picker\u2019 and \u2018Do Me A Favour\u2019 are built on funk and rhumba foundations that wouldn\u2019t be out of place during the average sci-fi cabaret night. You might even wonder why they bothered doing any more lounge records when they perfected the style on \u2018Cornerstone\u2019 back in 2009, a front-runner for the second best ballad ever written. Like the clues you missed in an elaborate detective novel, it suddenly becomes clear that Alex Turner was a secret lunar Liberace all along.<\/p>\n

\"Andy<\/p>\n

Arctic Monkeys at Open\u2019er 2018 (Andy Hughes\/NME)<\/p>\n

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At the point where they have to assimilate all those twists and corners into one coherent festival set, though, they do feel like a fight between two very different bands. The show ricochets between chaos and cocktail hour, Turner snarling and crooning like the insouciant offspring of \u201880s Bowie on the funky latter era stuff one minute, and seeming in his element blasting out the old indie club riots of \u2018I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor\u2019 and \u2018The View From The Afternoon\u2019 the next. His Nicholas-Cage-on-Henderson\u2019s-Relish attitude naturally infects the older songs; he\u2019s all synths and snake hips during the carnival interlude of \u2018All The Pretty Visitors\u2019. Newer tracks like \u2018One Point Perspective\u2019 have a tendency to tip towards the aimless and prog, but ultimately it\u2019s the \u2018AM\u2019 tunes that prove the most cohesive. \u2018Knee Socks\u2019, \u2018Arabella\u2019, \u2018R U Mine?\u2019 and \u2018Do I Wanna Know?\u2019 rock and roll in perfect balance.<\/p>\n

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We\u2019re on an exploratory mission to the surface of Open\u2019er though, so expeditions are undertaken to faraway stages where intriguing life-forms lurk. At the Alter Stage we study Superorganism, living proof that ancient alien civilisations consisted of cheerleaders in multi-coloured rain-macs singing brilliant calypso rap songs about wanting to be a) famous, or b) a prawn. At the Tent Stage Feet Foxes prove a difficult species to focus on, their snowflake folk and jazz flute interludes dissolving under the critical microscope until it\u2019s almost impossible to keep your attention on them for more than a\u2026 oh look, a massive totem pole!<\/p>\n

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\"Andy<\/p>\n

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Superorganism (Andy Hughes\/NME)<\/p>\n