Gillingham, Kent, UK (By Mikey) - I am the new Scottish gentry",
Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos elegantly and quite correctly announces, through the regal, preening strut of 'Shopping For Blood'. With their thermometer currently as hot as Jay Z armed with MDMA goggles, eyeing Beyonce's almost illegal booty in cut-down denims, the word is out on this Glaswegian four-piece.
Indeed, dotmusic finds itself in an almost partisan tent, buzzing with the sort of anticipation The Hiss, hype-shagged right up the bill, can only marvel at as they await their own cremation. Named after the assassinated Austrian archduke, it's all, naturally, tremendously redolent of other people's footsteps. Franz Ferdinand do little new and are surfing of the New Wave 20 years too late, attracting comparisons with Scottish 'Postcard' label luminaries Josef K and Orange Juice.
Perhaps more ludicrously described as a blurred passing gust of the slick debonair decadence of Roxy Music, the ragged axe juddering of The Strokes and the drawn cutlass of Adam & The Ants, there is an edgy, artful twist to FF. Thrown together, it highlights a pop classicism that may well allow the likes of rapier imminent single 'Darts Of Pleasure' - complete with the euphoric, Kraut-spitting outro, rhyming "super-fantastic" with "sharp as elastic" - to crossover in some style. "I know that you will surrender", Kapranos insists on 'Darts...' Alex, we're already on our knees.
The festival is barely a few hours old when Alien Ant Farm set about rebuilding their career after last year's horrific coach crash. Given it's mid-afternoon and they've been relegated to the relative lowly surrounds of the Radio One Stage, the 'Farm seem undeterred with the ever eager Dryden Mitchell sandwiched between the larger than life caricatures of guitarist Terry Corso and bassist Tye Zamora.
'Movies' ignites the atmosphere for the first time at this year's Reading but the frenzy is short-lived as new material from their 'truANT' album and sentimental overload extinguish any early flames. Mitchell thanks fans for their loyalty but an ill-advised rant at Kerrang! for slagging them off will do him no favours in this environment. Nor will the desperate covers of Sade's 'Smooth Criminal' and the now-not-so-funny rendition of Wacko's 'Smooth Criminal', which seems to suggest the expiry date on AAF's shelf life is rapidly approaching.
Meanwhile, hacking away at the Main Stage are The Datsuns, a band like so many other from 2002, who wowed journalists and music industry types alike sending A&R cheques fluttering in the winds of Camden Town. With the benefit of a few months of hindsight and the high water mark of The Darkness (oh, how The Datsuns must loathe The Darkness) the emperor's clothes are all but off.
Try to resist that sneer, but The Datsuns are nothing if they're not a postmodern phenomenon - a band that choose to stick a fa�ade of The Stooges on to a structure that is largely AC/DC rather than troubling with anything so wilfully obscure as innovation. Wrap these bands in a cellophane bag and sell them at �9.99 a pop. 2002 was a bumper year.
Usefully, The Datsuns - like The Vines, Jet etc - come from a corner of the planet that's hardly encumbered with a weight of pop musical history burdening the shoulders of its young musical upstarts. Isolated from a regular cultural diet you either go the Boards Of Canada route or buy some records at your local, under-stocked Our Price and start to learn the chords, wear the jeans and kick out the jams. The Datsuns' local Our Price may have been thinly stocked but, as today's set attests, it delivered a formula that's produced easy to swallow three-minute rock injections as fleetingly fun as 'MF From Hell' and 'Harmonic Generator'.
Elsewhere, it's all about contrast this evening. Whilst Justin Hawkins and co are entertaining 99% of the Reading crowd on the Main Stage, flailing around in the evening sunshine, glamming up proceedings with their spandex and big hair and bringing every rock'n'roll clich� into full Technicolor reality, Ladytron perform with minimalist chic to a select crowd in the dark recesses of the Radio 1 tent.
For most of their set, Ladytron do not move. At all. But their rigidity perfectly fits the style of the music and, as 'Play Girl', 'Nu-Horizons', 'Cracked LCD' and 'Seventeen' churn out from the human machine on stage, the audience bobs its collective head knowingly. For many, it seems that choosing Ladytron over The Darkness today was something of a style statement - and it's hard not to feel a little pleased with yourself with a band as effortlessly cool as this. And there's not an air-guitar in sight.
On paper, The Darkness are no more than the sum of similar parts. Swap Cambridge, New Zealand for Lowestoft, Suffolk, AC/DC for Thin Lizzy and Queen, but somehow they transcend the stolid photostat of The Datsuns. Of course, this is their moment to shine, just as it was The Datsuns' turn here last year. Hilariously unselfconscious frontman Justin Hawkins gets more mileage from song titles involving the word 'motherf**ker' and has considerably more fun than his counterpart, Dolf De Datsun. And, unlike Dolf, because Justin really is Justin, he doesn't need to worry about slipping out of character.
The Darkness may claim that they're the one hundred percent 'real deal' but there's an element of pantomime and parody in what they do. Combined with their cast-in-stone musicianship and perfectly crafted (and perfectly daft) songs they elevate homage to a unique art form. This afternoon it's impossible to be unaffected by their charm. Accordingly, the crowds turn out in their droves to provide Friday's uncontested 'must-see'. 'Bicolage' and 'Supermodified'. Safe to say then, that he won't be found playing a tongue-in-cheek Happy Hardcore set over in the Dance Tent. Nope, in fact he's mix and matching Mobb Deep's devastating 'Shook Ones Pt. 2' with DJ Hype. Remarkably there are kids at the Reading Festival who still find time for breakbeats between Sum 41 and Blink 182. Amon is old enough to be their Dad but no one cares until he whips out 'The Black Angel's Death Song' by some old band and brings the room to a stand still. That's bricolage for you.
Each year the Carling Weekend takes a token stab at a hip-hop line-up. Each year it's an increasingly pointless exercise. This year's eager victims are Brooklyn duo DM & Gemini. The pair's current album 'Ghetto Pop Life' was recorded at legendary hip-hop spot D&D Studios, the spiritual home of Gang Starr's DJ Premier, and is every inch of vinyl worthy of the association.
Both producer and emcee have notched up ample tours of duty on the underground and Gemini should have been playing this gig back when there used to be such a thing as the Essential Festival to properly represent this music. As it is, he's here now and it's frankly embarrassing that this event just insults everyone who cares about hip-hop with a complete disregard for sound or stage production. If you close your eyes and shout out the words, you can imagine how good 'Ghetto Pop Life' will sound when they play in London next week.
You can't argue with The Kids. That's why we're here, right? It's also why US rock outlaws The Hiss are afforded a decent crowd in the Carling Stage. There are rumours amongst these fresh-faced whippersnappers, fed by the industry Cosa Nostra, that the new Oasis are about to be born before our eyes. Yeah, exactly. The new Oasis!! F*ck me, that's thrilling news. However, please try and contain your dead-eyed, hypnotised drooling on the keyboard and the inevitable, frenzied desire to relieve yourself all over the screen for the next few seconds, whilst we attempt to make this Earth-splitting mirage an Messianic reality.
"I put my back into it", Adrian Barrera - like Vernon Kay after a month of solitary confinement on Alcatraz - commendably assures us on the turgid, virus of a rock'n'roll computer programme that is 'Clever Kicks'. Indeed, it quickly emerges that The Hiss are armed with little more than base, gorilla noise of the purest and ugliest form, which makes no play for progress and has no truck with genius. The crowd begins to thin as the band bulldoze their way through the squalling, reeling rifferama of 'Back On The Radio', while the stupefyingly cool bass player readjusts his flat cap and the cross-eyed guitarist suffers an aneurysm attempting to move his fingers across those hallowed Bonehead fretsteps.
This is the kind of rowdy, two-dimensional schlock that the Rolling Stones, and, latterly, Oasis, long since boxed and threw onto the last train out of town. And, crucially, they put considerably more than simply their backs into it. They were, after all, rock stars, not workmen.
The same cannot be said of The Hiss.
