Music > Live Reviews

WoW Music Festival 2018

02/07/18

Is WOW Festival Norfolk’s best kept secret? It’s certainly not the easiest to find, tucked away on a back road somewhere between Diss and Burston, with nothing more than a discreet, hand painted arrow pointing to a gap in the hedge. Stick your head in, and you’d find no fences or barriers, the festival instead taking advantage of hedgerow and stream to define its curtilage – Brigadoon nestled within a beautiful wooded area to the side of a single track lane in the middle of nowhere. The festival is tiny, with a capacity of five hundred, most of which seem to know each other. Comfortably fitting into an area about the size of a couple of football pitches, people sat content to chat and smoke and wave at vaguely recognised faces from the year before, surrounded by stall selling counterculture goods and services. Though notionally a three day event, it’s really two days with one split in half. If that seems a little odd then a moment’s thought should tell you this is an inspired idea. Bags of time to get set up on the Friday when you would otherwise be missing stuff, and a lazy departure on the Sunday evening with enough time to get back home in time for the real world on Monday. The net effect is that each day had a distinct personality, with music carefully curated accordingly.

Those looking for famous faces, or indeed anyone you may have heard of, should apply elsewhere. I recognised only a handful of names on the bill, and I can’t pretend to have liked everything I heard, but I will say that pretty much everyone acquitted themselves honourably. Given a program that included Greek folk, jazz funk, ragtime, ska, roots reggae and electro swing there were things I loved, things that surprised me, and things that were simply not to my tastes, but the abiding impression was how cleverly the organisers had ferreted out little known artists that excelled in their own field. You were as likely to be impressed by someone at the bottom of the bill as the top. A case in point were Fick as Fieves, second up on Friday when most folk were still setting up their tents, whose defiantly energetic set in the face of a largely empty arena put me in mind of early We Are Scientists. Which is not to say there weren’t great things going on later in the day. Punkish Gaffa Tape Sandy turned the volume up to eleven, only for the Resonators to tweak it back down again, and while Electro Swing will never be my thing, the Circus of that name brought the beer tent, and the night, to a fitting upbeat close.

Sore heads from the previous night’s revels were soothed early on Saturday, with a series of acoustic sets gently coaxing the assembled to life, though Katie Spencer’s wistful, haunting meditations on life and love, and beautifully accompanied solely her own accomplished guitar playing, were just the thing for lying in the sun and nodding back off to sleep. I did so, only to be woken shortly after by a Dachshund wearing a daffodil necklace licking my face. It was a moment to remember, if not exactly treasure, and one of many. Bessie Turner, returning from last year and soon to be headlining a stage of her own, had her set thoroughly stolen by five year old Penelope, who so impressed Turner with her interpretive dance, that she asked her on stage.

“This one’s a sad song, Penelope,” said Bessie. “Do you think you can handle it?”

Penelope determinedly nodded her head, and then got down to business.

Then there were the HooDoo Operators, who decided that the solution to the sparsely filled beer tent in which they were performing was to go find themselves an audience. A four piece guitar band, and therefore unusually mobile, they travelled first to the food tent, then out to meet sun worshippers, adding to their chorus of backing singers as they went. By the close of their “set” they were surrounded by folk singing their hearts out about their mojo working to a group of beaming picnickers, no doubt regretting they had missed the rest of the performance.  

Undoubted musical highlights were, for me, Port Erin, with their complex rhythms and groovy baselines, but I also loved Lord of Worms, a superb progressive grunge band from Bristol surprised to find themselves sandwiched between hip hop and reggae, but giving it their all. The Popes of Chillitown were also great, rising to the challenge of an impromptu promotion to the main stage following technical issues, with an infectious mix of ska and rock which dragged drinkers out into the nippy midnight air for a final knees-up of the day.

Sunday was a deliciously intimate affair, with a largely acoustic run of bands in the covered marquee that was busier, and livelier, than it had been all weekend. Sweet tunes from Maya Blue were followed by compelling performance poetry from Wensum, gentle folk from Twisted Routes, and then funky sax from Nebula Sun. The afternoon was gently brought to the boil with Don Kipper’s North East London sound, following by the frenetic fiddle based dance tunes of mullet sporting Whiskey Shivers. After which, all of a sudden, that early Sunday finish didn’t seem like such a good idea, as sadly it was time to go home.

This was a resolutely old school affair, reminiscent (if you’re old and wizened enough to recall) of the legendary Albion fairs of the early eighties. More like a village fete gone weird than a modern festival, there was music, and lots of it, but as important was the feeling of community. It’s not unusual to see happy, smiling faces at a festival, but when those faces are the bar staff, and the litter pickers, and the sound engineers, then you know you are attending something a little special. This may well have been a uniquely relaxed festival, but that was because it was supported by people who pitched in, caring about the smallest detail, anxious to make sure everyone had the best time possible. At one point I looked on, from afar, as organiser Geoff Dixon (unmistakable in his shorts and Hawaiian shirt) took the trouble to poke his head into each and every portable loo, making sure all were in order (they were spotless throughout, by the way). That, I thought as I watched him, is in a nutshell why this event is working. With sensibly priced food, ale filled tankards, a mix of straw bales and old sofas to sit on, home-made cakes served on real plates, the running order sketched out on a white board, and people of all ages and backgrounds simply getting on, you can’t help but feel his is how festivals ought to be.