NME braves the infamous French festival and makes it out alive – just. More details on their site
FRIDAY
“Can you feel the love tonight? YEAH! I WANNA SHOUT AT THE SUN!” Tim Harrington – frontman of Les Savy Fav – says what we’re all thinking. The Fav are currently playing hard and fast on a stage in a lake, as we watch from the sunny beach at France’s Les Eurockéennes festival. Naturally, Harrington has already leapt into the water, and is priming himself for his next feat. An enormous roll of tarpaulin is rolled across the top of the crowd; this is Harrington’s catwalk, along which he rolls like a meatball down a lumpy bowling lane. NME later discovers that supporting the runway causes one pissed festivalier to break their leg. This is just the start of an evening where everyone seems abso-honking-lutely fucked out of their faces. We purchase a hotdog, and notice a man sat to the right of the stand, swaying gently, and chewing the same mouthful for well over five minutes.
This is probably why everyone has rightly realised that Battles, despite being long pegged as unsexy math rockers, are actually massive party boys. FINALLY. Vastly improved on a sloppy recent show at London’s Heaven, they’re magnetic enough that even those with their eyeballs pivoting in their skulls hang on every ricocheting build, willing on the bungeeing chirrup of ‘Ice Cream’ and ‘Wall Street’’s cod enormousness.
It’s not quite as raucous for Metronomy, but the midnight slot suits them handsomely, spotlights gliding across the lake and Joe playing the ever-so polite master of ceremonies to Metronomy’s skronky English pomp.
SATURDAY
Last night might have been unhinged, but that doesn’t mean that Les Eurocks isn’t civilized – the acts don’t start until the early evening, meaning there’s plenty of time to sleep off that gueule du bois before much-touted Raphael Saadiq’s turn on the Esplanade. For all his highfalutin collaborators and awards, however, he turns out to be disappointingly traditional, playing straight, ‘50s rock’n’roll that soundtracks Jools Holland’s wettest dreams.
Later on, and everyone around NME spends most of Motörhead’s set going, “So this one’s ‘Ace Of Spades’, right?” Nonetheless, it’s a grand opportunity to wield rock fingers before QOTSA, who may be listed as “stoner rock” on the programme, but as ever, there’s nothing even faintly lethargic about them; instead they’re mean-faced and brilliantly miserly, playing with prick-teasing, sharp economy.
SUNDAY
As NME explores the tranquil jetty, a voice snaps from the Plage stage. Mona’s Nick Brown is sulking. “Fuck, you can do better than that,” he spits exasperatedly, after the crowd reflect their abhorrent posturing’s mediocrity. Oh Mona, do bugger off back to the dirty bars where you belong, hmm? Following a spate of French bands (covered here), it’s back to the Plage for Odd Future, whose ringmaster is currently confined to a wheelchair after breaking his foot in LA in June. Much like Cobain rolling onstage at Reading in ’92 in a similar chariot, the effect makes Tyler look even crazier, glowering and spitting from the side of the stage whilst Hodgy Beats parades his fully functioning limbs. By ‘Check My French’ – which, unsurprisingly, goes off – however, he’s on one foot, leaping around like a Flubber-galvanised pogo stick.
By contrast, there’s little that’s risky about Arcade Fire’s slot, but then there hardly needs to be – the only shocks Win and Régine administer these days are the chest-whomping gasps when you realise those are your roadtrips and your dreams and your towering sense of failure that they’re singing about, and OH GOD, the sunset over the lake, and suddenly it’s all a bit much. Arcade Fire are as close as we’ve got to a band that inspire religious fervour right now. And boy, we could do with a few more of those.