Festival season! It seems to start earlier and earlier each year, which lead to spending a Friday night in conditions not distant from wandering into your local Iceland store, climbing into one of their massive freezers and deciding that was a perfectly good bed for the night. After being defrosted on Saturday morning Is This Music? was ready to enjoy Brew at the Bog 2014, a celebration of good Scottish music, booze and food.
Bogbain Farm might not be the biggest of venues (if you started walking down from the campsite when you heard Vic Galloway introducing a band on the main stage you’d arrive midway through their first song) but it’s just about perfect for the 2,000 well-insulated souls attending the third year of Brewdog’s festival.
Saturday is not only sunny but sidles up to ‘Taps Aff’ territory, much a surprise given how cold Friday evening was. It’s all too perfect for sampling the variety of offerings at the bar and food stalls – nine different craft beers, several different ciders from Thistly Cross and Rekorderlig, prosecco, a variety of spirits and a gin bar stocked with twelve different gins.
Resisting the urge to go all Barney Gumble in this review, we sober up with wood fired pizza and Indian street food and go in search of the most important thing – good music.
We catch acts to watch for the future – Siobhan Wilson is simply wonderful in the barn, performing songs that are elegant, understated and almost have a French sound to them whilst Kill The Waves offer up imaginative and melodic post-punk on the Pond stage around the corner. Best of all are Skinny Dipper – a (nearly) all girl group who offer easy-oasey sun kissed pop songs with a great understanding of song structure and harmonies. ‘Son Of A Mitch’ closes the set and the hundred and fifty or so people (we didn’t count them accurately, blame the gin bar) all bask in their delightful loveliness.
Established performers are also dotted around the bill. King Creosote opens a jam-packed Barn stage and is predictably good, Roddy Woomble plays on the Pond stage and offers a mix of new and old solo tunes along with reinterpretations of Idlewild songs ‘You Held The World In Your Arms’ and ‘The Quiet Crown’, and Casual Sex have very quickly become a must see act since their shows with Franz Ferdinand, ‘What’s Your Daughter For?’ being a particular highlight. Singer Sam Smith offers the most useful advice of the weekend – “Drink responsibly or shag badly!”
With such a strong bill there are always disappointments – up against such a consistent main stage line-up the Little Kicks seem lightweight compared to those around them and Stanley Odd fall well short of living up to the expectations of a headliner, drawing a notably smaller crowd than Admiral Fallow who preceded them on the bill.
The absolute festival highlights include Fake Major in the barn stripping things back and offering raw, ethereal versions of songs from their back catalogue. They manage to make the barn feel cosier and more intimate than it actually is, impressive given it’s their only gig of the year so far. Prides can do no wrong at the minute and a large main stage crowd lap up ‘Messiah’, ‘The Seeds You Sow’ and closing song ‘Out Of The Blue’ and hint at the true potential that this band has ahead of them.
Admiral Fallow head onto the main stage at quarter past nine and offer three quarters of an hour of both old and new material in the sunset slot. Although the rain has started to fall for the evening the party atmosphere is not dampened; the crowd jump and dance to ‘Squealing Pigs’ and ‘Subbuteo’ and give just as much energy for the previously unheard songs dotted around the set as well. It’s almost effortless for the Glaswegians – hopefully next time they will be headliners outright.
It seems unfair to leave out so many acts from this review with such a strong line-up, Miaoux Miaoux are entertaining late at night in the Barn, Shambles Miller has a plethora of charming folk-pop songs, Tuff Love are all different shades of ace and Kid Canaveral are rarely anything other than top notch and don’t disappoint tonight.
Hints are being dropped that Brew at the Bog 2015 might be moving to a two day festival and it will be interesting to see if the event can continue to be as strong with double the acts to be booked. With so many quality performances squeezed into one day you’re more than spoiled for choice as it is.
In one corner you have the big corporate festivals with their watered down lager and Radio 1 pop acts. In the other you have Brew at the Bog with great Scottish artists, good food, even better drink and a breathtaking setting. Which side are you on?
RT @isthismusic: Festival review – Brew at the Bog – http://t.co/lmW5pwayij
Thanks for the nice words, @isthismusic! http://t.co/eZiNZfqqx8