Festival review: Fence Homegame

Published on Monday 9 May 2011 19:28

FENCE HOMEGAME VARIOUS VENUES, ANSTRUTHER ****

FOR those returning fans who contributed to the sell-out of this year's Homegame in a mere 20 minutes, the Fence Collective's annual knees-up in their home village has become more than just a music festival. It's like a family holiday and a school reunion blended into one, with fish suppers by the seaside and drunken stories told long into the night increasing the air of nostalgia. Like any self-respecting Scots summer holiday, there were also a couple of battering downpours to offset the gorgeous spring sunshine which bathed "Ainster" harbour on Sunday evening.

With each Homegame, its devoted followers are treated to something reassuringly the same but intriguingly different. This year the beloved but badly in need of repair Hew Scott Hall was off-limits, so the adjoining village of Cellardyke's Town Hall was pressed into service. It's a beautiful, church-like venue, at its best with the sun streaming in the windows for the Sunday afternoon performance of Glasgow author Rodge Glass' serene indie-folk quintet Burnt Island. It also played host to a short Heavenly Records tie-in event headlined by Liverpudlian folk singer Kathryn Williams.

The input of such friends and artistic partners was more in evidence than usual this year, with Josie Long, a sometime tourmate of Homegame's co-organiser Johnny Lynch (aka Pictish Trail), curating a comedy stage in the local rugby club bar – a snug venue which demanded bravery and a willingness to deal with occasional heckles. Friday night also saw Fence alumnus Gordon Anderson (aka Lone Pigeon) curate his own "Space Cave" in the AIA Hall, a darkened room adorned with glowsticks and a flickering video projection. Fine-tuning the sound from song to song himself, Anderson welcomed friends like The Kittens (ex-Divine Comedy bassist Bryan Mills and Nick Munro of Edinburgh's 7VWWVW) and Austen George, after whose set Anderson enquired "wasn't that the most beautiful thing you've ever heard?" with honest wonder in his trembling voice.

One minor complaint which murmured its way around later in the weekend was that the Space Cave, along with sets from Scots bands like Meursault and the Last Battle in back rooms of the Smugglers Inn, had been shut-outs from the moment they started. Yet the marquee names – like Josh T Pearson and his attritional electric blues, Nathan Fake's upbeat and poppy techno show, Slow Club's euphoric country-rock set, and co-organiser King Creosote's rich reinterpretation of his My nth Bit of Strange in Umpteen Years "live only" album alongside Lancashire blues-rockers the Earlies – played to full and contented crowds, all home for the holidays once more.