Home is where the art is

Published on Sunday 30 March 2008 20:11

THE Fence Collective's annual Anstruther hometown gathering – Homegame – can only exist, it seems, in spite of the odds. In previous years festival organisers have had to cope with such adversities as the discovery of a swan infected with the bird flu virus H5NI in nearby Cellardyke, and one curmudgeonly local biddie's (very nearly successful) badgering of Fife Council to have the entire event banned.

This year, Anstruther Town Hall Hall – the main venue of choice in a quaint seaside town much better equipped for the sale of fish suppers and 99s than the hosting of alternative folk concerts – inexplicably slashed its official capacity by two-thirds, leaving Fence bosses to tear out what little hair they had left.

The most viable option, if there was to be a Homegame at all in 2008, was to scale the whole event down to a capacity of just 200, a hefty drop from the 800 maximum of last year. While it will hardly be of consolation to those who failed to bag tickets, this didn't necessarily turn out to be such a bad thing: the line-up was correspondingly slimmed down to be more "Fence-centric" – that is, predominantly featuring artists either on or closely affiliated to the Fence label – and overall, there was a tangible sense of the event getting back to basics. Plus, it probably meant a few less late nights for whomever it is that has to hand-make all the tickets.

It certainly helped that the Fence extended family, as it were, has become so large and diverse. The Collective's resolutely DIY, right-on approach to making, recording and releasing music has spread widely on the wind in recent years, resulting in a number of like-minded offshoots, including Edinburgh promoters Tracer Trails, Manchester-based label Red Deer Club and Fence's electronic wing De-Fence. Each of them curated a separate strand of this year's festival.

De-Fence hosted the opening night at Legends – a dilapidated bar and function room adjacent to the local high school – presenting a noisy, high-voltage line up that will have thoroughly shattered any misplaced notions of Fence being all about Arran sweater-sporting crusty old men downing pints of heavy and singing bawdy sea shanties (although admittedly there were a few sea shanties to be heard over the course of the weekend).

Falkirk's Viva Stereo have been around for a number of years doing relatively unremarkable dark-edged Primal Scream-style electronic rock, but they look to be hitting a new, much more gainful creative stride at present. Singer Stuart Gray has found his own moody, Scots-inflected voice, and their hefty crescendos dip into the realms of visceral post-rock. Following them on stage were Fife locals OnTheFly – a dancey, electro duo secreted behind two banks of blinking gadgets and wires, led by De-Fence fulcrum and King Creosote drummer Gavin Brown. Their collection of whirring beats didn't really have the desired effect on a packed, and by this stage well-oiled crowd, but they cooked up a few enjoyably heady aural brews all the same.

Down The Tiny Steps can be proud of the fact that they are the only band this reviewer has yet known to reference the board game Monopoly in a song, something that surely ought to happen much more often. The Glasgow trio – a kind of glitchy electro/folk/hip-hop cross between Hot Chip and the Beta Band – look like decent prospects too, and their closer, Handstand, was an immensely pretty little thing.

While all this had been going on up at Legends, The Hew Scott Hall, a centuries-old Church of Scotland building by the harbour, was hosting Clamjamfry – Fence speak for a big old acoustic free-for-all. In its latter stages, it saw slightly inebriated Fence chiefs King Creosote and Pictish Trail cover 80s popsters A-ha, and a chap called Hardsparrow drunkenly slur a lengthy, crumbling song about crab fishing, by which point it was definitely time for bed.

SATURDAY got underway with a solo set by lo-fi shufflers Northern Alliance – more specifically, singer-songwriter, author and journalist (occasionally of this publication) Doug Johnstone. He closed a chatty, good-humoured set with a touching number about his son, followed by the slightly more carefree End of the Set Song, with its Ivor Novello Award-courting chorus, which includes the refrain: "I didn't write a chorus."

Across at the Erskine Hall – a community centre which hosts the local playgroup (the walls are covered with pre-schooler's paintings and collages) – Newcastle songstress Beth Jeans Houghton was finishing doing her dainty, mellifluous, childlike folk thing, which was achingly twee enough to soundtrack an Orange phone advert.

The venue then filled up quickly for HMS Ginafore, a Fence stalwart whose songs are regularly covered by other artists on the label, not only because they're exceptionally good songs, but also because she's an incredibly reluctant performer who generally needs to be plied with booze before she'll get up and play them herself. She's a funny and affecting lyricist, but her guitar playing and vocals left a lot to be desired (something the gin can't have helped).

The evening concerts kicked off back at Legends with Deaf Mutes, who are fronted by ebullient BBC Radio Scotland DJ and occasional bloke-off-the-telly Vic Galloway. They made surprisingly good listening out of an unapologetically grandiose fusion of prog-rock and baroque pop. Be warned though: this fusion contains Bruce Hornsby and the Range.

If anyone happens to try and sell you a vintage harmonium in the Falkirk area (something that surely can't happen that often) Rob St John would probably like to hear about it. The young Edinburgh-based singer songwriter had his stolen on tour there prior to heading up to Fife. A Yamaha synth deputised ably as he opened the Tracer Trails-stewarded line-up at Hew Scott Hall with a set of gorgeous, pastoral folk, hushed and sleepy enough to send an insomniacs convention off to the land of nod.

Galway songsmith Adrian Crowley performed later in the same venue. His third album, Long Distance Swimmer, came out last year (it was recently shortlisted for Ireland's Choice Music Prize), and songs from that record comprised the mainstay of a spellbinding performance – the highlight of the day by some way. All reverb-y, crystalline electric guitar sounds, dark baritone vocals and pensive word play, Crowley's stuff is warm, enveloping and bewitching in the vein of Jeff Buckley or Bill Callahan.

Legends was already packed to bursting point by that stage, for King Creosote and band. The Fence founder and leading light is as close a creature as the Collective has to a bona fide pop star (his last album, Bombshell, was released on major label subsidiary 679 Recordings to very positive reviews), and it was no surprise to see him prove the biggest draw of the weekend. The crowd was practically spilling onto the stage by the time he'd worked through a cranked-up mixed bag of songs from his sizeable back catalogue, You've No Clue Do You, Not One Bit Ashamed and Klutz included.

Raging eccentric Withered Hand – a fantastically flaky, tiny-voiced Edinburgh strummer reminiscent of alt-folk loon Daniel Johnston – made for a somehow fitting finale. His set climaxed with the spectacle of a low-slung banjo being raked with a violin bow, Jimmy Page-style, in a kind of elemental fusion of folk, punk and hard rock. If Homegame can continue to survive just so that happens once more every year, the world will surely be a better place for it.