Now in its 20th year, France’s La Route Du Rock has already well established itself as one of Europe’s must-attend indie festivals, slowly but surely confirming my particular opinion, that similar large scale UK-based events are losing touch with the best emerging and diverse talent around.
Now customary, La Route Du Rock again mixed alternative crowd pullers such as The National and Flaming Lips with more avant garde European acts such as Etienne Jaumet and Yann Tiersen – the former a particular highlight amongst the cine-enthusiasts amongst us attending.
Crowds were understandably drawn early on the opening day with the sun, sound and no doubt the sight of the Dum Dum girls (sorry feminists) – the festivals mixed bag of artists on show further enhanced with the violin-wielding and uprising ‘cutie pie’ Owen Pallete. His musical themes were continued by Yann Tiersen, complete with 5 min violin solos and who appeared alongside an orchestral ensemble known as Dust Lane inc.
Those of us familiar with the wonderful, if at times confusing, sound of New York hipsters Liars knew that all expectations had to be surrendered. Would they fuck it up or would they ‘fucking kill it’ as my colleague questioned. Turns out, the latter. Indeed, the only question during their ear assaulting set was if we were watching a dance or metal band. With the arrival of the haunting beat-based ‘Sailing to Byzantium’, Liars confessed only that, when on form, they truly ‘fucking kill it’.
Saturday’s washout weather contrasted the previous days, the now token big crowd puller coming with via mainstream fare which saw Massive Attack fail to kill anything – the main talking point of their disappointing headline set being the inclusion of massive screens for backdrop which displayed various statistics referring to Palestine and Israel. It was in French but I think their message was obvious. Foals did their best to salvage the mood however with weather shit, DM Smith failing to show up and Hope Sandoval & and (despite) her Warm Intentions putting us all to sleep , they were always going to be up against it.
Arguably the day in which all eyes would be focusing on, either beaming (Flaming Lips), streaming (The National) or simply buzzing (Rapture), began promisingly with DJ sets from Clapping Music and a live set from Archie Bronson Outfit. Before the Flaming Lips could get down to their usual monkey-suite-wearing party-time antics, we were treated to the festival highlight. Where Liars had previously ‘killed it’, it was left to The National to heartbreakingly ‘devastate it’. Running through newbies from their brilliant 3rd album ‘High Violet’, Matt Berringer screamed, crooned and cried his way through a blistering set which provided crowd sing-along in the form of ‘Mr November’ – ‘I wont fuck us over’ and individual letting go of being carried to ‘Ohio in a swarm of bees’ during ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’. Sunday night came closing down with the aforementioned cheer-mongering from Wayne Coyne and lastly The Rapture. But in truth the festival belonged to The National. They ‘made it’.
Words by Ray Jackson
Photo by Jonathan Fisher
