YES WAY YES WAY

For consistently good bands, good sound and atmosphere Yes Way totally beats Field Day hands down. Well, Sunday does, I missed the other days. Plus it was a twenty minute walk from my house.
So I groggily shuffled my hungover arse in the direction of the Bussey Building around two to find there was almost no one there but it soon started to fill up. SLUSHY GUTS played first. I am really liking their new incarnation as a four piece. Adds more beef to the still incredibly unbeefy lo-fi atmospheric sound. Clear lyrics tinged with sadness and fed-upness, perfect for those who like to be morose and frankly who doesn't? I mean, sometimes. Kind of like melancholy sea shanties, but with four it just sounds more pleasurable for the watcher. Next up BASTARD SWORD who kind of knocked me for six as they were so unexpected. They used a vocoder and auto-tune and played high energy keyboard/synth based electro pop. What could be better on a Sunday afternoon when yr expecting nothing but a twee fest? Got me shimmying about. ANGUISH SANDWICH are the band of Winston Echo who is well known to the UK indier than thou and I know I've seen him once or twice several years ago but can't for the life of me remember, anyways Anguish Sandwich were kind of chaotic rawkus shambolic indie punk. I liked them, they had the tunes. But I did leave half way through to go see what was going down in the Bussey Building Courtyard. People were discussing their Electrelane guestlist spots (grrr) or whether to start drinking beer (yes) and I was having anxiety about my desire for jerk chicken versus the response it might provoke from the high ratio of my friends who are vegan. The anxiety proved to be unfounded by the way as no one was bovvered.
I'll be honest I'm not sure I really paid much attention to any of the other bands until Maria and The Mirrors came on as I was having such a good time chatting to people in the courtyard. Again, another way Yes Way beat Field Day was that it was all small so you could easily find people. You still couldn't bring your own beer in though (despite our most ingenious efforts) so we ended up spending a lot of time sat in the street opposite and quaffing cans from the offy and meeting interesting people.
MARIA AND THE MIRRORS were my top pick despite sound problems, but I suppose I always had it in my head they were going to be. I saw them a few years ago at the Windmill in Brixton supporting some band or other and I was totally blown away. Things have changed since then, not least the fact that they have a more complicated sound set up, with the two female vocalists/drummers having about two mics each. They kind of remind me of a manic overactive octopus with a drummer furiously shouting and banging away on each side and some cute awkward faggy boy in the middle jerking his leg back and fourth and fretting over his laptop. Not that he is the focal point, it's the drummers you can't take your eyes off. MATM have the appearance of some kind of eighties new wave band but with much better clothes creating music that is kind of like the sound of things being smashed to bits in an electro double-drummer kind of way, that glimpses towards the Prodigy/Atari Teenage Riot/assorted industrial goth. The vocals often get lost in the sound or blend into the sound. Not sure if it's deliberate but it works somehow. And they just seem like such an anxious shy bunch of misfits which I think is what fuels their sound. It's the clamour of someone who feels fucked up smashing everything. Or maybe I'm projecting again. I just like it when things are a mess.

Dunno what happened next, more time in the courtyard and on the street outside...I think I watched another band. Who knows? I had fun anyway. It was a good day.