Decemberists, Sleater-Kinney, Gossip, Say She She. Gustaf, Teenage Fanclub, Death Cab For Cutie, The Postal Service and more – All Points East, Victoria Park, East London, 25th August 2024 = Final day of All Points East, back to the trees of Victoria Park, which really is just about a lucky for us four and a half minutes walk away from the Organ bunker here in Hackney, East London. The last of six rather big days and there was so much to pack in on this final Sunday of this year’s two weekend festival. it was impossible to see everyone you wanted to see and the final day, lots of serious rushing between stages, more than I can remember on any other day in recent years. Who is it essential to see today? Gossip or Decemberists? Yo La Tango or Teenage Fan Club? Say She She or Everything Everything? Lots of bands clashing, let’s get on with it, no time to mess around there’s some serious music experiencing to be done. Here then is what happened on the last day of All Points East 2024 from our point of view… 

Really needed to be there in time for Gustaf‘s first ever show in this part of the world, the fivesome’s British debut promised much, all the way from Brooklyn New York where they think a hero is some kind of weird sandwich and they’re always on their best behaviour and read books to get ahead. Now we were kind of hoping they’d be performers as well as great music makers, they were! The five of them soon filled the big blue tent up in a healthy way, they were clearly catching passing ears and what does it mean and how should I feel? Should I pretend it really isn’t real? Are we going to talk of them as art punks? Post art punks? Art posts? And can we touch it? Feel it? I’m good at this, I’m good, I’m very very good. Oh Gustaf certainly can perform! they’re good, they’re very very good, they are to be desired. Lead singer Lydia Gammill is a ball of all over the stage energy, her band, is it her band? The band, whoever’s band it is, they all demand attention – brilliant percussion player/other vocalist Tarra Thiessen is an utter dancing ball of must watch energy, a dancing while singing and hitting things star, is it her band really?  Hang on we need to name check them all; Gustaf are Tine Hill (bass), Vram Kherlopian (guitar), Melissa Lucciola (drums), Tarra Thiessen (vocals, percussion), and Lydia Gammill (lead vocals), they claim they got their start in 2018 when Thiessen recruited Gammill to help drive her van down to SXSW, I really really hope that’s true, I hope their van driver really did become their utterly compelling slightly disturbing centre-of-the-stage-demanding maybe just a little off-hinge singer, I hope Lydia Gammill did project herself out of that van and out to the centre of the stage. What do they sound like? Well they’re doing that locked on New York Art rock post punk thing, that slightly Devo-ish psycho killer thing, all five of them seem vital to the operation, they’re clearly going places, they’ve got a book, show me the book, they’ll get stuck in your head and your dreams, take note of that, I don’t come here to repeat things. Yes, there might well be quite a number of so called post-punk revival bands out there right now, Gustaf stand out though, Gustaf have personality, they have a slightly different presence, they sound great, did she just pull out a flute? They look great, they move great, they perform. they need to be watched, they took to an almost empty big blue tent stage and by the end of their short early afternoon set they had a more than healthy happy smiling dancing crowd pulled in to see what they were grabbing – a more than healthy crowd pulled in and won over. Oh yes, Gustaf were good, they were very very good, they were on their best behaviour, what does it mean? They’ll get stuck on repeat, Gustaf have landed over here, you can’t pretend it’s not real, they’re not just rehashing the spiel but we can’t hang around, there more to see, we’re missing bands on other stages… 

A sprint over to catch a quick bit of Yo La Tango but hey we can’t be in two places at once and as much as we’d like to stick around for them, Teenage Fanclub are way over the other side of the festival on the other big stage, the Fanclub demand we go west, no time to tango and no time for more of that free vegan ice cream (yet) either. Just about made it in time for Teenage Fanclub to quietly amble on stage and just easily effortlessly flow in to it all in the afternoon sun, to effortlessly glide into that so so inviting flow of Home and the comfort of that open door, into the way it rolls along so so well before that riff that reals in the years a couple of minutes in takes you along. The newer material is easily as good as those old friends from their glory days, they sound at ease with it all, just a bunch of people up there playing together and smiling as they do, and smiles down the front from people just really (really) enjoying it all. And for a rather beautiful forty or so minutes no one at this end of the festival site had a care in the world, we’re all just flowing with the way Teenage Fanclub are just flowing up there, with that sublime guitar interplay, with the gentle chug and the gentle gear changes, with that taking their own sweet time to find their way to About You – oh this is good, no ones talking here, no ones annoying anyone, no danger of a punch up today, everyone focused on the pure joy of a band with a sound perfectly crafted and everyone feeling the love and these golden days now far from violence, Tired of Being Alone, from 2023’s Nothing Lasts Forever sounds just right in the late afternoon late summer sun – the sky isn’t quite aglow yet, but it all just feels so so right listing to Teenage Fanclub in the park in the sun, basking in that easy to go with Neil Youngish whatever you want to call it, that Big Star thing they do, you know the names that people mention when they try and fail to write about what it is Teenage Fanclub do that makes them so good. 

hey, I’ve grown into Teenage Fanclub, grown to really really appreciate and admire them, I’ll admit I never did back there, in fact we had a complete bust up with them back in the Atom Seed days over a complete mismatch of a double headline clash for television thing at the Marquee many years ago, I ages i dismissed Bandwagoesque as a lot of inkie press hype and very little more, how wrong I was and oh how I’ve grown to love it and the rest of their catalogue, especially their later material so much –  not everyone here agrees, they do divide opinion here in the Organ bunker but hey, I’m having a brilliant time right down the front and Everything’s Falling Apart is a walk don’t run delight, 2016’s I’m in Love is almost a (more than welcome) surprise considering they said they only had time for two more songs before they had to get off. In Love feels good, it all does, that’s enough, Teenage Fanclub just feel good today, it feels more than enough and of course they finish with The Concept and we all sing along, we’re all smiling, they really are sounding so refined and at ease with it all these days, long may they go on playing so well and making the great records they still make, excellent mid afternoon set.

No time to hang about, goodbye to some newly made friends, was everyone down the front from Scotland besides me? “Here we are, sun above us, dry earth to stand on, good music, what more could we possibly need?” asks the very Scottish girl standing next to me, So friendly down the front for Teenage Fanclub, no talking while the band were actually playing, no screeching, braying or beard growing, nothing like that annoying LCD Soundsystem crowd last weekend and today thankfully feels different, feels much better. No time to hang around though, according to my back of a brown envelope list that we were now referring to as the app, (“check the app, where next?”), Sleater-Kinney are already on way over on the other side. Time to run across the miles of plain, run with the herds of Wildebeest kicking up the dust again, past the Six Music noise pollution again, past the Ferris wheel and the chairoplane ride that looks so tempting, past the food stalls and the bars and the Lynx pushers (no I don’t want to smell like a tube train on the way to a football match even if it is free) and it is quite a way to the other big stage (actually they’ve laid things out brilliantly). Sleater-Kinney are indeed underway by the time we get there…

I must admit I wasn’t sure what to expect from Sleater-Kinney, saw them and really enjoyed them a fair few times back there (and the glorious Heavens To Betsy before that, did we see Heavens To Betsy or just write about them? It all gloops together as one big mass of gigs and tapes and bands and zines and photocopied Bikini Kill flyers and did that happen or didn’t it? After a while it all meshes together, I do know there’s a Heavens To Betsy tape and a letter from them in one of the the boxes in the corner where all the ancient Organ history is waiting to be explored), really enjoyed our Sleater-Kinney encounters back there but that was probably in the last century now and well Be Your Own Pet were so disappointingly middle age and mortgages last year on the very same stage in the very same sunny late afternoon timeslot. No need to worry, Sleater-Kinney more than rock! They might be a little older and maybe a bit wiser now, but they are essentially still that glorious wanting to be in charge of it all Riot Grrrl rooted band from the 90s and Olympia, Washington and yes, they are as powerful as ever, as compelling as ever, maybe even more so? They’re playing a healthy proportion of material from this year’s rather fine Little Rope album, including the excellent Say It like You Mean It – really love that song, and yes, say it like you mean it is of course is exactly what they do for the entire set. Sleater-Kinney have always had depth, they’ve always had great songs to back it all up, they’ve always been about more than just their positive feminist confrontation, there’s always been more that those essentials, they might be wild and weary but they still won’t give it.

So good to see Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker up there together after all this time, too see and hear the chemistry that’s more than still there. They really are doing it today and when they get on it they really really do rock. That chemistry the band have is something really special now, that was one seriously forward looking challenging set and in the very best sense of the term a serious (alternative) rock band up there really really (really) doing it! Nothing needlessly wild here, they are so aggressively good, it also looks like they’re having fun, surely no bad thing? The Center Won’t Hold is deliciously edgy, experimental, biting, dangerous, it put me in my place, how dare I doubt them, how dare I not be sure what to expect? How predigest of me (don’t tell Emma Harvey, I’ve got to share a stall with her at the Art Car Boot Fair is two weeks!) Hey, there’s plenty of once great all male bands who long since stopped delivering and still clutter up stages, tere’s being plenty of times I’ve almost reluctantly turned up doubting a band are going to still have it and been more than right about it. Sleater-Kinney definitely still have it and more, both in terms of this marvellous performance and in terms of the records they’re making. The Fox was biting but the duck won out! Dress Yourself is beautiful, spine-shivering, there’s no friends to bury in the park today, Sleater-Kinney are sounding brilliant, Sleater-Kinney seriously delivered, they were glorious! 

No time to hang about though, this is a seriously good mid afternoon early evening bill and no time for Everything Everything, (sorry Lemon Twigs, completely missed you) no time for everything, really really had to see Say She She in the big blue tent, Not seen the Brooklyn band before and to be quite honest what I was kind of expecting was the three vocalists performing with backing tapes or maybe some kind of button pusher doing things with some kind of technology, No! Wrong. I was aware of them, I kind of like their records, and while the argument is for Everything Everything I’m insisting we really need to see just a little bit of Say She She first, just five minutes, check them out – they held us for the whole set with their refined blend of 70s soul, funk and disco, with their stage presence and with that damn fine backing band of theirs. Say She She are so damn good live, you can’t help but dance, your feet just have to move, and that mean version of the7 70s funk classic I Believe in Miracles that they kicked out at the end, their latest single so it seems, might just be even better than the Jackson Sisters version (and yes I do know that was a big thing to say). They’re from, New York although one of the three front voices was rather English and feeling good to be home, there’s three really really (really) good singers/front women up there and they’ve got one hell of a band. Some had tried to tell me they were an update on Northern Soul, they’re not that though, they’re more of a 70s funk thing, think Chic, think disco, think dreamy harmonies, they talk of discodelic soul, I can go with that. And what a joy they were, the three of them like some sort of super hero soul combo, each one with her own special powers – the tent is seriously dancing, we’re having one hell of a good day today!  She Say Say make great records, you really need to see them live though, live is where they’re at and that rather cool record style fade out from the band at the end didn’t go unnoticed. No time though, quick apology to the guy who’s toe I danced on, and the Decemberists are already on the big stage, time for another excellent mood change, this bill is really working, time to run again… 

Oh, I’m running like a fool now, I can hear Decemberists playing that infectiously good (yes I do know what I said there) Burial Ground, I’ve missed the start, did they arrive on the back of elephants for The Infanta? Now I was seriously looking forward to this, never seen Decemberists live before, how is that? They write such good songs, tell so many great stories, there’s whole shelves full of history books in those songs and wow, can they write them or what! Burial Ground is Beach-Boys-good, and yes I’ve already missed them open with weaving that is The Infanta, and it feels so so good down the front here as I arrive for the end of Burial Ground and what a difference a couple of days make. Such a different crowd, no one is going to need to punch anyone today, today is brilliant it every way, everyone is smiling, no one is talking loudly while the musicians play, the weather is holding and Colin Moley and his band from Portland Oregon are sounding so so good. How cool is keyboard/accordion player Jenny Conlee, those big screens really do let you see it all – where big festivals were once all crap sound, songs lost in the wind with the flying bottles of pee and no one able to see anything, these days they’re increasingly slick operations. The sound is always brilliant at All Points East and those big projections behind and to the side of the bands are so so good, the Seymours and the Howards would be so impressed, they’d be impressed that someone sees fit to be singing about them in a park in London five hundred years or so years on. William Fitzwilliam is such a beautifully sounding song, and don’t loose your head and does Colin Moley know he probably can’t quite see the Tower of London from up there on the big stage, he almost could though, if he stood on up on the very tips of his toes and all those new buildings weren’t in the way, he is facing it, he is on a direct (lay) line and England’s fair Summer is enjoying these songs, the Boleyns maybe not so much? That glorious mix of English folklore, Americana, Latin flavours and lots (lots) more and are tey very nearly almost touching on prog rock now and again these days? No complaints about that from over here they (almost) are.

This Sporting Life is about as autobiographical as these stories get, it is a tiny bit of lull before that sublime almost lo-fi opening riff of Make You Better and that really is a truly truly beautiful song and that is some beautiful tunesmithery – is Make You Better it a touch Waterboys? That was meant as a compliment, so much emotion in that song. Alas, even in a field in England, we know what he means when he talks of J.D Vance as he leads us into Severed and being born to a jackal and how he’s indeed going to leave us all severed and omen-like with his black shirted born to a white house games – oh look, I filmed J.D Vance bit, I guessed it was coming, had phone at the ready, I’ll put it on You Tube, if the band don’t mind, if they do someone will tell me. And then after the epic Severed there was the home run of O Valencia and the extra story telling and the fun of Dracula’s Daughter and I would have been happy with another couple of hours of the more than excellent Decemberists and that really was entertainment.      

And with that we can almost stop and catch a breath, oh no, hang on, we can’t, the back of the envelope app says Gossip are half way through a set in the big blue tent, we need to rush again, can we take any more? Time to run, or at least rapidly walk. Hey, I can hardly write this review, yesterday was so so good, we make it something like seven solid hours of none stop excellent bands, performances and with hardly time to even stop for a pint or some of that free ice cream like there has been on other days. Yes, I am aware that tickets for these events are expensive and yes we are on the press list again today, not everyone can afford to get in, most people I know can’t, but but but All Points East has once again seriously delivered, this is such a well put together well designed festival both in terms of the lay out and the bills, and for the last three years it has been brilliant and well here we are on the last day and it has been brilliant again. 

Gossip are well into their energetic set by the time we get into the belly of their crowd, things are seriously jumping in the now very packed blue tent and if only we could have been in two places at once and that moody start of Heavy Cross is just kicking in, that calm before the jarring storm of a that rainy night. It is an awkwardly good song and hey, I like Gossip, I’m not going to claim to be a big fan, it impossible not to like them today though and they do have this place seriously seriously jumping and yes the crowd does go crazy for Standing in the Way of Control and yes the Rebel Girl line wasn’t missed (does she always sing that? I don’t know), Gossip were good as well… 

Likewise Phoenix look and sound like they’ve gone down well over on the other big stage, the French band aren’t really my thing, way too slick, but hey, they’re going down well with their breezy modern synthy pop rock thing, they and their crowd look to be having a seriously good time, we only really catch the end and a euphoric 1919 and before that Trying to be cool, they don’t sound French do they? They could be from anywhere, they really are (too) slick, synthesised, I guess there’s worse things in life than their brand of harmlessly catchy pop rock, they were worth our fifteen or some minutes with their pop art, they were pleasantly good, they clearly went down a storm, they’re clearly have a great time, last day of a tour high spirits and yes they caused us to miss Spiritual Clamp… 

So, almost time for Death Cab For Cutie, often abbreviated to DCFC but we Dream City Film Club fans can’t have that! Death Cab time, everybody put your best suit or dress on and yes Ben Gibbard, all dressed in black for the occasion does have a way with words and songs and so this is the new year rather than almost the end of Summer and the U.S band are telling us of tears in the fabric and looking for the patterns and performing their fourth album in full, 2003’s Transatlanticism, the one that broke them into the mainstream, the one that made them almost household names (and not just a Bonzo Dog song). Death Cab feel just right tonight after the musical overload of a busy day, we weren’t honestly planning to stick around for much of them but the vibe is just so very very nice and the songs are very (very) nice and the weather is still rather nice and the words are easy on the ear and it all feels rather good and the fact that these songs from twenty one years ago clearly mean so so much to so so many people around us makes it feel rather good to be here almost gatecrashing in the middle of it all. Death Cab never really ever touched me, I tried a few times back there, it was all a little too nice, a little bit too American and over here we never really had the money for cars to do it in (it was graveyards and bus shelters) but tonight it is kind of just that, harmlessly nice and to kick any of it would be to kick a puppy.  Transatlanticism, with this crowd loving it all, feels like a really good way to almost end a fine fine day

We say almost because Ben Gibbard, now all dressed in white, is back on stage, after a short fifteen minute break, to perform all of 2003’s Postal Service album Give Up. There’s big big cheers for mail deliver partner Jenny Lewis and tonight, in the pitch dark now, and just like Death Cab before them, The Postal Service are just really really sounding nice, people around us are getting really emotional about it, everything looks perfect all in white, it feels like a good time for us to politely walk away with the joy of it all in our ear. It feels like something that really does mean something special to that big big crowd hooked on every word of it as we glance back from the other end of the park and make for the exit feeling good about it all, Neither Death Cab or the Postal Service have ever really done it for us, but it does feel so right here tonight, it feels brilliant, everything really does look almost perfect from the far way point of exit and we’ll leave them just the other side of their strangest dream and the importance of that song and those glorious days of innocence before conspiracy theories and the realisations of global warming and for a brief half an hour as we walk away with it all behind us and before we can get home, before we turn on our phones and check back into reality and the news headlines, for that brief moment of time everything is just nicely perfect and the two weekends of the festival have ended in just the right way with Ben Gibbard and his friends and in a few weeks there will be no sign in the park that any of it ever happened.

Was there a band of the day? Impossible to say, we spent something like seven hours, it was almost non-stop today and pretty much everyone we saw was damn good, it really was a great day, a great couple of weekends. All Points East delivered again, thanks everyone, thank you. (sw)

Previously –

ORGAN THING: Pixies were glorious, the ice cream delicious, MSPaint (kind of) impressed, the talkers annoyed and LCD Soundsystem headlined as the second weekend of All Points East kicked in…

ORGAN THING: Loyle Carner, Nas, André 3000, Cymande and more at All Points East, Victoria Park, London, what a beautifully positive day it was…

As always, do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show…