Truck Festival 2024: Sunday – Festival Review

Truck Festival – Sunday (see also Thursday & Friday and Saturday)
Hill Farm, Steventon, Oxfordshire
26th July 2024

Day four of Truck Festival is a scorcher. Our team continues to soak in as much as possible on the final day of this year’s event.

The Oxford Symphony Orchestra have managed to cause a circle pit of polite moshers already, the women next to us seem to be singing along to that tune from Frozen, so we wander off to watch Dog Race, previously seen at this years Ceremony Festival in Bedford, who have impressed enough for one or two of us to recently become more familiar with their output. 

In the same way that Dry Cleaning have managed some respectable success due to some unconventional vocals, we imagine that Dog Race could experience a similar success. Vocalist Katie Healy splutters, speaks and sings the tunes in a way we haven’t heard since Lene Lovich and each song grips the listener with a curious need to hear over and over again. This is a band that could find a lot of people getting familiar with very soon. Dismiss them at your peril.

We visit the Rocking Chair Stage for some Comedy and shelter from the blistering sun, because standing for another hour in the heat may not be too healthy for us if we want to last the day. Alex Keeley tells us some stories relating to his teaching work and for twenty minutes or so we forget where we are and brush the dirt from our shorts (and minds) before venturing back outside for some more music.

Coach Party and Black Honey appear to be ploughing a similar path of female-fronted indie music to that of male-fronted indie bands The Snuts, The K’s, Sea Girls, The Amazons and The Kooks. It is possible to tell them apart, each band all have at least four or five banging tunes you didn’t realise you knew, but everyone at one point of their performance are also providing tiny hints that anything the Killers can achieve with great effect may possibly work for them too. It’s all OK though. Each show featuring a lot of familiar radio friendly day time alternative music is always a pleasure to witness. 

CVC are seen, enjoyed but forgotten about rather too quickly once Glasgow band Vlure come along to provide us with something to remember again. Vlure are a very puzzling outfit for at least one of us. Described by someone a little worse for wear as Frankie Goes To Hollywood with two (sometimes three – those bits really were ace) muscular, shirtless blokes shouting at us, moshing in the audience with us and waving a St Andrews flag over our heads, it’s a bit too serious but very compelling to watch. Having seen more than one show by this band now, it’s safe to say these are probably one of the most original outfits around at the moment and are another one of the weekends highlights, even though it’s tough keeping a straight face when watching these people strutting round like an entourage of wrestlers in a holiday camp.

Heartworms are providing another reminder that many of us enjoy watching entertaining front people that stare at us or dance sporadically during their collection of more than decent guitar driven tunes. There doesn’t seem to be enough of this going on nowadays. They’re as compelling to watch as Siouxsie And The Banshees were, and it’s at this point of the weekend that we realise that the Nest Stage hasn’t served up one bad show all weekend.

Personal Trainer are also a joy to watch. Boasting seven members who at times are all singing, walking around the stage and contributing to the chaotic spectacle in front of us, they start the show reminding us of Pavement but provide us with some big feet tapping tunes to convince those unfamiliar with the Dutch band’s output to revisit again sometime.

Bob Vylan of course are doing what we’ve all come to expect now. Harsh, aggressive, electronic, hip hop, punk rock, angry rap yet with light hearted moments that have the large crowd entertained before the short walk towards the main stage for a final time to see if The Streets can still convince us they’re still a force to be reckoned with. 

The moment The Streets’ Mike Skinner arrives and starts having a chat with us all, we realise he’s not changed too much over the years. Now in his mid-forties, he manages to continue each one way conversation throughout the show, whether it’s explaining mid song to the audience how he wants to be on someone’s shoulders by the end, or how three people seem to be getting their attempt at a human pyramid all wrong (“get the smallest on the top you fools….”). Tracks from the twenty year old A Grand Don’t Come For Free sound as great today as when they were first released, and anthems such as Don’t Mug Yourself and Fit but You Know It are received like long lost friends.

Truck Festival has provided us with one of the best festival line-ups we could ask for this summer. We haven’t noticed the security (always a good sign), we have few complaints about the toilet facilities (which is often what people who aren’t here will want to know about) and the food or water queues vary across the site throughout the weekend (why isn’t there ever a queue at the water point over to the left of the main stage?). The queues to get in, especially the re-entry queues, are quite long on arrival, but this is a great festival with a great crowd as excited as us from the time of arrival until early Monday morning when the gruelling journey home begins. 

All four headliners absolutely smash it and we may even have seen two or three bands that might get to headline in three or four years’ time (86 TV’s, The K’s, Fat Dog…..?)
A remarkably brilliant four days.

Recorded highlights can be found here

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Thanks go out to The Zeitgeist PR team and Mandy H for the video highlights

Words by Keith Goldhanger. Photos by Trev Eales (except for The Streets). More writing by Keith on Louder Than War can be found at his author’s archive. You can also find Keith on Facebook and Twitter (@HIDEOUSWHEELINV).