Left of the Dial is a young and agile showcase festival leaning on the side of fun

It’s just a pleasant place to spend a few days in October, and if you’re a fan of new, alternative music, it’s even better. Since 2018, Left of the Dial has continued to fill the city with more bands and more punters, and this year saw some 130 acts play two or three times in venues, churches, boats, train stations and anywhere you can fit a three-piece band from London.

The showcase festival is named after the 1985 punky power-pop song by The Replacements – a fairly useful starting point to understand Left of the Dial’s curation, which reflects today’s increasingly eclectic styles of alternative rock, with a bit of a post-punk edge. At the opening ceremony, where blue cocktails are handed out for free and a stream of banners are dropped in place of an actual welcome speech, the track is played consecutively on two different organs, while Bristol’s Saloon Dion wait somewhat awkwardly on stage. The joke is on them: we’re handed envelopes explaining that the organist has also learnt their song ‘I Don’t Feel’ and that he’s about to play it. It takes a minute for the band to notice, and they don’t really pick up on the cue to play along.

But this early laugh is indicative of the festival’s tongue-in-cheek style, from their dry social media posts to the blow-up air dancers flapping about outside venues signalling there’s music playing inside. “We’re never going to make any money off the festival,” says founder and director Minke Weeda, “so we might as well just do what we think is fun. We really want to take care of the artists and our ticket holders the best way we can, but we don’t care what the rest of the world thinks.”

There will always be an industry side to new music or showcase festivals like these – who wouldn’t want a prospective festival booker or agent to see their set? There is even a compact conference on Saturday including talks from Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey and Bands Boycott Barclays. But a lot of the reason Left of the Dial is quite giddy is that it feels more hidden or ostensibly less important than just watching a load of bands.

There are a lot of them to get through, after all, and it speaks volumes to the UK’s scene that so many of them here are British. Cambridge’s Ugly are undoubtedly one of the weekend’s best, a band that are full of utterly bizarre and moreish bangers. Their sound has the frenzy of a folky Mars Volta, the surging falsetto harmonies of Everything Everything and, at times, the creepy melodic jerks of Adult Jazz. But either in De Doelen or the majestic Paradijskerk church, their sound is beguiling and entirely their own – from “Sha”, which drifts dreamily from creaky layers to a folk-rock anthem built on the buddhist chant “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo”, to the currently unreleased “Wasteland”, in which vocalists Jasmine Miller-Sauchella and Tom Lane’s harmonies flit between a bouncy hip-hop rhythm and mysterious waaahs. It’s a trip.

Church performances, though not as acoustically crisp, prove to be some of the weekend’s most enjoyable performances – not to mention an excuse to sit down for 40 minutes. Having recently supported Slowdive on their UK tour, Rebecca Cockram and Ben Easton’s Deary are the best suited for this kind of space with their washed out vocals and smooth-edged guitars.

Man/Woman/Chainsaw are another band proving that UK post-punk is finally moving past sprechgesang, repetitive scratchy riffs and ill-fitting blazers (well, mostly). At a Thursday showing at Rotown, a hub of sorts at Left of the Dial, the London six-piece alternate between chunky, rapid jams and ornate, jazzy post-rock. Another eclectic Londoner, Sam Akpro, helps to clean the palate of all this noise while also keeping a bassy clout on tracks like ‘Trace’ and ‘Disposition’.

Presenting the weirder edges of what Blighty has to offer, though, are Mermaid Chunky. The sound of the recorder is surely ingrained in all of us as a jarring sensation that nevertheless represents childhood and innocence. It’s in this same realm that the puckish Freya Tate and Moina Moin thrive. I’ve seen Mermaid Chunky three times this year and each time started off with mild annoyance before being bewitched and vibing out to the hypnotising array of pipes, woodwinds and other off-beat sounds that convinced James Murphy to sign them in the first place. They were at home at Green Man and End of the Road festivals, but for some reason, perhaps their avatar-ish appearance, it also seems to work in front of House of the Dead, Time Crisis 2 and the other neon-lit games of 160K Arcade.

Of course it’s not just the Brits who impress here, though. The American contingent feels particularly strong and adds a little something different. On record, the DIY, “van-lifeing” group Twen sound like a classic folk rock band with a modern, shoegaze-y glaze, but aboard a moving boat with an open bar on Friday afternoon, there’s an enjoyable pop-punk bounce to them thanks to Jane Fitzimmons syrupy vocals, a locked-in rhythm section and, of course, the rocking waves of the Nieuwe Maas beneath us.

New York’s Wild Pink is one of the best currently leading new paths of heartland rock in the wake of The War on Drugs’ major popularity, and though belters like “Sprinter Brain” don’t shy away from this influence, there are some surprisingly chuggy and thrashing sections of the set that give John Ross and his band an edge.

It would, given that we’re in The Netherlands, be cool to discover a few more Dutch artists on the line up, with Cloud Cafe doing most of the heavy lifting with their melodic Americana. Fellow Amsterdammers Naive Set have plenty of woozy, rocking numbers, but lack a bit of oomph at 10 pm on Saturday.

But if this is all sounding a bit Cool Britannia, bienvenue En Attendant Ana. The Parisians have, for a while now, earnt comparisons to Electrelane and Stereolab for their spacious, loungey instrumentation, motorik beats and the Anglo-Frenchness of the latter. Their Friday set at Roodkapje – a cool, multi-space venue with friendly staff serving the smallest beers you’ve ever seen – takes a few by surprise, and I recognise several return customers the following evening in the sparkling Salsability next door.

The vibe for their second showing is one of the best of the whole weekend, and you can see it on the band’s faces as they power through gorgeously psychedelic pop with rhythmic strumming and coyly proud smiles. Songs such as “Wonder” from 2023’s Principia are what ultimately got them signed to Sub Pop earlier this year, but new tracks “Magical Lies” and “Teeny Tiny Ache” have helped complete a lustrous setlist that makes them a must-see in the new year. Alongside acts like Friedberg and AK/DK, all of whom have in some iteration been making music together for the best part of a decade, their presence indicates that though the uplift isn’t always immediate, the demand will renew and grow as long as the music stays interesting.

Though a handful of performances over the three days feel a little green – many of these bands are still honing their craft – the quality does seem disproportionately good. What’s the approach to booking Left of the Dial? “There isn’t really a singular method to it,” says Weeda. “Last year we started the application portal on the website, there are many acts that are now pro-actively putting themselves forward. Another part of it has always been acts getting enthusiastic and reaching out to the festival through their peers that played passed editions.

“We’ve also become more visible to the international music industry so there’s loads on offer through those channels now compared to a few years back. Luckily, I still sometimes get to spend hours just browsing through acts that are supporting the acts that we enjoyed in the past or reaching out. We’ve met loads of good folks over the years championing the festival who I often chat to about what’s happening in their neck of the woods, which also helps with staying ahead of the curve, I guess. It’s quite nice to have several different channels that also often overlap.”

With everyone playing several times across the weekend, bands can relax a little, not have to worry about getting in the van for a few days and enjoy finding some new music for themselves. For now at least, Left of the Dial is a European showcase festival without the biz-baggage and fatigue of many of its peers, in turn affording them a refreshed sense of discovery and genuine fun.