Crossing Border Festival – The Hague, 20-22 November 2008

I’ve realized something recently. I don’t like choice. Choice can be a real pain. In fact choice is always causing me problems, slowing me down or making me regret decisions I’ve made. Let me give you some examples:

I’ve got eight notepads. Yep, eight. What are they all for? I can’t really decide but they’re all slightly different and I use them all. They’re everywhere – in my bag, on my desk, in my bed. Also, there are four novels, nine albums, two magazines, three newspaper supplements, a literature journal and a printed essay scattered around my computer. Which ones am I going to read/listen to when I finish writing this? Probably none of them, the choice is too much. I think I might have a lie down and think about how my life got this cluttered. Maybe I’ll pop down the road for a paper and spend a good five minutes deciding which sweets to buy. I can’t decide. I’m a mess. And if I didn’t have so much choice it’d probably be okay.

So what in God’s name does the rampant neuroticism of an inept manchild have to do with the fifteen-year-old Crossing Border Festival that recently took place in the Hague with a glittering line up of music and literature events, you ask? Well, perhaps less than I’m making out, but I do have a point to make:

The Crossing Border Festival is brilliant. Really brilliant. As I mentioned, before, each year it takes place in The Hague which is a gorgeous place, half of the pleasure of this event is discovering the little gems of the city, muddling along the pretty narrow streets lined with cafes and boutiques and taking in the sights and the culture. And the festival itself is great – the venues are plush and well-suited, the staff professional and courteous. The only problem is the line-up. With such a luxurious choice of so many things to go and see, by the end of the weekend I think I managed to miss more great stuff than I saw this weekend. I’m not going to tell you what that was until the end, though. I’m not stupid.

Thursday
Anyway, Thursday was a good start . After arriving and taking a look around the town and embarrassing Sonny (my personal photographer and general subordinate) by taking loads of tourist photographs, he and I arrive at the cluster of venues that will house festival in the middle of The Hague’s theatre district.

The area covers a The Royal Theatre and two temporary structures over the road, the National Theatre Gallery on the side-street and a scattering of other nearby buildings. After catching some poetry read entirely in Dutch in the cosy Cuatro tent, a quick check of our schedules reveals that Frightened Rabbit are playing in the intimate Eenhoorn or Hotspot tent next door so we go over. This early on it’s predictably a fairly quiet affair but they play well, representing their stripped down version of mini-epic pop, which is a phrase I just made up. While the room is nowhere near full, everyone seems to be involved and enjoying themselves as we skip out and head to see Ra-Ra Riot on stage one of the National Theatre Gallery.

The main stage is of a decent size and is a fitting venue for the headlining acts, Ra Ra Riot play to a enthusiastic crowd, healthy in numbers. They themselves dance and pull faces as they play, it’s the second to last date of their European tour, but show no signs of fatigue. In fact once they’re fully warmed up they threaten to be fantastic and pull off a very convincing Hounds Of Love cover, helped in no small part by singer Wes Miles’ very solid vocal performance. I’ve been meaning to become a Ra-Ra Riot convert for a while now and it looks like I finally got around to it.

After this we’re forced to leave Louis Theroux’s talk about his book halfway through because we need to get to Death Cab for Cutie. Unfortunately, the room is packed and I am sitting right at the front. I stand up and make a fool of myself, but I’m fairly sure that Louis doesn’t see because I timed it so that he’d be watching the DVD screen behind him. Even so, I avoid approaching him when we see him at the afterparty in case he did catch me walking out and is annoyed. I lost precious seconds in my escape when I couldn’t find the door beside the stage (it was behind a curtain). Sonny later reports that I ‘looked like I was shitting myself’.

Stage one is packed when we get there. Death Cab begin by playing popular songs from Plans and Narrow Stairs but then begin to reach back into some The Photo Album material. We Looked Like Giants is a highlight for me, but Cath is somewhat ruined by intermittent sound. Death Cab for Cutie always seem to have technical problems. Otherwise it’s a fairly standard show from Death Cab, solid but not particularly special. During the performance Ben Gibbard is handed a note from the audience, presumably a request for him to marry someone. He says maybe.

Friday
After we attend a lunch for journalists and writers and enjoy a walk around town, despite the freezing winds, I embarrass Sonny by taking tourist pictures for a second time. I try to tell him that it’s part of the joy of being at such an event, but he seems unconvinced.

That evening we start by dropping in to see Emmy The Great play on the top floor of the Royal Theatre – I know Euan of Young Husband who plays guitar for Emmy, and he’s unaware that I’m in Holland. I can tell from his face that he’s surprised to see me in the audience. He later tells me that ‘I nearly made him fuck up.’ Emmy The Great play to a crowd who have an air of curiosity about them, with one or two seasoned fans looking on with glazed eyes and mouthing all of the words.

At one point Emmy mentions that the band “aren’t always on point when playing in Amsterdam”. It takes her a couple of seconds to realize her mistake at which point she covers her head and shouts ‘SHIT’. She smiles sweetly and offers ‘We’re always on point when we play in The Hague!” the audience laughs and I’m impressed at how she charms her way out of such a faux pas.

Downstairs on stage one, Belgian alternative rock outfit Headphone are playing. While they sound glossy I can’t help but feel that they’re ultimately fairly normal. I don’t think they’ll be Crossing any Borders in a big way any time soon. Ohhhh! Yeah, I said it, someone had to say it.

After Headphone are finished we’re forced to miss Seasick Steve so that we can get into position for Fleet Foxes as people pour into the venue. I’m struck looking around by the age range of the crowd at these gigs at how many young children and older people are there, nodding along with everyone else.

Fleet Foxes take to the stage and I soon find that I have nothing original to say about them. They’re effortlessly brilliant live, a truly unbelievable performance. At one point Robin Pecknold spots the members of Swedish-indie-sister-duo First Aid Kit down in the audience and invites them up to harmonise with him, and while the ladies look a little bit lost it was still a nice moment. Now, I’m tempted to say that Fleet Foxes were my highlight but somehow I don’t feel that would be fair, Fleet Foxes just did what everyone expected them to do. That is turn up, be shit hot, move on.

For some reason we then elected to stay and watch Ben Folds and not Tindersticks or Tom Baxter. The performance can’t help but suffer for being after Fleet Foxes, Ben finishes his second song and then proclaims it to be ‘Bullshit’. I’m assuming he’s referring to it being one of the dummy songs he released online with the same names of the real songs from his new album. We leave soon after.

Later on one Chris Killen, author of The Bird Room and one of the Crossing Border chronicles writers informs me that there was a little venue playing awesome weird post-rock music the whole night just down the road. I missed it all. I’m returned to my point about this festival cramming just a little bit too much good stuff in, in too little time. Perhaps a trite and unreasonable complaint at this point, but I’m standing by it.

I stay at the afterparty until gone 3am.

Saturday
After the late finish I elect to spend most of the day napping, watching David Attenborough shows and eating complimentary hotel fruit. Feeling refreshed and ready for another epic night I head with Sonny to the see the Willard Grant Conspiracy in the extravagant Royal Room in the Royal Theatre. The room is stunning, with it’s beautiful cavernous painted ceiling and enormous stage, indeed Robert Fisher jokes that he could’ve taken another thirty band members with him, I sit and absorb the soft country vibes for as long as I can bear to sit still, but I feel like I need to get moving tonight and so we head back to the Hot Spot to see Appie Kim.

A blonde Natasha Van Wardeenburg postures and rocks ayrthmicaly as she and drummer Marcel Duin crash through her lo-fi tumbledown alternative rock solo set, although I feel that with some more enthusiasm from the audience the performance might have been vitalized with some desperately needed energy and the pair could really have shone. Unfortunately, however, things seemed rather flat, although circumstances may have conspired against Appie Kim in this case.

We only have time for a brief visit to The Cave Singers on stage one if we’re to catch all of the bands we intend to, and while for me their summery folk brings back memories of this years rainy festivals it does little to defrost the slightly lacklustre start to the evening.

Upstairs, Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed and the True Loves fill the room in stage two and by the time I’ve squeezed myself in there is a queue heading all the way down the stairs. Eli vigorously belts out bluesy funk, squawking and dancing, his band are energetic and lively and the crowd love it. I want to stay and watch more but it’s Scottish night over in the Paradise Room in the Royal Theatre.

When we get there The Phantom Band are playing a particularly pleasing kind of inventive post-indie, with repetitive instrumental and semi-improvised set-pieces. It has to be said they are at their best when they’re doing this, as the other half of their more traditional material sounds like a different (albeit similar) but slightly inferior band. Certainly they’ve played a large part in helping to pick this night up and I’m grateful to them as we head back to stage one to watch Chris Killen read from the first chapter of his novel The Bird Room, out on Canongate in January. It’s very funny, awkward and intelligently observed and we stay put as Liam Finn prepares to take the stage, fully intending to watch part of his set and then move upstairs to watch Micah P Hinson.

I can only apologise to Micah P Hinson. Halfway through Liam Finn ‘s set someone comes downstairs to tell me that Micah is playing really well, but I’m glued to watching Liam Finn experiment with a prototype stringed one note instrument that his friend made. He hits and slides along the strings with a drumstick, loops the resulting riff and then drums his heart out, making a sound that I can only describe, as I did to the person next to me at the time as “the bollocks”. It’s the first time he’s used the instrument. As he finishes a call floats from the rear of the room: “You’ve done that before!”

“I haven’t but I’ll do it again!” he replies, before returning to his drum kit.
For me this performance is the highlight of the festival, Finn’s material really comes alive onstage and his performance is passionate, involved. The music is attractively shambolic at times, the improvisation engrossing, the clever melodies are gratifying and the delivery by both himself and his auto-harp wielding, vocal harmonizing partner Eliza Jane Barnes, flawless.

After Liam Finn finishes and the whole of Holland piles into the room to watch The Black Keys. There are a couple of amusing moments during the first couple of songs with Dan Auerbach mentioning that he gets an electric shock every time he approaches the microphone and a roadie eventually walking onstage to tell him he can’t do anything for him.

The Black Keys play hard and loud, Auerbach stomps and riffs and people at the front start to go a little bit mental. For a two-piece this band make quite a racket. The performance is strong, energetic. They build to furious climaxes and hold the audience right with them, Patrick Carney drums like he is trying to pound a hole in the universe. I can hear people in the crowd talking about how good they think The Black Keys are. I’m getting exhausted just watching them. It’s a fine way to end the festival.

The next 24 hours are spent as follows: Attending another afterparty, drinking gin and tonics, sharing cigarettes with bouncers, throwing snowballs made of hailstones, talking drunkenly to The Phantom Band, wandering the city asking locals for somewhere to buy food, raiding a minibar, flying home and nearly being sick on the Piccadilly line. None of them were spent sleeping,

So there it is. If you’re looking for news on Dead Stereo, Cass McCombs, Caroline Chocolate Drops, Rupert Thomson, Broken Records, Julian Velard, Jan Rot, Kathleen Edwards, the second half of Louis Theroux’s talk, Shearwater, The Swell Season, Tom Baxter, Tindersticks, Kristin Hersh, Women, The Moi Non Plus, The Truth Machine, Micah P Hinson, Julie Mittens, Yuri Landman or Seasick Steve then I’m sorry, I didn’t watch them because there was too much choice. But I feel obliged to tell you that they were there and I’ve been reliably informed they were all really, really good. Anyway, you should go next year and see for yourself. That’s all you really wanted to know, wasn’t it?

For a complete slideshow of all the photographs from the weekend, click here.

Find the full line up, daily blogs from the festivals writers and book next years tickets (soon) at the Crossing Border Festival website.