Tim Hughes tries to catch as many new names and legends at the weekend's Truck Festival

  • Truck Festival
  • Hill Farm, Steventon
  • July 17-18

IT was one of those festival moments that send a tingle down the spine...

Peter Hook, the co-founder of Joy Division and New Order is on stage bashing out an all-killer set of the bands’ greatest tunes. She’s Lost Control, Atmosphere, Bizarre Love Triangle, True Faith, Love Will Tear Us Apart – and an air-punching Blue Monday...

This is stadium-filling stuff, as evidenced by the sea of grins and raised arms. Incredible, then that it should all be taking place in a small marquee at an equally intimate festival. It also highlights how important Truck festival has become since it started life, as a rowdy birthday party for co-founder Robin Bennett back in 1998.

Over the intervening years, Truck has grown in size and stature, attracting some unfeasibly big bands to diminutive Steventon – a village who’s only other rock credential is as the home of presenter ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris.

A change of management, with the team from Y Not now running the show, has done nothing to change the relaxed vibe and stellar line-up; indeed a determination to grow the festival - this year’s welcomed a record 6,000 people – has meant more money to spend on ever bigger bands.

So, while ‘Hooky’ delighted fans in the Market Stage (technically the third stage) on Saturday evening, giants Basement Jaxx wound up the crowd on the main Truck stage, and Pulled Apart By Horses finished off a powerful set in the Barn.

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The night before, the site was rocked by a crowd-pleasing set of bass-heavy rave with a retro twist by Clean Bandit, the cool and slick minimal hip-hop artist Ghostpoet, and flavour of the month, indie-rockers Augustines. There was more rocking, and eardrum-ringing from Don Broco and Honeyblood and one of our new favourite bands Nothing But Thieves, who sound like they’ve been staying up all night listening to Radiohead, Muse, Led Zepp and Jeff Buckley – which is obviously no bad thing.

But it was Tim Burgess’s Charlatans who owned the first day of Trucking, with gems from their new, 12th, album Modern Nature, and classics North Country Boy, One To Another, anthem The Only One I Know and encore Sproston Green, getting the crowd in a sweat.

There was more blending of rock and dance on Saturday. Public Service Broadcasting combined the best of both with tight electro fused with scorching guitar - which on Signal 30 and Spitfire, had the crowd in a frenzy of arms and crowd-surfing.

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They were joined by a choreographed two-man brass section for Gagarin and the haunting, and suitably epic, climax, Everest.

There was more of the same for psychedelic rockers Temples. But it was Basement Jaxx who stole the show with a set that veered between house, soul, burlesque and sophisticated dance – from opener Good Luck, through Red Alert and Romeo... before showering the crowd with confetti for a blockbusting Where’s Your Head At.

That would’ve been a great place to leave it – but this is Truck, and no Truck is complete without a final word from the aforementioned birthday boy, Robin Bennett, his brother Joe and their band The Dreaming Spires – joined for a swaggering finale on the Veterans and Virgins stage by a selection of Truck faces who had been playing (as veterans , obviously) throughout the day.

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“You know we've got soul,” sang Robin, as the crowd picked up and repeated the mantra and returned it – performers and audience alike singing their lungs out and with arms in the air.

This is what festival-going is all about, and thank Truck for another great year - tingles and all.

Tim Hughes

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