Indie Field

FOR many music lovers, Oxfordshire’s annual Truck Festival is the highlight of the summer, attracting familiar faces year after year – both punters and players.

And one of those faces is very familiar indeed. One of the festival’s biggest fans also happens to be one of the country’s best-loved frontwomen – a classic beauty whose dreamy voice provided some of the best nuggets of perfect pop in the past two decades.

Sarah Cracknell, the voice of St Etienne is a pop icon. But, despite living a cow’s spit from the festival’s Hill Farm site, she has never actually played it. Until now that is.

In what can quite reasonably be described as a coup of monster truck proportions, festival organisers Robin and Joe Bennett have booked the three-piece to headline their Clash stage on Saturday – topping off a bill curated by the band’s Heavenly Recordings label.

“I’ve been to Truck a couple of times, and to its sister festival Wood. And I love it. It’s a really good festival. This year we’re playing and some really good people are going.”

“It’s a friendly event and quite collaborative; people end up on stage with each other, playing in each other’s bands and forming mini supergroups.”

So can we look forward to a St Etienne collaboration? “There’s a possibility of something happening,” she teases.

By anyone’s standard’s Sarah has had an impressive career. Songs like Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Nothing Can Stop Us, You’re in a Bad Way, Kiss and Make Up, Hug My Soul and He’s on the Phone stand out as gems of indie-pop, while her film score work, more experimental electronica, and collaborations with Kylie, Marc Almond, DJ Paul Van Dyk, French superstar Etienne Daho, and Tim Burgess of The Charlatans, have earned her critical acclaim.

Perhaps ironically, considering the band’s longevity, Sarah was only intended as a temporary singer for St Etienne. The band, formed by former music writers Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, and named after a French football club, was designed as a vehicle for an ever-changing roster of female vocalists – but Cracknell’s sublime delivery on the classic Nothing Can Stop Us assured her a permanent place in the band.

“I joined St Etienne to do their third single, but we got on so well I carried on,” she says. “I did have a bit of grief from the music press suggesting I was just a front person and not anyone creative – but they soon revised their opinions.

“Some people also accused us of being elitist, but we were never like that. We’d just discover new things and want to share them. I love music.”

So what is she most proud of?

She thinks hard, and pauses. “There’s not one specific thing I can think of,” she says. “But I’m proud of the fact we’ve had such a long and creative career and are still relevant.” And what has she most enjoyed? “Everything!” she says cheerily. “I had been in bands when I was young but had given up on the idea. So when I was approached by Bob and Pete to do their song, it was completely unexpected.

“To have had this career in music has been amazing. It has all been a bit of a surprise – the whole 20 years!”

But there were highlights. “Top of the Pops, when it existed, was great. And playing The Word live made it hit home – even though it was terrible; I was on a podium on my own like a rabbit in the headlights. It was all a blur.”

“There haven’t been any low points,” she goes on. “We get on very well as a team and as friends. In fact we’ve always employed our friends to play in the band – so there have been some good parties too.

“I suppose the most bizarre gig, though, was in a big top at Chessington World of Adventures. We were introduced by Judith Chalmers, there were all these clowns, and the music started before we’d even come on. It was awful! Bob managed to avoid it so we had to call a friend over who looked like him.

We called him the Bob-alike! It was the most surreal episode of our career.”

So how rock & roll are St Etienne – who famously demanded venues supply them with Champagne before their shows? Sarah is too clever to give anything away, but adds, “We never got really messy – well… maybe we got messy in the 90s, but not as bad as some.”

And how did she cope with her role as sex symbol to a generation of indie kids? “I never abused my position… much to my regret!” she laughs.

“I had a boyfriend for most of that time and while people fancy you more because you’re in a band, I never took it on board.”

So, with the start of Truck just a day away, does she have any festival survival tips to share?

“You need footwear you can walk in,” she says. “But you still need to be stylish. You also need a way of getting out of the festival if you want to – so you need a friend who will drive and not drink.

“And if you’re going to camp, get something nice and fancy, rather than a sweaty two-man tent.

“Oh! And you need something nice to drink... I’m always up for a good local cider.”

* GET SET TO PARTY - THE TRUCK STOPS HERE!

AS well as boasting one of the best line-ups in recent years, this weekend’s Truck Festival looks set to be a satisfyingly local affair.

In a typically Truck combination of established names and bubbling new talent, the line-up features a bag of local legends and hot new things.

Highlights include North Oxford’s Phil Selway (sticksman with popular beat combo Radiohead), Oxfordshire singer Sarah Cracknell (see above), virtuoso squeezebox-botherer John Spiers (and his band Bellowhead), electro-experimentalists The Rock of Travolta, Robin and Joe Bennett’s Dreaming Spires, the punchy Young Knives (riding high after releasing their best album yet), stunning Long Insiders and upbeat Alphabet Backwards.

Fans of cutting edge fayre, meanwhile, will be in their element with a stage curated by the guys behind the city’s Blessing Force scene – Chad Valley, Jonquil Pet Moon and Trophy Wife.

But the set we are most looking forward to is the traditionally riotous blast by jazz-swing Prohibition-era adrenaline-freaks The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band.

If their set at a jumping Cellar last Friday was anything to go by (see review at oxfordmail.co.uk), this seven-piece brass, keys and string machine are set to steal the show. Don’t miss their gig on Saturday – and alongside Dreaming Spires on Sunday.