Tramlines Festival is 60+ venues, 4 days long, small acts and big acts, all for free! Yes free, several hundred acts for free! Because of this its gained the unofficial title as the ‘Urban Glastonbury’ and it certainly suits the event, covering many musical styles as well as having other acts alongside markets, club nights and pretty much every kind of thing you’d could ever expect and more at Tramlines. With apparently up to 175,000 people coming through Tramlines this year it proves its popularity will not be fading soon.
Friday 22nd July
Run, Walk! – © Joni Andrews
Our first stop this evening is the Kid Acne – Kill Your Darlings exhibition. This is Kid Acne’s very first solo exhibition in his home town, covering his work from the beginning. His work; including copies of musical outputs, to pictures of his graffiti as well as sculptures and comics showed the diversity of Kid Acne’s an artist. With the exhibition drawing a huge queue to be able to look through a catalogue of his previous work as well as new work.
What’s the best way to describe Juffage? He’s certainly a one man band, its experimental, it’s noisy, it’s complex, it’s mad. With an almost violent on stage presence this visual and sonic performance was mesmerising. Not only with the ability to play a bands worth of instruments proficiently he can also play many of them at once, for example playing drums, bass guitar and singing all at once, now that’s something to see.
Post Rock is getting a popular genre in the recent years, and with many bands appearing playing this style in a very short amount of time. With this to stand out takes a lot now. Killington Fall unfortunately, don’t quite do enough to really stand out against so many bands out there at the moment. Whilst they play well and make for a good set to watch so do many of the bands that are in this scene in at the moment. With more experimentation sonically and more exploration into ideas this could really push themselves to someone who do stand out.
Scaggy Garage Punk duo Cuss Words, who are absolutely mad. Setting up in the middle of the venue, and not limiting them to any part of the venue to go and be in led to a crazy set. Finishing by throwing their equipment around and getting the crowd to kick the drum equipment over made sure for a memorable set.
So after Cuss Words, Dignan Porch well, felt overly tame. So what are they? Some form of Space/Indie Rock. Being a fairly chilled out band, and in between high energy bands they felt completely out of place with the other bands playing at the venue.
Run, Walk! are a Noise Rock/Bass/Drums duo are today’s headliner at The West End, taking the style back to mad loud music. With tonnes of energy and lots of presence, including Matt jumping off the speakers it made for a great set for everyone that had stayed around for them. Even running 2 hours didn’t let this ruin the evening!
Twin Atlantic – © Jason Broadhurst
After finally opting to head over to The Leadmill to see Twin Atlantic over Sheffield’s very own Heaven 17 I was shocked to see the length of the queue to get into the venue tonight. With a line of people bending around the corner it must be a tribute to just how far tonights headline band have come.
A local band did the honours of opening up tonights proceedings it wasn’t until London based band Tellison perform that the gig feels fully in swing. Having featured in many recommended artists lists and on the Channel 4 hit TV show The Inbetweeners they are perfect for this venue, gig and setting.
Futures are another act I have heard of but never had the joys of listening to they aren’t quite up to the same standards of previous band Tellison but they do more than enough to keep up the good atmosphere and the anticipation for tonights headline act.
Finally tonights headliners Scottish rock band Twin Atlantic have racked up support slots for acts such as The Subways and pop-punk legends Blink-182 along with the release of their new album ‘Free’ they have matured into a band that only has a bright future ahead of them. Charismatic frontman Sam McTrusty leads by example singing every word to the crowd only to have the crowd sing back twice as loud. With it being 3 years since I last saw them they are easily 5 times the band they were then and if they carry on this road then they will be giving fellow countrymen Biffy Clyro a run for their money. After all it was only 3 years that Biffy Clyro themselves were playing this very venue.
Words and photography: Jason Broadhurst & Joni Andrews
