I thought I had the best joke in town when I said that we all wanted to see Jarvis Cocker at the OFF Festival this year, but all we ever got was Puuluup and Bar Italia. My sense of victory, however, did not last. The vocalist of Les Savy Fav beat me, quite comprehensively, with the nipple joke. More on that later.
This year's edition of the legendary Polish festival did not impress with its line-up as much as it did last year, but there is a certain joy to stumbling upon a lesser known artist giving a disturbingly great performance in a small tent at the edge of the festival grounds. There was plenty of it this time - in addition to the usual: rain, smell of weed and the great museums of Katowice. With that said, it was a little heartbreaking to see an older gentleman in front of me in a T-shirt with the full line-up of 2010 on his back. The Flaming Lips, Tindersticks, Art Brut, The Fall, Dinosaur Jr... Oh well.
Day 1
Who knows, though? Perhaps by 2038 English Teacher will have become a legendary act in their own right... Their early performance on Friday, to a scattered but receptive audience, made me reconsider my indifference to their debut album (This Could Be Texas, 2024). I was willing to write them off as yet another British band who wants to be like Black Country, New Road, but they were genuinely good here. Intense one moment ("Nearly Daffodils"), elegant the next ("You Blister My Pain"), they were charming, confident and quite humble. In fact, I have relistened to the album a few times since last Friday, and it just keeps getting better.
Polish hip-hop is not something that could entice me, but from what I could gather, Łona (Adam Bogumił Zieliński) is something of a legend in this country. His lyrics in particular are widely praised. What drew my attention was the fact that he was playing with the jazz musicians Andrzej Konieczny and Kacper Krupa, and jazz rap is something I do appreciate (I still relisten to Blowout Comb once in a while). They were mostly doing last year's Taxi (also available as an instrumental album), and I found the juxtaposition between atmospheric jazz and shouty rapping quite engaging.
Did I say English Teacher were confident, charming and humble? Well, Bar Italia were all that without the 'charming' and the 'humble' bits. A certain arrogance is healthy, no doubt, but then you must have the music to back it up. I know they are getting quite popular, and receiving a lot of coverage and rave reviews (not from Jarvis Cocker, though, who does not rate them), but their noisy indie rock just sounds like a racket and the hooks and the melodies simply drown in the sea of monotony and power chords.
Finally, at midnight (when else?), Imperial Triumphant were playing. This concert was worth attending for two reasons: for the experience and because I never really cared for Future Islands who were at that time playing on the central stage. It was thrilling to see the masked avant-garde metal band from New York performing in the pouring rain of southern Poland. I really enjoyed the jazzy interludes which, nonetheless, always gave way to the lead vocalist growling wickedly into the microphone. It was quite an experience, if nothing else.
Day 2
Best things in life happen on Saturdays. Klawo, a jazz six-piece from Gdańsk, kicked things off on the central stage. They dazzled without being overbearing, which is something I appreciate in jazz. To me, the highlight of the set was the brief, vibraphone-led, sweetly sung "I Feel Something" which exploded quite beautifully towards the end.
A little further away, on the experimental stage, the Estonian duo Puuluup were doing avant-folk using contraptions called talharpa (the sound is not unlike something you could get out of a pleasantly distorted violin). Catchy, whimsical, inessential and with some funny self-deprecating banter between songs.
Mostly, though, I was here for Baxter Dury. Interestingly, the man was so hyped up (cocaine?) that even his band members were a little shocked. Mad dancing was in full display. When I saw him in Berlin last year, he slowly built himself up into this total frenzy of dancing and screaming. This time, he was that way from the start, from the very first chords of "Leak At The Disco". And it was one hell of a show. He played his best songs, including three from his latest album, and he was shouting 'we love you Poland' at the end like he really meant it. A great songwriter and an entertaining performer. All you could ever wish for at the festival.
Did I just say entertaining? Next up was art punk band from Brooklyn called Les Savy Fav, and this was one of the highest points of this year's OFF Festival. Basically, what we got was the vocalist Tim Harrington (who looks a little like the bearded man from a Gentle Giant album cover) stripping to his underpants and walking among the crowd while the band was playing tight, high-octane rock music without paying any attention to whatever was going on around. Harrington himself was a hoot, talking incessantly in between songs; at one point, he brought up the Polish language (sounds like an English person swearing), at another, he asked the audience if they knew the word 'nippy' and then said that actually, it was not nippy but nipply outside (true on both counts) and in fact, at least one of the band members had three nipples. I don't know, the whole show was intoxicating, and filled with great songs that span the band's entire career.
Finally, Saturday was brought to an effective close by Grace Jones. She started with her brilliant take on the Bowie/Iggy Pop classic "Nightclubbing" and then she was by turns salacious, majestic, totally irresistible. She played a half of Nightclubbing LP and other classics ("Private Life" and "My Jamaican Guy" were incredible). The extended ending was her doing a hula hoop for ten minutes while performing "Slave To The Rhythm". A night to remember, obviously.
And another OFF Festival that delivered the goods, even if sometimes against all odds and with the rain pissing down all over the tent camp.
