Deadletter: The Market Stage, Truck Festival

Oh when there's no future
 How can there be sin
 We're the flowers
 In the dustbin
 We're the poison
 In your human machine
 We're the future
 Your future

 London’s Deadletter played the Market Stage of Truck Festival as part of So Young Magazine’s line-up and we were there to check them out.

Atrocious weather dominated proceedings on Saturday. Fields became quagmires, tent entrances like waterfalls, and knee-deep puddles at the urinals were not enough to dampen the spirit of Deadletter or their huge crowd. Their brand of funked-up post-punk psyche blasted out of the traps with ‘The Snitching Hour’. The ‘Pretty Green’-esque bassline and Ian Dury ramshackle party sonic took the good work of Warmduscher in 2022 to another level. The joyous sax coupled with Zac Lawrence’s irrepressible energy had a sodden tent grooving.

Poppy Richler’s sax style lent the set a unique insight into just how fucked the UK is. In the bleaker moments, she lit up the dysfunctional incompetence of the Tories and, on ‘Madge’s Declaration’ and ‘Binge’, she tapped into the audacity of this generation to have a good time in spite of no future.

‘Degenerate Inanimate’ combined the chaotic carnival of The Happy Mondays peak (‘Bummed’) with Lawrence’s poetic mesh of Carl Barat, Alan Donohoe (The Rakes), and Ian Curtis vocal. Together, they created something that went beyond the outsider tag of post-punk. Visions of sun-drenched technicolour main stages emerged. Diehards at the front hanging off every spoken word and families dancing at the back to the jubilant ‘oh ohhhhs’. Not since Pulp, Suede, and Sleeper stormed the charts have misfits produced alternative art this all-encompassing.

As they decree “there’s something in the air, there's a storm coming” only one thought lingers, Deadletter. Their time is coming, sooner rather than later preferably.

Pynch: The Market Stage, Truck Festival

Opening the Market Stage early at 11:30 to a very damp Truck Festival were London four-piece Pynch. Having released their debut album ‘Howling At Concrete Moon’ via Chillburn Records back in April, Pynch were looking to kickstart So Young magazines hosting with a bang.

Their set was awash with motoric styles. From Kraftwerk to Jonathan Richman, their tales of being left behind in the modern world eased a sodden crowd into Saturday’s bleak skies. ‘Karaoke’ twisted and turned effortlessly, withstanding its lyrical isolation. They trod a similar path on the anti-greed polemic of ‘London’. Harsher synths and lyrics of despair combined with the pop instincts of Golden Silvers on this satirical reflection of modern city life.

Perhaps the weekend's crowning moment came via their set closer ‘Somebody Else’. Dan Le Sac vs Scroobious Pip beats injected vibrancy and technicolour into their motoric guitars which set about a groove in the huge tent. It was though, through Spencer Enock’s lyrics and guitars that the magic took place.  For so long, an unwritten social contract was present for younger generations. Toil and struggle early on, reap the rewards later. In recent times, no such carrot has been dangled. In fact, a closed sign is almost permanently on display. Mortgages, record deals, travelling, you name it, the boomers had it and took it back. Pynch, like no other, got this across via their melancholic poetry this past Saturday. No matter how hard you try or even succeed, life is just about survival at present (“'Cause this is not what I'm supposed to do / And no one cares where I went to school / It doesn't matter how you get paid / As long as you can make it through the days”). Yet, the Market Stage filled up, it danced, it through fists aloft. It was a tear-inducing moment. The sheer defiance of it all. To be kicked when you when you’re down and still find beauty in the world, in people, and in music, generated enough energy to solve any crisis.

Pynch professed “I wanna die doing what I love / I wanna feel like I'm doing enough” last Saturday. They needn’t worry, they have and they will. A genuine triumphant of the human spirit!