Predictably, perhaps, the afternoon’s biggest draw – so far, at least – is for Simon Armitage. At 2pm, the Poetry Tent is rammed, with the crowd extending about 20 people deep around the perimeter. One curious passer-by asks my neighbour who’s on.
“Simon Armitage,” says the guy standing next to me.
“Sorry,” says the passer-by, “I don’t know who he is.”
“He’s only the most important poet since Andrew Motion.”
“You’ve lost me. Who’s Andrew Motion?”
“Obviously,” comes the withering reply, “you never studied GSCE English at the start of the Noughties…”
When I was grappling with the Dirty Projectors’ “Bitte Orca” a while back, I came to the fairly trite conclusion that I liked the band best when Angel Deradoorian or Amber Coffman took the lead, rather than David Longstreth.
The first Monday morning of spring seems a good time to finally tackle the new Grizzly Bear album, “Veckatimest”, which I know I’ve been promising for a while. Without getting into some blog hype thing in the tradition of the Animal Collective (it was Grizzly Bear who reputedly leaked a couple of AC tracks and caused a lot of the fuss, if I remember right), “Veckatimest” is looking from here like the best album of this bit of 2009, at the very least.
