CHARLBURY RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL The impressive line-up of twelve of Oxfordshire's meatier bands provides a clarion call of the wild to a train-load of OX4's hardier souls, and yet again the vast army of Charlbury's enthusiastic teenagers, and despite the Sun God, after flame-grilling our foreheads and shoulders all week, deciding to rest up behind a duvet of cloud ready for Mondays solstice, the spirit of boozer-friendly Mill Field is alive to the possibility of sporadic hay fights and tussles to launch each other into the adjacent bend of the Evenlode. For this is the best thing to let happen, as huddling in a foetal position in a miscalculated t-shirt is always going to increase the cold overcast air. Music and movement. Whether eating at the barbecue, drinking at the on-site bar, or battling for an old football or frisbee, somehow it livens the spin of each song. Away from the shrapnel catching confines of small venue walls, pallid-skinned and blinking at the daylight, the character of all the bands is exposed to the full, giving an insight to potential as much as quality. And character-building it is, with young local bands Picicata and the debuting Wingnut, along with Five Mile Drive, all products of the Lock-In, with their muscular and curiously brilliant Anglo-American Mega City 4 mashed rock. Great vocals, guitar and drums setting a blistering pace in the afternoon, morphing their own songwriting shapes out of the vast amalgamated bucket of intense end-of-the-century riff and roll. Ivy's Itch arrive like a sherbet dab on the tongue of all this testosterone, and provide us with the first focused band, washing away, like bleach splashed in the eye, any tired conceptions that all girl-dominated bands are L7 or Hole wannabes. Like a sticking plaster torn mercilessly again and again from the hairy chest of rock, they humiliate any call for a sex war and just concentrate on how it feels. Strangely complimenting the Itch's search for uni-rock, the aptly-named Monolithic lace their straight jab to the face power with a tight, elegant, even sensitive punch. The steely set has a wonderful understated quality to it that will continue to pick up an appreciative fanbase every time. Before that and JOR's ace rap-core soundtrack to an imagined Pepsi-Max sports programme, where they demonstrate they've mastered Black Candy's domination of that genre; Seren perched like a nightingale of reflective but emotional song-smithing. Singer Lisa Catling, with her husky catch-in-the-throat style of Beth Orton and Patti Smith, majestically covers Gil Scott Heron's 'Ain't No Such Thing As A Superman' and we are smitten. Whispering Bob provide a pleasant surprise, not least because I've never been one for easing back Woodstock festival-stylee and letting it all hang out (man). But like the Sun, that decides to peek round a chink in the clouds for a moment, their song 'Dream On', shows what a warming, haunting classic it is, and promptly pockets the Best Song Of The Day award, in its sleepy wide-eyed Donovan way. Suriki's softly compelling expansion on the Radiohead 'Airbag' theme makes way for Vancouverites, and Nightshift website-readers Ignition 13, invited half-way round the world to show that things shouldn't get too serious with a Stones-fuelled three-chord punk rock of irreverently knowing lyrics and charm. All of which dovetails neatly into Canola's new found confidence and direction, their mosh and melody taking a knuckleduster approach after the previous day's march against capitalism as 'Copper' reverberates off the sheep in adjoining fields. And finally, headliners Dustball who have moved on from their speedball cut and thrust pop and are now entangling themselves in the greatest, most innovative massmonsterball ever, with no loss of energy, fun or damn fine tunes. Twisting up a mixture of Idlewild and Fugazi, Dustball look in their element with the festival-goers piling down the front for some mosh mayhem or simply to be stunned. One of the best bands of the year. More please. Paul Carrera. Photos by Gerard Wood

CORDUROY The Zodiac It's always the quiet ones. Studious, unassuming to the point of anonymity and totally lost in music, Corduroy do not strike you as the kind of band prone to - whisper it - showmanship. Yet we're barely halfway through the set and the keyboardist is up on his stool playing guitar, the bassist is throwing shapes straight out of Richie Blackmore's guitar-hero handbook, and they're jamming round a riff not a million miles from the blues. It's called 'Play Loud' and it's a bona-fide, horny-handed rock monster. But this is Corduroy surely - jazz, funk, wah-wah and Hammond - the band most likely to get first refusal on soundtrack duties for 'Starsky & Hutch - The Movie'. Doubtless they could still get that gig. New number 'Paddy & Keir' circles a nagging, tick-ticking groove, moody and atmospheric, a danced-up reworking of their trademark sound, verging on Barry Adamson territory. Elsewhere, though, the beat is heavier, an insistent call to the body, firing up the laid-back Steely Dan-isms of 'Thing For Your Love' and dynamiting the cool, soundtrack stylings of the opening instrumental with great echoing rhythms that wouldn't sound out of place on a Leftfield track. Corduroy, always eclectic, are simply adding layers, learning new moves (some, apparently, from Led Zep), and incorporating them. Mostly they're simply letting a new-found fondness for 90s dance music inform their long-standing love affair with retro 70s chic and vice-versa. The punters don't need asking twice. Old Acid Jazz favourite 'Mini' (the nearest they got to a hit single), the urban groove 'Something In My Eye', and new single 'Moshi Moshi', here given an almost big-band treatment, are all greeted with happy, smiley dancefloor action. Okay, so there is a touch of the muso about Corduroy. The introductions are delivered in the style of a public information film, and neither the guitarist nor the bass player will win any dancing contests. But the trick is to get that intimate club feel going, and they're so obviously into what they're doing they carry you along with them. Through old, new, borrowed and, finally, 'Goddamn', a weird and wonderful blend of gospel and thrash, punctuated by chilled Hammond interludes. So, all in all, they probably didn't need to indulge themselves in 'Play Loud"s rock theatrics. Unless of course, corduroy is this season's spandex. Nately Dunbar

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