Thanks for coming - see you next year!

Camera Obscura playing the Outdoor Stage (photo: acb)

Whew! What a weekend! Can you believe it's over? It seems like just a few minutes ago that we were packing our sunglasses and pac-a-macs, readying ourselves to enjoy all our favourite indiepop amongst the beautiful, rolling hills of Derbyshire.

Like you, we're totally overcome with that magical combination of exhaustion and happiness, but we've already been looking through the photographs, reviews and videos that you've all been kindly posting up!

We'll be publishing a selection of reviews over the forthcoming week, so do keep checking out the blog! In the meantime, if you'd like to share your thoughts and memories, why not visit the Anorak forum and tell everyone about your personal highlights? We'll also be posting up some of our favourite Indietracks photos, so do please upload them to our Indietracks Flickr group if you can!

Before we go, we just wanted to say a massive "thank you" again to Stuart for organising such an amazing event, all the bands, DJs and workshop leaders, the Midland Railway staff, the volunteer stewards and, most of all, YOU for helping to make it such a fantastic weekend.

Roll on next July - we already can't wait to do it all again next year!

Indietracks interview # 16: Camera Obscura

Today’s the first day of July, which means that the festival is taking place this month! It seems like forever ago when we announced back in February that Camera Obscura would be one of this year’s headliners, so it’s brilliant that we only have to wait another few more weeks to see them play as the sun sets on the Saturday night.

Camera Obscura have become such household names that on a recent trip to the US, we found a feature on them in every newspaper we looked at (here's Tracyanne on the cover of the Boston Metro!). The band were formed in 1996 by Tracyanne Campbell, John Henderson, and Gavin Dunbar, and have since received high acclaim for their sophisticated, melancholic and uplifting pop songs. They released their debut album Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi in 2001, and a second album, Underachievers Please Try Harder, on Elefant Records the following year.

In 2006, the band released Let’s Get out of This Country, produced by Jari Haapalainen and again released on Elefant Records. The album appeared high up in many critical lists of the ‘best albums of 2006’ and featured the classic floor-filling pop anthem Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken. In February 2009, it was announced that Camera Obscura had signed to the legendary indie label 4AD, who released their fourth album, called My Maudlin Career, in April 2009.

Gavin Dunbar, the band’s bassist (and guest DJ at a 2007 Indietracks Christmas event!), joins us for today’s interview.

Hi Gavin, Elefant Records are curating a stage at this year's festival. What was it like being part of the Elefant family?
We felt very lucky when we signed to Elefant, they were big fans of our first record, having licensed it for Spain, and welcomed us into the label. They became good friends of ours. It is inspiring to see people so genuinely enthusiastic about music and the bands they release records by. They put in so much effort to what they do, and you can tell that from the artwork of the releases and packaging to they way they keep in touch with the fans of the label. It really is like a family there.

How did you approach the recording of the new album, following the success of Let's Get Out Of This Country?
We knew we'd made a substantial jump forward with Let's Get Out Of This Country, being the first time we'd made a whole album with a producer, and feeling that we'd progressed a fair bit both as a band and as players. The basic approach was the same as it usually is, getting a collection of songs we're happy with together and rehearsing them up to the point where we feel ready to go into a studio. We knew we wanted to work with Jari the producer again, partly because we felt he brought out the best in us, and partly because we knew he wouldn't want to just make another record the same as the last. We worked away on the songs in Glasgow and then Jari came over a few times for pre-production work in rehearsals, and suggested a few things, then it was off to Sweden to record over a fairly intense two week period. We've always basically recorded live, and then added a few overdubs if they were required, so we're quite used to going in and getting the basic tracks down as live takes, including the vocals. It seems the best way to work for us, you can tell fairly quickly when you get a take with the best feel for the song.

You're very active Tweeters! Has the relationship between the band and its fans changed as a result?
I think we've always been quite good at trying to keep in touch with the folk who come and see us or buy the records. I guess as ways to keep fans up to date with what you're up to evolve, it’s nice to be on top of them. We do like to have active myspace, facebook and twitter things going on as well as the band website. And for those people not keen on technology, we still keep the snail mail PO Box alive so folk can correspond to us in the old fashioned way.

We hear the band have recently given up their jobs to pursue the band full-time. How easy has it been to adapt to being a full-time band?
It’s been great for us. We've been through long period of basically being full-time, but also trying to juggle full and part-time jobs on top of the band, that’s the hard thing. Being full-time with the band and not having to fit in another job on top is fantastic. We actually get to sleep sometimes now.

What music are you enjoying at the moment?
The new M Ward album has been enjoyed by the band. We're loving playing with Agent Ribbons who have been supporting us in the States this tour, we'd highly recommend checking them out, and we're looking forward to playing with Anni Rossi on the second leg of the trip, we really enjoyed playing with her recently in New York.

What attracted the band to play the Indietracks festival?
It’s such a great grassroots festival, organized by people who have a real love of the bands they ask to play, and the people that go to the festival are real music fans, the atmosphere is relaxed and friendly plus you get a go on the steam trains. Who wouldn't want to play. We were disappointed not to have been able to play the last couple of years, but band weddings and pre-booked Spanish festivals meant we weren't able to. I did come down to DJ at the Christmas event in 2007, which was great fun. We're really looking forward to getting down and having a hang about.

Do you approach playing at festivals in a different way to other gigs?
I guess you have to a wee bit. I think we've got better at festival sets over the past couple of years, you don't want it to be all upbeat fast pop songs, you like a bit of variety, but it makes sense at festivals to build a set round the songs you know the people who like you really want to hear, and people who maybe don't know are going to enjoy hearing for the first time.

What's the most unusual place you've played a gig in the past?
It’s got to be the venue we played in Mexico City in 2007, the Polyforum. We played inside the world's largest mural, which was pretty amazing as a backdrop all round us, and we hadn't really known what to expect when we arrived, and the place was rammed to the rafters, so a fantastic night was had by all.

Thanks Gavin – look forward to seeing you at the festival!

Teenage Fanclub announced as Sunday headliner!

Scottish power-popsters Teenage Fanclub have been confirmed as the Sunday headline band for this year’s Indietracks Festival. The much-loved band, known for their chiming Byrds-esque guitars and West Coast harmony vocals, will play the Outdoor (Elefant) Stage at Indietracks.

More than 50 bands are playing this year’s Indietracks Festival, including Camera Obscura, Rose Elinor Dougall, Emmy the Great and Au Revoir Simone. Other bands playing include BMX Bandits, Lucky Soul, Frank and Walters, Help Stamp Out Loneliness, Butcher Boy and Manhattan Love Suicides.

Teenage Fanclub, hailing from Belshill near Glasgow, formed in 1989. They are most renowned for their critically and commercially successful albums Bandwagonesque, Songs from Northern Britain and Grand Prix, and are currently working on their ninth studio album.

This year, Indietracks is teaming up with legendary Elefant Records as part of the indiepop label’s 20th anniversary celebrations. The Madrid-based label, which was launched by Luis Calvo in 1989, has picked a number of bands to play on a special Elefant stage over the course of the weekend.

This is the third ever Indietracks festival, which is being held at the Midland Railway in Ripley, in the heart of the Derbyshire countryside. The site houses a whole range of lovingly restored steam diesels and locomotives. Festival goers are allowed to have unlimited rides on the steam railway over the weekend and full access to other railway attractions including a farm and museum.

Weekend tickets cost £55, day tickets cost £30 and both are available to buy from Ticketweb or by calling the railway direct on 01773 747 674.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Paul Richards’ top five bands to see at Indietracks

This morning we woke up to find that Indietracks has been selected as one of the Sunday Times’ 12 hottest cool festivals of 2009. How cool (and hot!) is that!?

Today we’re delighted to be joined by this year’s first special guest contributor to the blog. Paul Richards writes for indie-mp3, DJs at Lostmusic events and runs the 'Indie pop' Facebook group, putting out mixtapes and writing about indie pop old and new. He’s selected his five must-see bands from the line-up announced so far. Take it away Paul...

Butcher Boy

Without doubt the brightest spark in the British indie pop music scene, Glasgow’s Butcher Boy play Indietracks in support of their stunning second LP, React or Die. Constructing the most heartbreakingly beautiful pop songs you’ll hear all year with such subtlety and elegance, HDIF’s flagship band are fronted by the National Pop League’s John Blain Hunt. They released their debut Profit In Your Poetry in 2007, with standout tracks such as ‘Girls Make Me Sick’ and ‘There Is No-one Who Can Tell You Where You’ve Been’ garnering positive reviews with The Guardian calling it a ‘promising debut’ whilst likening them to The Smiths and Lloyd Cole.
Their recent mini-tour saw them play a spectacular show at the Brixton Jamm in March whilst they play later this month at The Luminaire with support from fellow labelmates Cats on Fire and Pocketbooks. React or Die features ‘Carve A Pattern’ (Record of the Week on The Radcliffe and Maconie Show on Radio 2), new single ‘A Better Ghost’ and ‘This Kiss Will Marry Us’ with The Times giving the album 5/5 let’s hope they go on to bigger and better things. Just make sure you don’t miss them.

Camera Obscura

Headlining the Outdoor Stage on Saturday will be Scottish indie poppers Camera Obscura. Since their charmingly understated debut album Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi in 2001, they have released Underachievers Please Try Harder in 2004 and Let’s Get Out of This Country which followed two years later to critical acclaim. The latter includes the dance floor hit ‘Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken’ and the enchantingly sweeping ‘Come Back Margaret’. One of the best songstresses in the business, Tracyanne Campbell’s vocals are warm, gentle and above all achingly tender. That’s not to say they can’t have fun too. Check out ‘Anti-Western’ from their debut, ‘Number One Son’ and ‘Let Me Go Home’ from Underachievers Please Try Harder. Recent radio sessions on Radio 2 and 6 Music has seen them promote new material from the forthcoming album My Maudlin Career, released on the 4AD label. The LP features the single ‘French Navy’, arguably up there with ‘Lloyd…’ as their best song, along with other highlights ‘Swans’ and ‘James’. They’ll be playing a number of European and North American dates prior to Indietracks.

Bonne Idée

Formed in a Gothenburg basement in 2006, Bonne Idée are an unsigned band with a modest but promising output. They haven’t released an EP or album yet, whilst there are only a few songs on their MySpace page which are sung in Swedish and English. ‘Glassbåten’, which can be found on the Birdsongs, Beesongs... Volume A compilation, has an intro that sounds like it could have been lifted straight from Nico’s Chelsea Girl LP as the song has a wonderful melody and delightful accordion. ‘It Will Be Back’, their strongest song, soars with a delightful chorus sung in French complete with ‘ba-ba-ba-ba’s’ bouncing along until the songs end. They are playing a handful of London dates before Indietracks at the Goonite Club, Fortuna Pop and Twee as F***.

The Manhattan Love Suicides

Leeds quartet The Manhattan Love Suicides play fuzzy noisy pop reminiscent of the C86 scene. They cite Sonic Youth, The Velvet Underground, My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain as influences some of which you can hear in their own sound. Personally I can hear The Shop Assistants and a touch of The Primitives too. Their self-titled debut album was released in late 2006 complete with a cover of the Beat Happening classic ‘Indian Summer’. With few of their songs ticking over the three and a half minute mark, tracks such as ‘Things You’ve Never Done’ and ‘Suzy Jones’ are choice picks for first time listeners. Singer Caroline has a fragile yet confident voice whilst musically expect to hear lots of feedback. They released a compilation of singles, EPs, radio sessions and four new recordings entitled Burnt Out Landscapes on their own Squirrel label last year and comes highly recommend.

The School

The School play infectious indie pop with a strong 60s girl group sound. Like Lucky Soul, they sound like they could have been produced by Phil Spector in his heyday, in fact their debut single ‘All I Wanna Do’ has THAT drumbeat intro. There’s a hint of Tracyanne Campbell’s forlorn vocals although they are possibly more indebted to The Crystals and The Marvelettes.
Their debut Let It Slip EP came out last year on Elefant Records. The titled track jangles along with airy vocals of pure innocence whilst there are nice touches of trumpet just at the right moments. ‘Shoulder’ is a great slice of swaying pop with stomping drums much in keeping with their girl group sound. Definitely worth checking out when the sun shines bright.

Thanks Paul! If you’re nodding sagely in agreement or tearing your hair out in bewilderment at Paul’s choices, we’d love to hear from you. We’re encouraging lots of people to write pieces for this blog, and it’s a great opportunity to get your thoughts heard by more people than you possibly expect! Please get in touch at indietrackspress@gmail.com if you have an idea for a blog piece.