Review: Pop All Dayer The Maze Nottingham

 

 

In the mid-1980s, “indie” was a wide ranging definition. Since at the time, the definition just referred to whether a record label was independent of the majors or not, you would often get Kylie at the top of the indie charts as Stock Aitken and Waterman were technically an indie label. Of course this made Kylie’s attempts in the 90s to “go indie” by getting James Dean Bradfield to write her some songs ironic as she used to be indie any way.

These days, indie is used very much to describe a genre of music, and the 10th Annual Nottingham Pop All Dayer at The Maze brings together such a broad church of music it’s a surprise that David Tennant isn’t here investigating a murder. From the jingly jangly pop perfection of Allo Darlin and The Hayman Kuper Band to the shoegaze of Fever Dream. From the garage rock of Wolf Girl to the college rock of Spinning Coin. From the almost punk stylings of Milky Wimpshake to the power pop of Joanna Gruesome. The only real surprise was that none of the bands featured a Rickenbacker guitar – the instrument of choice for that classic jangly indie sound.

Looking around the audience, it’s pretty much as you’d expect – generally a bunch of white folk of a certain age, wearing Adidas Gazelles or Converse (and a couple of pairs of Green Flash) There are a number of tote bags and I even saw a woman in a cagoule. Please note that I write about this with the highest form of affection as most of these descriptions fit me as well. It was great to get a real sense of community, where anybody that you saw in the audience could easily have been in one of the bands. In fact I even saw Pete Dale, the lead singer from Milky Wimpshake cleaning the floor after he spilt a drink. I’ve never witnessed such a polite audience either – rather than people barging past you to get the front/the toilets/the bar, people were actually saying “excuse me” There was such great togetherness that it felt like there could easily have been a raffle at the end of the night.

Apart from the small leak in the roof, it’s an excellent day of music – it’s easy to see how it’s been going for ten years. The bands are uniformly good and are different enough from each other to make the day interesting while all falling under the indie umbrella. For me the highlights were Allo Darlin, playing their last ever gig in Nottingham and Milky Wimpshake (who apparently play at the All Dayer pretty much every year so hopefully this wasn’t their last gig in the city)

By Gav Squires

@GavSquires