Ex Perthite LAURA MILLER takes a wonderful trip through the twee/folk/pop wonderland that was an ATP curated by Belle and Sebastian. Photos by DANI LURIE.

All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP), the festival where the headline band acts as curator, has its origins in the Bowlie Weekender curated by Belle and Sebastian in April 1999 at Camper Sands in Sussex, UK. To wrap up the ten years of ATP celebrations (who needs to be specific about dates?) ATP got Belle and Sebastian back in the driver’s seat for Bowlie II at Butlins Holiday Camp in Minehead, Somerset, UK. When I realised this coincided with my European travel plans, I knew I had to go. An objective review of the weekend is impossible for me, as almost two weeks later I’m still gushing, so what follows is a kind of recollection of my experience of the greatest music festival I have ever known.

Myself and my companions, three ex-pat West Australian ladies living in London and two boys from Leeds found ourselves at Butlins, a “holiday camp for ordinary Britions” where families flock in summer and holiday in the complex. It comes complete with fast food chains, a grocery store, several bars, an indoor pool, a bowling alley, an amusement park, a cinema, and stages for family entertainment. 6000 people were spread out amongst cabins that came equipped with a kitchen and bathroom and a 24hr TV channel programmed by Belle and Sebastian. This is a festival where all those things you hate about festivals (too many people, too many drunk people, toilets not clean/with no toilet paper/with long lines, drinks three times the price of ordinary drinks, sound clashing between the stages, sweat, rain, camping, no good showers etc.) don’t exist! Our cabin was a mere five minute stroll away from a giant pavilion which houses the main stage and a smaller 3000 person capacity venue with tiered seating up the back. Surrounding the pavilion were several smaller stages, and many venues for late night dancing. It was also the world’s most hygienic festival venue, with hand sanitizer pumps at entry and exit of almost every room!

Stuart Murdoch (Belle and Sebastian’s leader and a kind of God to most of us at the festival) was extremely accessible to his disciples. On the Saturday afternoon you could go to a book club which he lead (he e-mailed us his literary selections prior to the festival), on Saturday and Sunday mornings you could play 5 a side soccer against the Belle and Sebastian team (Murdoch was goalie), you could even play scrabble against him (if you managed to beat the other competitors) and verse a Belle and Sebastian team in a music quiz, or watch Belle and Sebastian’s favourite movies in the cinema. On Sunday morning you could listen to Murdoch read from his new book and take questions from the audience, he even gave us two opportunities for meet and greets.

But it was, after all, a music lover’s festival, and no amount of ten pin bowling, and hilarious TV programming could compare to the lineup Belle and Sebastian compiled. They mixed classics of various eras (Teenage Fanclub, Galaxie 500, The Zombies, Vashti Bunyan) with the so-hot-right-nows (Best Coast, Foals, Dirty Projectors, Jenny and Johnny). They didn’t forget their Scottish roots (Camera Obscura, Frightened Rabbit, Sons and Daughters, The 1990s), and threw in a few surprises (Mulatu Astatke’s Etheopian jazz stylings, Them Beatles, Scotland’s “finest” Beatles cover band, comedian Daniel Kitson teaming with musician Gavin Osborn and a much hyped “secret band”).
As at every festival, I couldn’t do it all, so here is an account of how I experienced Bowlie II:

Friday, December 10
Once we finally make it to Butlins, it’s straight to Best Coast! Their low-fi fuzz pop is a nice start for all of us. Despite the snow piled up outside, it gets hot in there, Bethany Cosentino takes off her wool jumper to reveal a flesh covered singlet and black bra, we all swoon, she giggles. We head over to Teenage Fanclub, and I wish I’d listened to Peter Barr’s advice a little more back in the day, because I would probably appreciate them more if I knew their stuff. Back at the centre stage The Zombies, yes THE Zombies are a strange sight, half have clearly had work done and their faces gleam, the other half look as if 7.30pm is way past their bed time. We listen to them tell stories about how Dave Grohl apparently loves them (zzzzz) until they play “She’s Not There” and we can’t really believe it’s live, by the real band. Then we eat some pizza, too much pizza. Time for a “wee nip” of whisky back in the cabin before watching The Go! Team. Goodness they’re fun, but have they really grown enough since Thunder Lightning Strike came out over five years ago? Probably not. We go to watch the Phenomenal Handclap Band (because we really just want to hear that “5, 10, 15, 20” song), but they seem disjointed and unenthused. We decide an early night is required.

Saturday, December 11
We wake up with butterflies in our guts and start the day with Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan. Campbell (who was in Belle and Sebastian from 1996 ‘til 2002 and left the band on acrimonious term) has a sweet breathy voice, while Lanegan (from the Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age) sounds like he drinks 2 bottles of whisky and smokes 50 cigarettes a day. They are a chilling couple. They appear in a haze of smoke in the dark room and do not speak a word to the crowd and rarely play instruments. Their band are also all business, and barely put a foot wrong, but it’s Campbell and Lanegan’s delicately matched voices that give us all goosebumps. Next, Frightened Rabbit wrap us around their little fingers with their likeable tunes and humour, and frontman Scott Hutchison does an impeccable impression of The National’s Matt Berninger. Then it’s time for Dean Wareham to play Galaxie 500, in contrast to his recent visits to Australia with Britta as “Dean and Britta”, today he (and Britta and band) play Galaxie 500 songs and I finally get what all the fuss was about. We then dance a bit to Wild Beasts (previously seen in Australia at the 2010 Laneway Festivals) and our jaws drop at the Dirty Projectors’ vocal brilliance. We go crazy over hearing Neko Case’s amazing voice with the full New Pornographers (despite this being the only time at the festival that the vocal mix was just not right). Then, finally, it was time for all 6000 of us to pile in to the main stage. Belle and Sebastian’s “fake manager” Douglas introduces our heroes, and they have us in the palm of their hands for an impressive, career spanning set that went like this:

I Didn’t See it Coming, I’m a Cuckoo, Step Into My Office Baby, A Century of Fakers, I’m Not Living in the Real World, If You’re Feeling Sinister, I Want The World to Stop, Lord Anthony, Sukie in the Graveyard, Write About Love, Dirty Dream Number Two, The Boy With The Arab Strap, If You Find Yourself Caught In Love, Judy Dream of Horses, (another song I didn’t scribble down). Then the encore; Lazy Line Painter Jane (with original vocalist Monica Queen) and finally, Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying.

They were perfect, but I am far from objective, and I expected nothing less. They are professional performers who switch instruments (and even frontmen, with Murdoch giving Stevie Jackson a go at times) with ease. Murdoch flirts with all of us, saying he’d like to stay up late and have a dance in the small bars with us, and invites a select few on stage to do just that with him (and gives them medals as thanks). Our adoration borders on the side of worship, but they deserve it. In the crowd we chat to strangers about our favourite songs and albums and about why Belle and Sebastian mean so much to us. The responses are varied, but the final views are unanimous, in 2010 Belle and Sebastian are just as relevant and effective as ever, they have achieved the rare feat of growing into themselves and evolving, while still maintaining their original charm.

Jenny and Johnny (Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis and her boyfriend Jonathan Rice) have the tough job of following on from the headliners, the crowd thins out to around 1000 but we lap it up. Lewis and Rice are clearly in love and ooze a cuteness we all crave. They play all of their album, I’m Having Fun Now, and two Jenny Lewis songs from her second solo record Acid Tongue. A few more “nips” later, and the secret band appear, they are Franz Ferdinand, arguably Belle and Sebastian’s home town of Glasgow’s most successful exports of the previous decade. I didn’t think I wanted to see them, but my post Belle and Sebastian buzz continued and myself and my companions danced like lunatics. What followed was some cabin dancing to INXS on portable speakers, some dancing in various bars to great DJs, presumably a few more “nips”, numerous conversations with festival goers from all over the world, and somehow a bed time of 7.30am.

Sunday, December 12
Double shot coffee in hand (thanks Dani) we make it out of bed to listen to Murdoch’s sweet, sweet voice reading from his debut book The Celestial Café which is a selection of his blog posts. He is joined by fake manager Douglas again, and hearing their voices sends me back to ga-ga-land. Afterwards I meet my idol and all I can say is “Betty”, this is quite embarrassing. I hide my red face in the crowd watching Stevie Jackson’s (Belle and Sebastian’s “other songwriter”) solo set. He is charming and hilarious, the songs are simple and sweet. I need a rest. I re-emerge for Sons and Daughters, who’s frontwoman’s sequined shorts remind us all that just because the headline band have played, the festival is far from over, but I’m not quite ready to party again yet. The smooth Ethopian jazz grooves of Mulatu Astatke follow and our sore heads are cured. To close down the main stage, Glasgow’s second finest indie pop band, Camera Obscura deliver a hugely enjoyable set. Something strange has happened, the notoriously grumpy Tracyanne Campbell and co. say they are having a “great time” and seem genuinely delighted to be there. Campbell even pokes fun at herself asking the audience to clap along “so we can look like we’re fun”. They play a selection from their most recent albums My Maudlin Career and Let’s Get Out of This Country as well as a few new tracks and a couple from their early days. The crowd is impressed but restrained, and just as shocked as I at Campbell’s jovial mood. Reunited with the rest of our crew we make it to centre stage for “Scotland’s finest Beatles cover band”, Them Beatles, complete with fake noses and wigs, brilliant accents, and costume changes. We danced and sung and couldn’t have imagined a better night cap to the festival. You could call us geeks, but hey, we were at a Belle and Sebastian festival (A-twee-P anyone?!), it’s not an insult! We are the luckiest twee fans in the world.