Don't Carry the Weight of the World on Your Shoulders

We’ve had some sunshine these last few days and it tends to remind you that, sometimes, there really is a summer out there – as opposed to the soggy mess that passed for summer last year.

One of my abiding memories of last year (apart from the site of bowsers being delivered to the bottom of my street) was that of struggling through deep river beds of thick mud at Green Man, and explaining to my son, who was at his first festival, that we’d just been a bit unlucky, and that if he could just imagine how the whole site could have been in glorious sunshine then maybe he’d feel a bit better about the whole experience.

Anyway, I’m still um-ing and ah-ing about Green Man this year. Officially, I’ve decided I won’t be going, but it only took a casual mention from said son to leave me all turned round about it again. I dunno…

I was reminded, though, of one set I caught at last year’s festival, which never quite made it onto these distinguished pages, even though I did record it. I remember standing at the Green Man café, grimly holding onto a cider, waiting for the various water/electric problems to be sorted out, feeling, well, not a little pissed off with the weather. And then this lot came on, and, well, if the sun didn’t actually start shining, let’s just say it felt a little brighter.

Threatmantics

Threatmantics are from Cardiff and, perhaps not surprisingly given that they are a Green Man act, do a fair amount of singing in Welsh. With an idiosyncratic line up of drums, lead guitar and violin, they were a lot of fun, alternately wistful and then blunt. It was a really good set that cheered me up no end.

At the time, they didn’t seem to have much of a web presence, and so I didn’t post about them at all, but now there are a couple of tracks available from their Myspace page which are worth hearing, and there’s an album and new single in the offing.

They’re also playing at this year’s Green Man…

Don’t Carry

Sum Sum

There’s also this video of Threatmantics live which looks a lot like their actual Green Man set, but isn’t…